Okay, thanks, Claudia. I’ll look into it at that end.

RegEx Helper as a plugin can offer some help (assuming that RegEx Helper is already installed):

Open your file in Notepad++
Set the language to Php
Launch the plugin using Ctrl+F12
Type in the “Regular Expression” window: ({{)|(}})
Turn on the highlighting using ‘Mark’ button.

Tested using this Moustache template:
<strong>Hello, {{firstname}}</strong><br>
<p>You are visitor number {{visitorNumber}}.</p>

Hello, @scott-sumner and All,

I’ve studied the general case of searching a specific character, ONLY IF, located inside a range of characters with delimiters.

Now, two cases are possible :

Case A : an area with a same starting and ending character, as, for instance, '.....' or "....."

Case B : an area with a different starting and ending character, as, for instance, (.....), [.....], {.....} or <.....>

Notes :

For our discussion, we are supposed to look for the colon character

For case A, I chose the double quotes delimiter ", as common boundary

For case B, I chose the start delimiter < and the end delimiter >

Let’s begin with the easier form !

Case B : A possible regex would be :

SEARCH :(?=[^<\r\n]*>)

REPLACE Any string or character, even EMPTY

Note that this regex looks for a colon character, ONLY IF followed by a range, possibly empty, of characters, different from the first delimiter < and from the EOL characters \r and \n , till the ending delimiter >

On the test example, below, the regex finds all colon characters, located inside the <.....> areas exclusively ( the ones which are underlined ) Fine !

1:23:<This:is a: tiny>text:to :see<if :my :logic:>is: correct:<I: hope:that>: all: will:be<::fine,: indeed>: ! :<:>78:9 ¯ ¯ ¯ ¯ ¯ ¯ ¯ ¯¯ ¯ ¯

Now, in case A, the annoying thing is that it’s impossible to distinguish the two delimiters ! So, we’re going to cheat a bit ! First, we’ll replace, for instance, any area "....." by an oriented area as, for instance, #"....."@. Of course, these new boundaries must be absent from the present contents of the file !

So, assuming the original text :

1:23:"This:is a: small"text:to :see"if :my :logic:"is: correct:"I: hope:that": all: will:be"::fine,: indeed": ! :":"78:9

The simple S/R :

SEARCH ".*?"

REPLACE #$0@

would get the following text :

1:23:#"This:is a: small"@text:to :see#"if :my :logic:"@is: correct:#"I: hope:that"@: all: will:be#"::fine,: indeed"@: ! :#":"@78:9

Accordingly, the correct regex becomes :

SEARCH :(?=[^#\r\n]*@)

REPLACE Any string or character, even EMPTY

Again, only the colons, inside the areas, which are underlined, are matched by the regex !

1:23:#"This:is a: small"@text:to :see#"if :my :logic:"@is: correct:#"I: hope:that"@: all: will:be#"::fine,: indeed"@: ! :#":"@78:9 ¯ ¯ ¯ ¯ ¯ ¯ ¯ ¯¯ ¯ ¯

To end with, use the simple regex :

SEARCH #|@

REPLACE Empty

in order to get the original areas "....."

Et voilà !

Cheers,

guy038

@guy038

Thanks…what confused me was that it sounded like you were saying that tabstops were always 4 columns…your most-recent post clears that up.