Find and replace

**Snowtoad** · 10-07-2010, 02:29 AM

I've got a word document with a large list of references of journal articles.
It's in a form like

...
CRDT- 2010/07/03 06:00
PMCR- 2011/07/01
AID - 83/1/51 [pii]
AID - 10.4269/ajtmh.2010.09-0621 [doi]
PST - ppublish
SO - Am J Trop Med Hyg. 2010 Jul;83(1):51-5.

PMID- 20578447
OWN - NLM
..........

CRDT- 2010/07/03 06:00
PMCR- 2011/07/01
AID - 83/1/51 [pii]
AID - 10.4269/ajtmh.2010.09-0621 [doi]
PST - ppublish
SO - Am J Trop Med Hyg. 2010 Jul;83(1):51-5.
.......

I want to get rid of the "AID - XXXXXXXX [pii]" parts
However if I do a find and replace for Find: (AID - )*\[pii\] then it will find the first "AID - 83/1/51 [pii]" fine but next it will select from the start of the "AID - 10.4269/ajtmh.2010.09-0621 [doi]" all the way to the end of the next "AID - 83/1/51 [pii]"

So I need something to like limit the allowed number of characters of the wildcard or some similar solution...

Cheers

**pike** · 10-08-2010, 01:31 AM

Hi Snowtoad

This should do the trick

(AID*?)(pii?)

**pike** · 10-08-2010, 02:19 AM

even better
(AID*?)([!do])(pii?)
not quite the same as reg exp but close enough

**Snowtoad** · 10-09-2010, 01:25 PM

Originally Posted by pike

even better
(AID*?)([!do])(pii?)
not quite the same as reg exp but close enough

Thnaks Pike, I'll give that a go!

**Snowtoad** · 10-10-2010, 07:49 PM

Yeah those didn't seem to work, had the same effect as the ones I tried.. first selected what I wanted, then next it selected from the AID - XXXXXXXXX [doi] all the way to the next AID - XXXXXX [pii]