Sky 8 -- searching for literal *

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AElfwine Mischler

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Nov 5, 2020, 7:28:23 AM11/5/20
to SKYIndexUsers
I have put an asterisk at the beginning of many records (there's a reason for it in this unusual index), but have decided that the asterisk will look better at the end of the entry. However, when I search for * to replace it with something -- or even to group all the records that have it -- Sky 8 finds everything. I do NOT have "pattern matching" checked. I have not asked it to use wildcards. But it's treating the asterisk that way.

I've tried using Find (Ctrl + F) and also Group on Text (Ctrl + Alt + G) but I'm getting the same result. Is there any way to automatically find these records, replace the asterisk with something else (e.g. $), and then group on those records and add a suffix? (Only I'll use a percent sign or something for the suffix, and change it in Word.) It's the finding that's the problem at this point.

Thanks.

AElfwine Mischler
Personal email: aelfwine...@gmail.com
Member, Editorial Freelancers Assoc. (EFA)
Member, American Society for Indexing (ASI)


AElfwine Mischler

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Nov 5, 2020, 8:52:46 AM11/5/20
to Deborah Patton, SKYIndexUsers
I found a relatively easy way to get rid of the asterisks. Once I had them grouped using Ctrl + Alt + G [*], it wouldn't find an asterisk alone. But if I typed *Abu to be replaced with Abu, it could handle that. (And I worked on a copy of the file just in case anything went wrong.) So it took maybe 20 minutes rather than an hour or more. Very few identical names, so even working in the Index Pane wasn't much faster.

Thanks!

AElfwine Mischler
Personal email: aelfwine...@gmail.com
Member, Editorial Freelancers Assoc. (EFA)
Member, American Society for Indexing (ASI)




On Thu, Nov 5, 2020 at 2:53 PM Deborah Patton <ma...@pattonindexing.com> wrote:
From the manual:
If you want to enter a question mark (?), asterisk (*), pound sign (#), or left square bracket ([) as part of your search phrase, you must enter them within square brackets like this [?], [*], [#] or [[].
This works for group on text too.
Hope that helps,
Deborah



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AElfwine Mischler

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Nov 5, 2020, 12:45:30 PM11/5/20
to Theresa Duran, SkyInd...@googlegroups.com
Thanks, Theresa. Isn’t that weird, though? Shouldn’t you be able to find an asterisk in brackets WITHOUT checking the Pattern Matching box?

Ælfwine Mischler
Member, Editorial Freelancers Assoc. (EFA)
Member, American Society for Indexing (ASI)

On Nov 5, 2020, at 7:40 PM, Theresa Duran <ther...@pacbell.net> wrote:

I just tried it in Sky 7 and found that you have to search for the asterisk within square brackets AND have the Pattern Matching box checked. Once I did those two things, it found all the asterisks I had inserted.

 

Theresa Duran

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Nov 5, 2020, 1:33:12 PM11/5/20
to AElfwine Mischler, SKYIndexUsers

Yep, it’s weird. I was not aware of it previously. For me, the key takeaway here is never to use an asterisk symbol as a character code or marker.

 

Theresa

mjhw...@gmail.com

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Nov 5, 2020, 4:40:46 PM11/5/20
to SKYIndexUsers
In the search function, an asterisk is always treated as a wildcard whether or not you have checked the pattern matching checkbox. To search for the literal asterisk character, enclose it in square brackets [*] and tick the Pattern Matching checkbox. (This is described in the user guide, but not where you'd expect to find it.)
Michael

sese...@gmail.com

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Nov 6, 2020, 10:07:19 AM11/6/20
to SKYIndexUsers
It would follow then that "?" is treated as a wildcard for any single character, right?  That's in keeping with conventional search argument syntax also.

J. in CO
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