Insert extra tab for some lines

[Calion]

Okay, for a newbie to Grep, I feel like I've gotten pretty far.

So far, I've got 

^([^ ]+\t[[:upper:]]+\d+)

Replaced by

\1\t

Great! That works (well, sort of. For some reason it matched more than just uppercase letters, but as it turned out, that's what I wanted anyway, so whatever). But now I want to insert an extra tab after the initial string (prior to the first tab) for every line that does not match the second part of the expression (after the tab). But I have absolutely no idea how to do this.

An example to make things clear:

The expression above matches

9308 DDREF1 D&D Character Record Sheets (ca. 1991)

but not

9363 Character and Monster Assortment Pack

Fantastic. But now I need an additional tab after the numbers for only the bottom (unmatched) line.

Help?

[Christopher Bort]

On 7/26/17 at 1:45 PM, calo...@gmail.com (Calion) wrote:

>Okay, for a newbie to Grep, I feel like I've gotten pretty far.
>
>So far, I've got
>^([^ ]+\t[[:upper:]]+\d+)
>
>Replaced by
>
>\1\t
>
>Great! That works (well, sort of. For some reason it matched
>more than just uppercase letters, but as it turned out, that's
>what I wanted anyway, so whatever).

Enable 'Case senstive' for matching.

>But now I want to insert an extra tab after the initial string (prior

>to the first tab) for every line that does *not* match the second part

>of the expression (after the tab). But I have absolutely no idea how
>to do this.
>
>An example to make things clear:
>
>The expression above matches
>
>9308 DDREF1 D&D Character Record Sheets (ca. 1991)
>
>but not
>
>9363 Character and Monster Assortment Pack
>
>Fantastic. But now I need an additional tab after the numbers
>for only the bottom (unmatched) line.

Make the [[:upper:]]+\d+ part of your expression optional:

^([^ ]+\t(?:[[:upper:]]+\d+)?)

So now it matches

9308\tDDREF1

in your first example line and

9363\t

in the second. The replacement pattern \1\t will now give you

9308\tDDREF1\t

and

9363\t\t
--
Christopher Bort
<top...@thehundredacre.net>