Find & Replace: Regex Replace not Replacing

[EdmundB]

Hi

I am running LO 5.2.3.3 with Java 1.8.0_111 under Windows 7 Pro.

I cannot understand the replace function in Find & Replace with ‘Regular Expressions’ selected. For instance if I have

apple ant awkward any

and search using either ‘Find All’, ‘Find Previous’ or ‘Find Next’ then the leading a’s are highlighted. However when I try to replace them with say ‘o’ and repeatedly click ‘Replace’ then the highlight cycles through all the a’s but they are not replaced.

If I click ‘Replace All’ than all the leading a’s are replaced. If I tick ‘Replace Backwards’ then the a’s are replaced sequentially starting with ‘any’. If the leading a is also at the start of the line then ‘Replace’ works but not otherwise.

What do I need to do to be able to replace one instance at a time?

(If I simply search for ‘a’ then the Replace button works just fine but it also replaces a’s in the middle of words.)

[erAck]

What is your exact search term in the Find field, and is that “apple ant awkward any” within one cell, or four individual cells, or …?

[EdmundB]

Sorry. The editor won’t let me put the search sequence in without adding additional tags but it’s a start of word followed by an a. (back slash, less than, a)

The words are all on one line in Writer separated by spaces.

[Lupp]

(Use the tool ‘preforamatted text.’ (fourth icom).)
\ba is standard Regex for ‘Word boundary, then a’. GNU Regex uses \< instead of \b The ICU RegEx engine used by LibreOffice should interpret both these notations correctly. .
‘One instance at a time’ should work anyway 'Find Next ’ > Choose ‘Find Next’ again (don’t replace) or ‘Replace’.

[EdmundB]

Thank you very much.
Neither \< or \b seem to work properly what ever I do. This is really frustrating since I had moved to Find & Replace because AltSearch (my preferred option) has also stopped working sensibly.
Fortunately I have another PC running Debian Jessie with LibO 4.3 in which both Find & Replace and AltSearch work perfectly. It’s just not as convenient.
Is it worth raising a bug report?

[Lupp]

I tested with V5.2.2.2 and things worked as expected.and described by me (both the variants). I am afraid I cannot help you with a problem rather specific to your system/installation.
There is only one standard hint concerning very strange errors: You may try to reset your user profile (aftera backup, of course). A corrupted profile can cause funny behaviour.

[EdmundB]

I tried again on a neighbour’s Window 7 PC only to find the same fault.

After saving my profile and completely uninstalling LibO, I installed 5.1.6.2, the Still version. The Find & Replace fault was still there. I then installed 4.3.3.2, which works on my Linux machine. Both Find & Replace and AltSearch worked properly.

I then copied my 5.2.3.3 profile back. Find & Replace and AltSearch still work properly.

I can now get on with my work, but it still feels as if something is wrong somewhere