Regex search in Calc macro no longer works

[stanton]

I have the following snippet of code, which I created in OOo a while back and which has worked for a long time. However, when In recently tried this code in LibreOffice 4.4.2.2, the search never returned any results:

   SearchDesc = Sheet.getColumns().getByIndex(0).createSearchDescriptor
   SearchDesc.setSearchString(TextToRegex(strWord))
   SearchDesc.SearchRegularExpression = True
   SearchDesc.SearchCaseSensitive = False
   SearchDesc.SearchWords = True
   SearchRes = Sheet.getColumns().getByIndex(0).findFirst(SearchDesc)

It seems that the regex is at fault, as the following code works (for direct matches, that is):

   SearchDesc = Sheet.getColumns().getByIndex(0).createSearchDescriptor
   SearchDesc.setSearchString(strWord)
   SearchDesc.SearchCaseSensitive = False
   SearchDesc.SearchWords = True
   SearchRes = Sheet.getColumns().getByIndex(0).findFirst(SearchDesc)

Trying a somewhat more crude regex also works:

   SearchDesc = Sheet.getColumns().getByIndex(0).createSearchDescriptor
   SearchDesc.setSearchString(".*" + strWord + ".*")
   SearchDesc.SearchRegularExpression = True
   SearchDesc.SearchCaseSensitive = False
   SearchDesc.SearchWords = True
   SearchRes = Sheet.getColumns().getByIndex(0).findFirst(SearchDesc)

What’s the issue here? It seems the TextToRegex() function returns a regex which doesn’t match the original text…

[JohnSUN]

Do you really have strWord in contents of cells? May be you search it in formulas, not in values of cells? Try to change SearchDesc.SearchType from 0 (by default) to 1 (“search in cell formulas values”)

[erAck]

My crystal ball is broken, I can’t see whatever TextToRegex(strWord) returns.

[JohnSUN]

I think that it is a userdefined function, something like ".*" + strWord + ".*"

[erAck]

Obviously it returns something different as you mentioned in your third example that SearchDesc.setSearchString(".*" + strWord + ".*") does work.

[JohnSUN]

Yes you are right. But only if strWord no contains points, dollars, backslashes, brackets etc.

[erAck]

If strWord contains regular expression metacharacters or operators that are meant to be literal characters to search for, then each has to be escaped with a preceding \ backslash. Either that, or turn off regular expression search for such a string. But that was always the case. For such characters and expressions see Regular Expressions - Old location of the ICU User Guide and following.

[stanton]

For clarification: yes, strWord does occur in cell contents. That is why non-Regex search works. The strings are natural words, which normally don’t contain any characters with special meaning inside a regex. At the most, they might have diacritics (ą, ž etc.).