ISPF search - capturing result

jzhardy · Posted: Sat Dec 07, 2019 5:20 am

does anyone know if the result of an ISPF edit search is accessible in an ISPF variable ?

eg, from a REXX macro, i might have something like:

"F r'ab.+z'" which would match, for example, "abcdz"

is the result mapped to any .Z variable ?

Willy Jensen · Posted: Sat Dec 07, 2019 4:49 pm

The ISPF EDIT macro FIND service will set rc=0 and the special variable .zcsr to the line number if a match is found.

Sample:
"find ' XXMACS ' first nx"
if rc=0 then "change ' ' '*' .zcsr .zcsr first"

See the 'Edit and Edit Macros' manual for details.

Pedro · Posted: Tue Dec 10, 2019 11:18 pm

After the FIND is successful, you can use the CURSOR macro statement to get the line number and column value of where the cursor is. Then use the LINE macro statement to get the entire line. Use rexx PARSE statement to break up the line based on the column offset.

Joerg.Findeisen · Posted: Wed Dec 11, 2019 2:29 am

@Pedro: You might not get the RegEx search string in full detail when using parse afterwards.

prino · Posted: Wed Dec 11, 2019 2:46 am

Use the "macro_msg" edit macro command, and parse the resulting variables, ZEDILMSG, ZEDISMSG, and ZEDMSGNO.

Pedro · Posted: Wed Dec 11, 2019 11:47 am

Willy Jensen · Posted: Wed Dec 11, 2019 12:48 pm

Ok, slightly better sample than my first one:
"find 'text' first"
if rc=0 then "(r) = line .zcsr"

Joerg.Findeisen · Posted: Wed Dec 11, 2019 2:50 pm

This snippet works for me.

jzhardy · Posted: Tue Dec 17, 2019 8:39 am

thanks ! works brilliantly

slightly related, is there any way to get capture elements from a matching Regex ?

so, if an input line contained :

xyz : 123

any my match was r'xyz : *([^ ]+) *$'

then it would capture 123

Joerg.Findeisen · Posted: Tue Dec 17, 2019 8:45 am

Have you tried the code snippet? Guess not..

Joerg.Findeisen · Posted: Tue Dec 17, 2019 8:56 am

For your RegEx I'd use:

jzhardy · Posted: Fri Jan 03, 2020 8:04 am

sorry all, some clarification required on my part

my follow up was more about capture elements specifically. A regex expression can have one or more capture elements, identified by bracket pairs.

so, r'x(..)y(..)' would capture :

xyzyab

returning yz into capture element 1 and 'ab' into capture element 2. This is supported by a full implementation of REgex, but suspect it is not possible in ISPF regex.

jzhardy · Posted: Fri Jan 03, 2020 8:06 am

.. meaning I want to be able to capture an element into a variable ...

Joerg.Findeisen · Posted: Sat Jan 04, 2020 2:18 pm

AFAIK it is not (yet) possible with ISPF to have the captured groups as variables.

Pedro · Posted: Wed Jan 08, 2020 3:41 am

Joerg.Findeisen · Posted: Thu Jan 09, 2020 1:40 am

@Pedro: You only get one or two votes for that and it's being considered niche. Of course ISPF variables ZRE0..9 for up to 10 capture groups are available and it could work like that. The second string in a CHANGE could have r'\0 .. \9' for those variables if the first is also a RegEx but the total unresolved(?) expression length for both must not exceed 256 characters afaik presently.