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Re: QuickNotes

Carl,

You may be right, but I do use XyWrite wildcards in CI ,too. And I recall working to implement backreferences in a U2 frame. So you could change "Now the time is" to "Now is the time" in one fell swoop. And more complicated cases , as well.

I was re-inventing the RE wheel with its $1, $2 lazy and greedy IIRC.

--Harry



At 04:51 PM 5/12/2026, you wrote:
Reply to note from Harry Binswanger <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Tue, 12 May 2026 13:01:55 -0400

Harry,

> One thing from Xy that is immensely valuable is the wildcards for
> search and replace. Wildstring and the Not (plus the suite of
> others) have eliminated the need for RegEx for my amateur uses.

I considered implementing this, and may still do so. But for now I'd like to push back on the idea that regular expressions are not for "amateurs".  Sure, regexes can be complex and inscrutable; but most XyWrite-style wildcard searches are simple, and their regex equivalents are simple, too. For starters, no wildcards are needed for the following: