Affinity supports the use of regular expressions to find document content that matches specified patterns.
Regular expressions are used in several contexts in Affinity:
Writing regular expressions involves special syntax to specify patterns you want to find in text. Example scenarios and expressions provided below demonstrate common syntax you're likely to need to write your own expressions.
A comprehensive guide to the full power of regular expressions is beyond the scope of Affinity Help. You can learn more from online resources such as www.regular-expressions.info and regexone.com.
When an expression matches letters, the States panel is case sensitive unless you explicitly state otherwise in the expression. The Find and Replace panel is case sensitive when the Find box's Match Case formatting option is enabled.
On each panel, case sensitivity can be overridden for part or all of an expression:
The case of specific letters in an expression can be ignored by using a character class. For example, to match the letter a in either case, use [aA] in your expression.
Character classes can also be used when matching a range of characters. For example, [a-eA-E] matches an individual letter from a to e regardless of its case.
In an Affinity Photo document, we've used retouching tools to remove dust and blemishes from a photo by painting on layers above it.
Accordingly, each of these layers is named Dust removal or Blemish removal.
On the States panel, we can add a query that checks layer names match the regular expression (?i)(Dust|Blemish) removal, meaning either Dust or Blemish, followed by a space and then 'removal'. Letter case is ignored for the whole expression.
In an Affinity Designer document, we've used the layer name offset fill to identify layers that have been manually repositioned to create a handmade misprinted effect.
It's possible that we've typed these words in reverse order in some places.
On the States panel, we can add a query that checks whether layer names match the regular expression (?i)(?=.*offset)(?=.*fill).*$. This matches layer names that contain both words wherever each occurs in the name. Letter case is ignored for the whole expression.
In an Affinity Designer document for a CAD architectural design, layer names identify building components with a two-letter prefix, followed by one or more groups of an underscore followed by some digits. For example, Ss-35_10_15.
On the States panel, we can control the visibility of layers that belong to a particular component category by using an expression like [Ss][Ss](_[0-9]{1,})+. The expression will work even if the prefix's letter case has been mistyped.
Conversely, we can control the visibility of all other component categories' layers with a small change near the start of the expression, so it becomes (^[Ss][Ss])(_[0-9]{1,})+.
In an Affinity Publisher document, we want to find instances of a word throughout our text, but omit instances preceded by a specific word.
On the Find and Replace panel, with Regular Expression selected on the Find box's Formatting options, we can use the expression (?>!proin )aliquam. The results will include instances of aliquam except those preceded by proin and a space.
It's possible to exclude instances containing one of several preceding words. For example, to exclude instances where the word error is preceded by the article 'the' or 'an', use the expression (?>!(the|an) )error.