Regex search works intermittently

Questions & Suggestions
1

I'm totally stumped, any help would be appreciated. I'm using regex to save the heading (first 4 lines) of some plain text notes.

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The variable projecttext in this case is:

#p_test #current

202002212156 quis nostrud
===

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. ...

Sometimes this works, sometimes it doesn't. I can't force it to fail or succeed reliably. Sometimes I can fix it by restarting the engine, sometimes not. Does anyone have any ideas why this might be happening?

2

Try this Regex:
^(?:.*\R){4}

If this fails for any case, please post the EXACT source text for which it failed.

Let us know if this works for you.

3

Should the 4 be a 3? I only see 3 newlines in the original search pattern.

4

Nope. OP requested 4 lines, and that is what my Regex does.
You can test it at regex101.com.

5

Just a thought but a line that looks blank may contain white space so I would rephrase the capture to avoid that.

6

I think the ".*" will capture white space and everything else on the line.
\R will capture any form of end of line character(s).
^(?:.*\R){4}

As I said above, if you, or anyone, has any doubts, you can test it a regex101.com.

7

My guess is that @JMichaelTX is right - clipboards can often have linefeed or return line endings (and rarely return-linefeed endings), so replacing your use of \n (linefeed) with \R (which matches any of the line endings) should resolve your issue.

I generally prefer your use of \A over ^, since \A always means the start of the entire string whereas ^ can alternatively mean the start of a line within the string - but it doesn't by default so it's largely academic. Also, your regex:

\A.*\R.*\R.*\R.*

will avoid capturing the trailing line ending, so is slightly different to @JMichaelTX which captures the fourth line ending. Which behaviour you want is up to you.

8

In all this nobody mentioned capturing groups explicitly.

The OP’s screen display showed there weren’t any - both because of the lack of a ( and ) pair and because the action didn’t have the fields which enable you to say which variables get the result of each of the capturing groups.

9

I am sorry to disappoint everyone but the error has not returned since plaguing me for a day. I'm still using my original regex and there doesn't seem to be any issue... I'll try your ideas if it comes up again. Thanks all

10

There is a “0” capture group that is implicit that captures the entire match, which is what the OP is using to capture the search of the entire regex.

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