Regular Expression: adding bookmark html tags depending on various range of numbers - html

Question

I have some html pages with numbers of verses like:
verses 2-5
verses 11-15
verses 21-23
I need to add for each number a code before the word "verses"
to be
<a name="2"></a><a name="3"></a><a name="4"></a><a name="5"></a>verses 2-5
etc.
So it takes the range of the numbers given, and before the beginning it adds:
<a name=""></a>
for each number in the range..
I use notepad++ to search and replace.

Answer 1

You're going to need a script to do this. I whipped up a simple Ruby script to do it. Used it on your sample text, got your output. Just download Ruby, paste this into a file in the directory of that text, and replace the verses.txt line with whatever your file name is. Then run it from the command line like: ruby ./script.rb
d = File.read('./verses.txt')
c = d[0..d.length]
c.scan(/(verses\s+\d+-\d+)/) do |n|
n.each do |a|
a.scan(/(\d+-\d+)/) do |nums|
z = nums.to_s.split(/-/)
st=''
in1 = z[0].gsub(/\["/, '').to_i
in2 = z[1].chomp("\"]").to_i
(in1..in2).each do |index|
st += "<a name=\"#{index}\"></a>"
end
b = st + a;
d.gsub!(a, b)
end
end
end
puts d
f = File.new('verses2.txt', "w")
f.write(d)
Per your request, here is a modification that will overwrite the opened file and run on all files in a directory. For ease, I won't do directory entry, so place the script in the directory of all the files to run it. Here goes:
Dir.entries('.').each do |entry|
entry.scan(/.*.html/) do
|fn|
d = File.read('./' + fn.to_s)
c = d[0..d.length]
c.scan(/(verses\s+\d+-\d+)/) do |n|
n.each do |a|
a.scan(/(\d+-\d+)/) do |nums|
z = nums.to_s.split(/-/)
st=''
in1 = z[0].gsub(/\["/, '').to_i
in2 = z[1].chomp("\"]").to_i
(in1..in2).each do |index|
st += "<a name=\"#{index}\"></a>"
end
b = st + a;
d.gsub!(a, b)
end
end
end
puts d
f = File.new('./' + fn.to_s, "w")
f.write(d)
end
end
I'll think about how to do the arabic encodings. This will run on all text files, if they have different extensions or have a similar name, let me know and I'll update the script.
This should fully work, just tested it. Let me know if there are issues.

Answer 2

You can do it for 2-digit verses 10 to 99 like this:
Search: verses (\d)(\d)-
Replace: <a name="$1">verses $1$2-</a>
For 3+ digit numbers, add another group for the extra digit(s) and treat similarly.
This extra complication is required because notepad++ doesn't support look-aheads AFAIK.