I'm trying to create a find and replace macro to easily add html tags to the beginng and end of selected text.

I'm new to UE and normally use TextMate.

Lets say I select any word I want to bold in html.

I would like to have a macro add the <b> before and </b> after selected text.

In the find and replace I selected regular expressions and selected text.

How could I have ^ find before the selection and add <b> before the selection.

Likewise I would like $ to add a </b> at the end of the selection.

Ideas anyone?

Read about Tag Lists in the help. The Tag List view can be opened with View - Views/Lists - Tag List.

Thanks for the help. I'm new to this application and its so much more powerful than anything else I've used so far. Also noticed that ^ in the regular expressions for beginning of line is actually % in UE.

Thanks again you answered my question. Also wish I checked that help file before asking

There are three types of regular expressions available - UltraEdit, Unix, and Perl. There are some differences in the syntax that you have to be aware of.

Sometimes it's hard to know where to look in a big Help file if you don't get a bit of guidance first.

Actually I'm having tons of problems.

All I want to do is create a simple macro that puts a html tag before and after a selection, but can't seem to get it to find the beginning of a selection and then the end of a selection for the final result.

<tag>selected text</tag>

Its far easier to hit a macro then to go into a tag menu for every little tag when you repeat it over the course of a large document.

How can I write a find and replace script that will do what I want?

Try this for bold.

InsertMode
Cut
"<b>"
Paste
"</b>"

It works, thank you so much for the advice. I don't know why it works, but now I can get crazy with my macros.

For such simple tasks I use templates. For your example, the template would be <b>[$replace$]</b>

See also Usage of ^c and ^s in search and replace.