GREP of the Month: Character Equivalents
Searching for characters when a rose is a róse is a røse…
Intellectually, I understand that there is a difference between a, á, and à. As an American, I can’t actually pronounce the difference, but that’s my problem. And, of course, then there’s å, â, and ä (which are relatively common), and ã, ?, ?, ?, ?, ?, ?, ?, ?, ?, ?, ?, ?, and ? (which are mystifying).
But GREP is usually extremely precise in its pattern matching, so if you search for a you will find just that one character, no more and no less. That’s sad, because sometimes you want to search for “any a, no matter the accent.” You could do that with the code [aáàåâäã?????????????]
but that would be insane, especially if you had to search for several characters, each of which may or may not have an accent.
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