How to search for unclosed brackets

billob · #1 09-19-2016, 02:33 PM

I have a document with thousands of ( ) and [ ] combinations separated by text.

All sets share only one line

How do i search for one item in the pair being missing?

macropod · #2 09-19-2016, 03:20 PM

You could do that with a series of wildcard Find operations, where:
Find = \([!\)]@^13
to find opening parentheses that lack closing ones;
Find = ^13[!\(]@\)
to find closing parentheses that lack opening ones;
Find = \[[!\]]@^13
to find opening square brackets that lack closing ones; and
Find = ^13[!\[]@\]
to find closing square brackets that lack opening ones.

Alternatively, you could use a macro like:

Code:

Sub Demo()
Dim oPara As Paragraph
For Each oPara In ActiveDocument.Paragraphs
  With oPara.Range
    If Len(Replace(.Text, "(", vbNullString)) <> Len(Replace(.Text, ")", vbNullString)) Then
      .Select
      MsgBox "Selected paragraph has unmatched smart parentheses", vbExclamation
      Exit Sub
    ElseIf Len(Replace(.Text, "[", vbNullString)) <> Len(Replace(.Text, "]", vbNullString)) Then
      .Select
      MsgBox "Selected paragraph has unmatched smart square brackets", vbExclamation
      Exit Sub
    End If
  End With
Next
End Sub

For PC macro installation & usage instructions, see: http://www.gmayor.com/installing_macro.htm
For Mac macro installation & usage instructions, see: http://word.mvps.org/Mac/InstallMacro.html

billob · #3 09-19-2016, 06:25 PM

Hi Paul:

Thanks for your reply.

Looking at the square bracket routine for search. Does the number of characters between the brackets pairs oi my document matter?

It's been over 30 years since I actually wrote a Macro and that was for Excel so I
hope it does not come to that.

Cheers,
Billob

macropod · #4 09-19-2016, 06:44 PM

The wildcard Find code really only works with what should be one set of parentheses/brackets per paragraph, finding at any that has one parenthesis/bracket but not its counterpart.

The macro is more flexible and works on a paragraph-by-paragraph basis, comparing the number of ( with the number of ) and comparing the number of [ with the number of ] in the same paragraph. It reports & exits if it finds one where the numbers aren't the same, leaving the problem paragraph selected.

billob · #5 09-19-2016, 08:21 PM

Hi Paul:

The search routines work great for my needs.

I had to make one change to the 3rd one as it would stop on every line weather it was correct or not.

I would have thought that my now Microsoft would have included this option in their search program.

Many Thanks
billob

macropod · #6 09-19-2016, 08:41 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by billob

I had to make one change to the 3rd one as it would stop on every line weather it was correct or not.

Corrected.

Quote:

Originally Posted by billob

I would have thought that my now Microsoft would have included this option in their search program.

I'm not sure why you'd expect there to be a built-in tool for this, since people also use character pairs such as:
!¡, ¿?, <>, {} “”, ‘’, & «»,
and paired single characters such as:
", ', #, §, |, * & ‡
for enclosing various things which, depending on the document, may span multiple paragraphs. Regardless, as the wildcard Find expressions show, Word does have the means of doing what you wanted.

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