Why are you trying to do this? Surely it would be easier to do a search and replace on the document e.g. .^p for . ^p.

If you want to do it programatically then your code will work if you change to count:= -1. So if you are in the no space case in your thumbnail, the count:= -1 will select to the left of the cursor. if you use count:=1 then you select to the right of the cursor.