I have come across what seems to be a Find and Replace anomaly using wildcards. Trying to replace <period><space> with <period><space><space>. Please note that I do not agree with the current "rule" that there should be just one space after a period.



The Find string is (one space between the parentheses):
(.) ([A-Z])
I have also tried:
(. )([A-Z])
and also looked for something other than a space after <period><space>
(. )([! ])

Using the first Find example above, the Replace string is (two spaces between \1 and \2):
\1 \2

Working with the following:

One sentence. Another sentence.

Find correctly highlights ". A". However, the Replace produces this:

One sentence.A nother sentence. (two spaces between "A" and "n")

Can anybody tell me what's going on here?

There is no anomaly at all!

As a “wild card”, [A-Z] will only match one single uppercase character.

Note that trying to locate <period><space> as an end of sentence marker is always a bit of a wild goose chase. There are tons of abbreviations, acronyms, etc., followed by <period><space>.

However, you might want to try the following wildcard Find/Replace:

Find What: (.^32)([A-Z][a-z]{1,})
Replace With: \1^32\2

You should be able to use a wildcard Find/Replace, where:
Find = (. )([A-Z])
Replace = \1 \2
or:
Find = (.) ([A-Z])
Replace = \1 \2
or:
Find = (.)( [A-Z])
Replace = \1 \2
Find = (. )([! ])
Replace = \1 \2
and so on. None of these is capable of producing 'One sentence.A nother sentence.' There is also no need to complicate things with extra parameters or escape codes.

__________________
Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]

Today it works. I have often used wildcard find and replace successfully, including the situation I described. The day I posted I was getting the erratic results. I spent some time on it before posting, as I was sure I had missed something. All I can say is that I am certain I was doing it as I described, with the result I described, but now it works as expected.

"As a 'wild card', [A-Z] will only match one single uppercase character."
That was my intent. I was looking for a period followed by a space followed by any upper case character. The Find highlighted that combination. I realize there are abbreviations and other situations where I would not want the extra space, so I was stepping through the document and replacing as appropriate (except I was sidetracked by the the oddity that appeared that day). I had restarted Word, but got the same result. I didn't try a computer restart, but I should have done so before posting. I have seen oddities appear temporarily with Word and other Office products (and not limited to MS programs). All I can think is that this must have been one of those.

Anyhow, thanks for the replies. I appreciate both of you taking time to respond.