Using regular expression in shortcuts and getting inconsistent behavior
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I'm using shortcut to input and append info to a note document. The issue is that I'm trying to escape all the quotes and apostrophes in my inputs, but some might already be escaped so I have to do so selectively. The command I made for this in shortcuts was `Replace (? Hello there it's me, don\\'t escape this one. "One quote" followed by \\"another\\"
>
> Testing new date format and some escape characters like " and it's
Which then becomes
> Hello there it\\'s me, don\\'t escape this one. \\"One quote\\" followed by \\"another\\"
>
> Testing new date format and some escape characters like " and it's
So for whatever reason it isn't replacing anything on the second line with the escaped versions. I built this regex over at https://regexr.com/ where it matches all the strings in the input I give so it should work as far as I can tell, and it's not like the negative look behind isn't supported since it works fine in the first line. I also tried adding a separate " ' after the second line to see if it'd get escaped and those ones did, but the ones already in that line didn't.
Can anyone offer an explanation so I can better understand what's going on with the expression I chose and the data I’m feeding it?


Asked by Xavier
(21 rep)
Jun 25, 2021, 05:13 AM
Last activity: Mar 2, 2025, 01:04 PM
Last activity: Mar 2, 2025, 01:04 PM