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Regex with dates
Thread poster: Reed James
Reed James
Reed James
Chile
Local time: 14:52
Member (2005)
Spanish to English
Apr 13, 2019

I would like to know the best way to check date formats. Sometimes I have to convert US date format to UK date format. Can this be done with a regular expression in the search and replace dialogue?
 
Dan Lucas
Dan Lucas  Identity Verified
United Kingdom
Local time: 19:52
Member (2014)
Japanese to English
If even humans struggle... Apr 13, 2019

Reed James wrote:
Sometimes I have to convert US date format to UK date format.

I think the issue is that a date like "02/02/02" is ambiguous, but valid under either UK dd/mm/yy and US mm/dd/yy conventions. If even you can't tell which is which by looking at it, how can the regex? You might say "Well, that's unlikely to happen very often", but it's those edge cases that will get ya if you do a bulk find and replace.

Problems like this explain why the ISO 8601 format (yyyy-mm-dd) exists.

Regards,
Dan
 
Jean Lachaud
Jean Lachaud  Identity Verified
United States
Local time: 14:52
English to French
+ ...
Wordfast 5.8 Online Help says: Apr 13, 2019

"Note: Select Use Regex to search on regular expressions or wild card characters.", which should answer your question.
 
Reed James
Reed James
Chile
Local time: 14:52
Member (2005)
Spanish to English
TOPIC STARTER
How about the months written out? Apr 13, 2019

Usually what happens is that I will see 8 US date such as January 2, 1955 and I want to change into 22 January 1955. I don't necessarily need to in the find and replace dialog placed out. All I need to do is to find all of the months written out instead of doing an individual search for each month (January, February, March…) which is tedious and unnecessary.
 


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Regex with dates







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