Windows Batch File - Find and return string inside matching pattern

Question

I'm using a batch file to identify and load fonts temporarily. It looks for strings like /FontFamily(Rubber Dinghy Rapids)/ occurring inside .ai and .pdf files.

Now if I do findstr /r FontFamily\(.*\) MyFile.ai, this command returns a hugely interminable line of crap data with FontFamily(Rubber Dinghy Rapids) lost somewhere in there. I ACTUALLY need it to return the value of .* it found inside - in this case Rubber Dinghy Rapids.

Can I do this more elegantly? Or maybe I can switch to using VBScript if it's more elegant there?

My current solution is slow as hell... nested for loops, with one of them delimiting the crap data by the ( character, then finding the line that says FontFamily(Rubber Dinghy Rapids then stripping out the FontFamily( string, leaving me finally with Rubber Dinghy Rapids.

Two hints: (1) you use a greedy star match .* but you should use a lazy star match .*? instead. (2) To extract just the font family name, you need to use a capture group. I doubt that this two regex features are available in findstr. May be grep or a javascript regex can better suit your needs. — PA.
– PA., Commented Nov 19, 2013 at 22:16

Aacini · Accepted Answer · 2013-11-19 23:42:28Z

1

I wrote an hybrid Batch-JScript program called FindRepl.bat that use JScript's regular expressions to search for strings in a file. Using my program you may solve your problem this way:

FindRepl.bat "FontFamily\((.*)\)" /$:1 < input.txt

You may get my program from this site.

answered Nov 19, 2013 at 23:42

Aacini

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