Indesign GREP: Negative lookbehind with variable length

Question

I use a complex .txt for the basic findchangebylist-script that is included in inDesign to fix some common typography mistakes. F.e. it changes the hyphen to an en dash and puts a thinspace between 3-4 or puts a fixed space between p.4 (page four). Sadly this destroys URLs if they contain these. For exhample http://www.file3-4p.4fire.com becomes http://www.file3 - 4p. 4fire.com.

Is there anyway to exclude anything that is preceded by http? As I understand, there is no negative lookbehind with variable length like it exists for the positive lookbehind with \K. But does anyone know a workaround for this?

My grep for these exhamples is like this:

grep    {findWhat:"([0-9]\\.?)\\s?[~=-]\\s?([0-9])"}    {changeTo:"$1~|~=~|$2"} {includeFootnotes:true, includeMasterPages:true, includeHiddenLayers:true, wholeWord:false} 
grep    {findWhat:"(p\\.)\\s?([0-9])"}  {changeTo:"$1~s$2"} {includeFootnotes:true, includeMasterPages:true, includeHiddenLayers:true, wholeWord:false} 

Answer 1

Assuming all your text is black, you could first apply some other color to URLs, then perform the GREP find/change to all black text and finally change the color of URLs back to black.

Create a color swatch which you only use for temporarily coloring the URLs. Here I call it temp url.

First we select URLs with http(s)?://[^\s\r]+(?=\s|\r|). This should work with URLs followed by a white space or a paragraph break or positioned at the end of a story. You can tweak this to fit your needs. In the changeProperties object we set fillColor to the name of the temporary swatch for URLs: temp url.

grep    {findWhat:"http(s)?://[^\\s\\r]+(?=\\s|\\r|)"}  {fillColor:"temp url"}  {includeFootnotes:true, includeMasterPages:true, includeHiddenLayers:true, wholeWord:false}

Then follows whatever changes you want to make. In the findProperties object of each search we set fillColor to Black to only apply changes to black text.

grep    {findWhat:"([0-9]\\.?)\\s?[~=-]\\s?([0-9])", fillColor:"Black"} {changeTo:"$1~|~=~|$2"} {includeFootnotes:true, includeMasterPages:true, includeHiddenLayers:true, wholeWord:false} 
grep    {findWhat:"(p\\.)\\s?([0-9])", fillColor:"Black"}   {changeTo:"$1~s$2"} {includeFootnotes:true, includeMasterPages:true, includeHiddenLayers:true, wholeWord:false}

Finally we change the color of URLs back. In the findProperties object we set fillColor to temp url and in the changeProperties we set fillColor to Black.

grep    {fillColor:"temp url"}  {fillColor:"Black"} {includeFootnotes:true, includeMasterPages:true, includeHiddenLayers:true, wholeWord:false}

Further automatization

Instead of manually adding the temporary swatch for the URLs, it's possible to add it within the FindChangeByList.jsx script. I would copy the script and the FindChangeSupport folder to the folder with user scripts first though.

Locate the line in the beginning of the script that looks like this:

main();

And change it to this:

var swatch = app.activeDocument.swatches.item("Black").duplicate();
swatch.name = "temp url";
main();
swatch.remove();

This will make a duplicate of the Black swatch, name it temp url, run the main function and in the end remove the temp url swatch again.