The elusive regex with GPT-4

A DALL E generated image of running digitsWhilst the solving of regular expressions with ChatGPT seems like a great way to give yourself superpowers I have stayed away from writing about this usecase till now.  Yes, ChatGPT is great for those simple things that anyone with some basic knowledge could probably write themselves in the time it took to explain what was wanted.  But I like regular expressions… I’m definitely not a real expert, but I do like to play around with them and would consider myself above an average user.  So when I decided to test ChatGPT with a regular expression I asked it to solve something I have never been able to achieve on my own.  In fact I have never seen anyone else do this either… although I’m certain there are many people out there who would be very capable of doing it.  But when I’ve asked I have never had a satisfactory solution without using code, or without using multiple search & replace operations.

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A competitive edge…

I’m pretty sure that when we started to build the new Customer Experience Team in Cluj last year that there was nothing in the job description about being competitive… but wow, they are!!!  I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t competitive, because I know I am, but it’s been a long time since I’ve had these kinds of feelings that keep me up at night.

To some extent I think the training requirements at SDL are the perfect fuel for this type of environment and I haven’t made up my mind yet whether it’s healthy or not.  But in their roles the team speak with customers through the online chat, in the community, via email… basically anywhere anyone comes in with a question because they don’t have a support contract or an account manager to ask and they didn’t know about the SDL Community which is of course the best place to go for help.  To be able to answer the variety of technical questions we see, all the team have either completed or are working through the various SDL Certifications available at a rate of knots and are learning more about the sort of problems faced by translators and project managers just by having to help people every day.  They are doing a fantastic job!

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DOGS and CATS… Regular Expressions Part 4!

DOGS and CATS...When I first started adding articles about how to use regular expressions I thought I’d only write three… but I had an interesting question from one of our resellers, Agenor (actually Agenor always asks me the hardest questions!), about how to use the display filter to find segments that contain one word, but not another.  It was tricky, but once you have it you can use the expression all the time.  I have a collection of such things from when people ask me, so I thought I’d share how this problem was solved and also post a list of some of the useful regular expressions I have saved for  the display filter in Studio 2011.
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Search and replace with Regex in Studio – Regular Expressions Part 3

The final article (in this introductory series anyway) on regular expressions in Studio is looking at how to use search and replace in Studio.  This capability, to use regex to replace as well as search, will only be possible with the update release of SDL Trados Studio 2011 SP2 and later and it’s a very welcome addition to the toolset provided within Studio.
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Regex… and "economy of accuracy" (Regular Expressions – Part 2)

In Regular Expressions – Part 1 I wrote a summary of where regular expressions could be used in SDL Trados Studio, and I covered a couple of examples.  I also referred to RegexBuddy quite a lot as this is a really useful tool in helping you write and understand regular expressions.  But in case learning another application is something you don’t want to do I thought it would be handy to go through what I think are the most useful applications of regular expressions for every day use in SDL Trados Studio, and also share a few tips on how to use Studio to verify the expressions are finding what you need as well as introduce a little “economy of accuracy“.
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Regular Expressions – Part 1

Regular Expressions, often referred to as Regex, are something that come up again and again in forums, roadshows and the occasional questions.  So I thought it might be useful to take a better look at them and how they can be useful for translators.  To begin with I’m republishing a blog article I wrote a year or so ago on a different site so I can build on this theme in one location.
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