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VS 2005 Find in Files Regex needed to locate malformed hex codes

I need to find all hex codes in my asp.net web app that do not have a leading pound sign. That is, I need to find a line containing something like bgcolor="a9B0f3" but not find bgcolor="#a9B0f3".

I'm using Visual Studio 2005. I tried using Find in Files with this pattern:

^.*"([a-f]|[A-F]|[0-9]){6}".*$

but it only returned these lines for a test file:

<asp:ImageButton ID="btnCompoundingDate" runat="server" Width="16" Height="16" ImageUrl="~/images/SmallCalendar.gif" />
<asp:ImageButton ID="btnDeliveryDate" runat="server" Width="16" Height="16" ImageUrl="~/images/SmallCalendar.gif">

even though the test file includes lines like these:

<AlternatingItemStyle BackColor="#E6E6E6" />
<td style="background-color: #93cad9;" rowspan="100%">
<img runat="server" src="~/images/spacer_1pix.gif" width="10" id="STRImg1">
</td>
<td align="left" class="txt-bodyimportant" bgcolor="93cad9">
<asp:Label runat="server" ID="lblEditCounter"> 

It should list the next to last line with the bgcolor="93cad9" attribute but none of the other ones.

When I remove the quotes from the regex, it will find the "#E6E6E6" but not hex codes where lower case letters are also used (such as bgcolor="#93cad9").

Can someone please help me with the correct expression for VS2005 to find the hex codes without the leading pound sign?

Thanks.

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Pui_Yun

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ZekeLA

ASKER

That didn't seem to work. Neither one found any matches.

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kaufmed

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ZekeLA

ASKER

While that regex is better than what I had, it still does not work in VS 2005. Did you test it in VS 2005 or were you just providing a general regex solution? I think my problem may not be the regex so much as VS.

ZekeLA

ASKER

Also, why do you use ^6 and not {6}? In the cheat sheet I use, ^ represents the start of the line.

kaufmed

Because the regex codes in VS's library are not the same codes that other environments like Perl, C#, etc. use. If you view the "Complete Character List", you will see that repetition is achieved through the ^n syntax, where "n" is the number of repetitions.

Also, in VS find/replace, {n} is not the repetition construct--it is the tagging/grouping construct that allows you to use backreferences. This is similar to the parentheses constructs available in the languages I mentioned above.

kaufmed

As a further example, your cheat sheet probably lists

\s

as the whitespace marker. In VS find/replace,

:b

is the marker. I don't believe your cheat sheet is going to help you inside the IDE--VS help will do that. Use your cheat sheet for the patterns you write in code.

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Pui_Yun

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kaufmed

Of course if you do include the lowercase characters as I did, then you do not have to worry about whether "Match Case" is checked ;)

ZekeLA

ASKER

All of the proposed solutions are now working. Something weird must have been going on since I know I checked the various options carefully. I'm increasing points so I can distribute the wealth more fairly.