made by gemini

Beyond Split()

A Robust Pattern for Precise Text Formatting in

As a Coda expert, I love those moments when a seemingly simple problem pushes you to find a more elegant and powerful solution. Recently, I tackled a classic challenge in the

Coda

community: how do you format specific words in a block of text based on a separate lookup table? For instance, making “Name 1” bold and “Name 2” italic wherever they appear.

The assumption of the maker was to use Split() to break the text into individual words, check each word against a formatting list, apply the style, and then Join() it all back together.

It works… until it doesn’t.

The problem? Punctuation. If your text has “Name 1.”, the Split() approach sees "Name 1." as a single, unrecognized word. It fails to match "Name 1" from the formatting table, and the style is lost. So, how can we solve this cleanly?

Recognizing Patterns

In this context Split() is the wrong tool because it's too literal. It just cuts things up. What is needed was a way to understand the structure of the text. This required a shift from simply splitting the text to actively recognizing patterns within it.

A regular expression engine doesn’t just read a text from left to right like we do. Instead, it scans the…