Expression to select and affect specific characters in a text

[Dan Ebberts]

Try this.

Add a Fill Color Animator and set the color for the special character.

Add an Expression Selector.

Delete the Range Selector.

Replace the Amount expression in the Expression Selector with this:

myChar = “•”;
if (text.sourceText[textIndex-1] == myChar) 100 else 0

Dan

[Enrique Rovira]

Thanks Dan, worked beautifully!

[Enrique Rovira]

Actually I came across a problem, for some reason it selects the correct character on the first line but then selects and modifies the colour of the second character on the second line, the third character on the third line, and so on. Of course the bullet point is always the first character on each line.

[Enrique Rovira]

We tried moving things around as below, but to no use!

myChar = text.sourceText.value[textIndex-1];
if (myChar === "•") { 100 } else { 0 };

[Enrique Rovira]

We also tried this expression, from another of your posts actually.

But we get to the exact same problem, on each line will select a further character… If I put everything in one single line it works fine though.

c = text.sourceText.value[textIndex-1];
if (/^\•/i.test(c)) 100 else 0

[Dan Ebberts]

Try it this way:


txt = text.sourceText.replace(/\r?\n|\r/g,'');
myChar = "•";
if (txt[textIndex-1] == myChar) 100 else 0


Dan

[Enrique Rovira]

Ok now THAT worked perfect! I’m tinkering with it now but it seems all is fine.

Thanks!

[Nathan Clark]

Hi there, I was hoping to get this setup working today but sadly it fails… is this because of the new expression engine? would it be possible to get some guidance on getting this to work in AE 16.0.1? Thanks in advance 🙂

[Dan Ebberts]

This should work:

txt = text.sourceText.replace(/\r?\n|\r/g,”);
myChar = “•”;
txt[textIndex-1] == myChar ? 100 : 0

Dan

[Nathan Clark]

Indeed, it works beautifully. Thanks for taking the time to share your knowledge, it is deeply appreciated.