Line offset of an item (and other similar functions).

[Sarah Reichelt]

> I do want to match only whole items, so as to avoid false positives 
> (i.e. item "alex1" should not match "alex123")
>
> lineOffset will give me the line number - but there's no way to say 
> "match whole items only"
> itemOffset will find the right instance (given wholeMatches set to 
> true), but it gives me item number, not line number
> matchChunk will find it for me - but gives character positions, not 
> line number
>
> I'm hoping there's some way to inveigle one of the 'offset' functions 
> to do this.
The docs say wholeMatches works with lineOffset, so if it doesn't, you 
should bugzilla that as either a bug or a docs error.
>
> Alternatively is there some way to convert chunk expressions between 
> types, e.g.
> given myVar containing
>
>> abc,def,ghi
>> 12, 34, 56
>> a1,b2,c3,d4
>
> convert an expression such as   item 3 to 5 of myVar  to the 
> corresponding char/word/line expression (i.e. char 9 to 17 or word 1 
> to 3 or  line 1 to 2).
> Any suggestions on how to do it ?
>
If you get a result that specifies say "item 3 of line 5 of myVar", you 
can then say:
   put the number of chars in item 1 to 2 of line 5 of myVar into tStart
   put the number of chars in item 3 of line 5 of myVar into tLen
Then you can construct your chunk expression:
   char tStart to tStart+tLen of line 5 of myVar

This is untested and you may need to add or subtract 1 from these 
variables, but this should give you the idea.

Cheers,
Sarah