Is there a way to specify beginning of line in a Pluma Search?

Question

Here is my description of the current system:

• Pluma 1.24.0
• Ubuntu 20.04.2 LTS
• MATE 1.24.0

I was trying to replace spaces with tabs, but only at the beginning of a line. I could find spaces, and could find tabs, and even combinations of spaces and tabs. I did have 'Match regular expression' and 'Parse escape sequences' checked. I tried using a caret preceding the space, but it did not work. I tried with other characters as well, but still no go.

Answer 1

It works with leading tab ^\t, but not with leading space ^ .

So it seems to be a bug in Pluma or its 3rd-party regexp-parsing library.

I have reported it here.

As alternative you can use Kate editor which can be installed with:

sudo apt install kate