Regular expression to search for FORM and CFFORM tags

FORM and CFFORM tags

Recently I needed to go through a large body of code, checking all forms to be sure they met certain requirements. There was a lot of old ColdFusion code, written by many different people over a period of years. I didn't have one single string to search on, and wanted to find them all in one search.

Solution: I wrote a regular expression that allowed me to search for all <form> or <cfform> tags, regardless of case, using my favorite extended search utility, Homesite's Extended Find.

It's a fairly simple regular expression, but it was a big deal for me because (1) it worked! and (2) I figured out how to write it, so now I know I can write another one when I need it. Here it is:

[<]([cC][fF])?[fF][oO][rR][mM][[:space:]]

For those not familiar with searching by regular expressions in Homesite, it's the same as a normal Extended Find, but you check the box for Regular Expression so it treats your search text as a pattern, not a literal.

If anyone knows how to make the same search work in Dreamweaver or in CFEclipse, would you please post a comment here for everyone? It may be due to different RegEx syntax or other issues, but I'm not sure how to do this outside of HomeSite. Awaiting your reply ….