What does the input that the match is not recognizing look like?

Here's the whole story.

We got this request from a client at ETS: "We would like XPP to explore a solution that would ensure spaces appear where required. Specifically, we would always want there to be a space between immediately adjacent end and start focus tags. There would be only one exception: when such appear directly before or after an em dash, no space should be inserted.

RULE 1) I wrote a rule which looks for <focus_end><focus_start> tags that have no space between them and adds a space. This works:
Match:  <focus_end focus_idref="*"/><focus_start focus_id="*" itemref="*"/>
Output: <focus_end focus_idref="*"/> <focus_start focus_id="*" itemref="*"/>

To handle the exceptions I wrote two rules where the Match and the Output are the same.

RULE 2) This rule is for when the tags are preceded by an em-dash:
Match:  \M<focus_end focus_idref="*" focus_number="*"/><focus_start itemref="*" focus_id="*" focus_number="*"/>
Output: \M<focus_end focus_idref="*" focus_number="*"/><focus_start itemref="*" focus_id="*" focus_number="*"/>

RULE 3) and this rule is for when the tags are followed by an em-dash:
Match:  <focus_end focus_idref="*" focus_number="*"/><focus_start itemref="*" focus_id="*" focus_number="*"/>\M
Output: <focus_end focus_idref="*" focus_number="*"/><focus_start itemref="*" focus_id="*" focus_number="*"/>\M

Rules 2 and 3 do not work. Eventually I realized my rules were not recognizing an em-dash. So I tried this:

RULE 4)
Match:  \M
Output: \M<^!--em dash-->

...and that does not work.

Hi Jaye. My attempt at a thorough reply is being "flagged as spam or abuse."

Take a screen shot and paste it in. 

We got this request from a client at ETS: "We would like XPP to explore a solution that would ensure spaces appear where required. Specifically, we would always want there to be a space between immediately adjacent end and start focus tags. There would be only one exception: when such appear directly before or after an em dash, no space should be inserted.

RULE 1) I wrote a rule which looks for <focus_end><focus_start> tags that have no space between them and adds a space. This works:

To handle the exceptions I wrote two rules where the Match and the Output are the same.

RULE 2) This rule is for when the tags are preceded by an em-dash:

RULE 3) and this rule is for when the tags are followed by an em-dash:

Rules 2 and 3 do not work. Eventually I realized my rules were not recognizing an em-dash. So I tried this:

RULE 4)

...and that does not work.

That's the whole story. Sorry for the clumsy way I sent it. Hope that gives you enough to go on?

So much depends on what format the data is in - other possible things to look for in Xychange are (decimal unicode) ^&#8212; (hex Unicode) ^&#x2014; (or a character entity) ^&mdash; (in all cases the ^ is to escape the & and the semi at the end much be included when in XyChange).

So if it was the hex Unicode I would search for:

^&#x2014;*[ ^R^N^T]<focus ...

and replace it with:

^&#x2014;<focus ...

The best way to find out what the em dash is is to to at the input file in a text editor (say Notepad++).