Hyperlinks for Markdown in VSCode - regex

Question

I want to change hyperlinks to Markdown Hyperlinks all at once.
For example I have (and more of them)
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/ask
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/59030873/keyboard-shortcut-in-vscode-for-markdown-links
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/ask
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/59030873/keyboard-shortcut-in-vscode-for-markdown-links
and want to have:
[ask](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/ask)
[keyboard-shortcut-in-vscode-for-markdown-links](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/59030873/keyboard-shortcut-in-vscode-for-markdown-links)
[ask](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/ask)
[keyboard-shortcut-in-vscode-for-markdown-links](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/59030873/keyboard-shortcut-in-vscode-for-markdown-links)
I already found (for keybindings.json)
{
"key": "ctrl+q b", // Lines 2 Array Only
"command": "editor.action.insertSnippet",
"args": {
"snippet": "${TM_SELECTED_TEXT/(.+)(\\r?(?=\\S))?/[]($1)/g}",
},
"when": "editorTextFocus && editorLangId == 'markdown'"
}
which does a lot, but maybe anybody can add or give me a possibility to find out myself:
The link description from the last part of the link or to go through all link descriptions with tab so you can add the description easily
only change links (if there is any text between the links)
tia

Answer 1

I don't think using a snippet will work (or I can't figure it out) because of your requirement to only change links if there is any text following the link. That makes TM_SELECTED_TEXT not work. But it can be done with a find and replace pretty easily.
I wrote an extension Find and Transform that you can use to save the find/replace for future use. Example keybinding:
{
"key": "alt+q", // whatever keybinding you want
"command": "findInCurrentFile",
"args": {
// "find": "(^https:.+\\/)(.*$)(\r?\n)(?=(?!https:))", // if single line of text between links
"find": "(.+\\/)(.*$)(\r?\n)(?=\\s*(?!https:)[\\s\\S]*^https:)", // if multiple lines of text
"replace": "[$2]($1$2)$3",
"restrictFind": "selections" // if you want to only find within selections
},
"when": "editorTextFocus && editorLangId == 'markdown'"
}
I believe that satisfies your requirement that some text (I made it for any amount of lines of intervening text) be between links. And thus the last link - which may have text after it - but no following link - should not be transformed.
[If there is only ever one line of text between links, the regex could be simplified quite a bit.]