How to Create Variable Definitions from Phrases using Regexes (Notepad++) - regex

Question

Suppose we have a list of phrases - words separated by spaces. And suppose we want to define a bunch of variables based on these phrases such that the following hold:
Phrases already exist and are surrounded by quotes (if not, you can easily use a regex to achieve this)
Phrases only contain letters (this actually isn't true for me in practice, but I can handle those cases manually)
Variable name, followed by an equals sign, should precede the phrase
Variable name should be a lowerCamelCase version of the phrase
Example
Input
"hello World"
"foo bAr"
Expected Output
helloWorld = "hello World"
fooBar = "foo bAr"
Use Case
Often in my line of work I am presented with a bunch of constants which come from an Excel spreadsheet and I need to define a bunch of variables in code for them. The phrases have spaces in them, but the variables can't. I'd usually like to keep the variable names as close to the phrases as I can. I'd like a way to do it in bulk, without having to individually type out each variable name.
Notes
I have come up with a way to do this, which I want to record here in case I need it in future and in case others might need it. I also want to post it here because I have a feeling there are optimizations that can be made to my process, or at least alternatives.

Answer 1

I haven't found a single find/replace step that'll do everything for you, but I have managed to do it using a sequence of regexes, applied one after another. The first pulls out the content for the variable name and inserts the "=". The next one does the main heavy lifting and removes spaces and applies the correct casing. The final one ensures all variables begin with lowercase letters. Apply them in sequence to achieve the desired result.
Regex #1
All we're doing here is pulling content out of the quotes and inserting it on the left hand side.
Note: here and below, I need to use this character for whitespace because SO doesn't render it correctly: ␣. So replace that with a space when you use this or other regexes in this answer.
Find: "(.+)"
Replace: ␣\1 = "\1" (note the leading space)
In our example, after this step, we end up with:
hello World = "hello World"
foo bAr = "foo bAr"
Regex #2
Here, we want to match each word on the left hand side, with the goal of removing the whitespace and simultaneously fixing the casing.
Find: ␣(\S)(\S+)(?=.*=) (note the leading space)
Replace: \u\1\L\2 (absence of space in replacement pattern achieves the removal of the space)
After this step, we end up with:
HelloWorld = "hello World"
FooBar = "foo bAr"
Correct, except for the first letter of each variable name.
Regex #3
This fixes the leading characters to be lowercase:
Find: ^(.)
Replace: \l\1
After this step, our output is as desired:
helloWorld = "hello World"
fooBar = "foo bAr"
Optional Regex #4 (Remove Invalid Characters)
Though the requirement assumed all letters, this is often not the case. First, you may want some numbers in there. Second, there may be junk like parentheses. In this case, just do a find/replace with the replace expression empty for the following find expression:
[^\w\r\n](?!=)(?=.*=)
What that does is first matches negatively to anything that's not a letter, a digit, an underscore or an end of line character. It then ensures that the match is followed by an = down the line but not immediately followed by an =, meaning the space before the = is preserved.
As a Macro
Rather than manually do all 4 steps above, you can record them as a macro and save it to your Notepad++. Or just paste the XML below inside the <Macros> XML element in the file shortcuts.xml inside %appdata%\Notepad++. If you do paste, the shortcut is ctrl+alt+shift+V, but you can change that to whatever you want:
<Macro name="DefineVariables" Ctrl="yes" Alt="yes" Shift="yes" Key="86">
<Action type="3" message="1700" wParam="0" lParam="0" sParam="" />
<Action type="3" message="1601" wParam="0" lParam="0" sParam="(.+)" />
<Action type="3" message="1625" wParam="0" lParam="2" sParam="" />
<Action type="3" message="1602" wParam="0" lParam="0" sParam=' \1 = "\1"' />
<Action type="3" message="1702" wParam="0" lParam="768" sParam="" />
<Action type="3" message="1701" wParam="0" lParam="1609" sParam="" />
<Action type="3" message="1700" wParam="0" lParam="0" sParam="" />
<Action type="3" message="1601" wParam="0" lParam="0" sParam=" (\S)(\S+)(?=.*=)" />
<Action type="3" message="1625" wParam="0" lParam="2" sParam="" />
<Action type="3" message="1602" wParam="0" lParam="0" sParam="\u\1\L\2" />
<Action type="3" message="1702" wParam="0" lParam="768" sParam="" />
<Action type="3" message="1701" wParam="0" lParam="1609" sParam="" />
<Action type="3" message="1700" wParam="0" lParam="0" sParam="" />
<Action type="3" message="1601" wParam="0" lParam="0" sParam="^(.)" />
<Action type="3" message="1625" wParam="0" lParam="2" sParam="" />
<Action type="3" message="1602" wParam="0" lParam="0" sParam="\l\1" />
<Action type="3" message="1702" wParam="0" lParam="768" sParam="" />
<Action type="3" message="1701" wParam="0" lParam="1609" sParam="" />
<Action type="3" message="1700" wParam="0" lParam="0" sParam="" />
<Action type="3" message="1601" wParam="0" lParam="0" sParam="[^\w\r\n](?!=)(?=.*=)" />
<Action type="3" message="1625" wParam="0" lParam="2" sParam="" />
<Action type="3" message="1602" wParam="0" lParam="0" sParam="" />
<Action type="3" message="1702" wParam="0" lParam="768" sParam="" />
<Action type="3" message="1701" wParam="0" lParam="1609" sParam="" />
</Macro>