I have a document with multiple terms contained within quotations ("). For example, "1" 2 "3". I'd like to find and replace (^W, ^R) only the terms inside quotations. In my example, I'd like to find/replace "1" and "3".
I imagine I'd use a wildcard operator but cannot find one within nano.
How can I accomplish this goal?
Thanks!
Begin an instance of "search and replace" with Ctrl + \ and then enable regex with alt+r.
Enter the expression of what you'd like to replace (use your favorite search engine to learn more about regex or even check your work with regex101).
A lot of people tend to hate on nano, but I've yet to encounter a moment where it couldn't do what vim/emacs could do in terms of editing. Learn what you can from all of them, use your favorite.
Related
So I read a lot about Negation in Regex but can't solve my problem in MS Word 2016.
How do I exclude a String, Word, Number(s) from being found?
Example:
<[A-Z]{2}[A-Z0-9]{9;11}> to search a String like XY123BBT22223
But how to exclude for example a specefic one like SEDWS12WW04?
Well it depends on what you need to achieve or is this a matter of curiosity... RegEx is not the same as the built-in Advanced Find with Wildcards; for that you need VBA.
Depending on your need, without using VBA, you could make use of space and return characters - something like this will work for the strings provided: [ ^13][A-Z]{2}[0-9]{1,}[A-Z]{1,}[0-9]{1,}[ ^13] (assuming you use normal carriage returns and spaces in your document)
Anyway, this is a good article on wildcard searches in MS Word: https://wordmvp.com/FAQs/General/UsingWildcards.htm
EDIT:
In light of your further comments you will probably want to look at section 8 of the linked article which explains grouping. For my proposed search you can use this to your advantage by creating 3 groups in your 'find' and only modifying the middle group, if indeed you do intend to modify. Using groups the search would look something like:
([ ^13])([A-Z]{2}[0-9]{1,}[A-Z]{1,}[0-9]{1,})([ ^13])
and the replace might look like this:
\1 SOMETHING \3
Note also: compared to a RegEx solution my suggestion is kinda lame, mainly because compared to RegEx, MS-Words find and replace (good as it is, and really it is) is kinda lame... it's hacky but it might work for you (although you might need to do a few searches).
BUT... if it really is REGEX that you want, well you can get access to this via VBA: How to Use/Enable (RegExp object) Regular Expression using VBA (MACRO) in word
And... then you will be able to use proper RegEx for find and replace, well almost - I'm under the impression that the VBA RegEx still has some quirks...
As already noted by others, this is not possible in Microsoft Word's flavor of regular expressions.
Instead, you should use standard regular expressions. It is actually possible to use standard regular expressions in MS Word if you use a special tool that integrates into Microsoft Word called Multiple Find & Replace (see http://www.translatortools.net/products/transtoolsplus/word-multiplefindreplace). This tool opens as a pane to the right of the document window and works just like the Advanced Find & Replace dialog. However, in addition to Word's existing search functionality, it can use the standard regular expressions syntax to search and replace any text within a Word document.
In your particular case, I would use this:
\b[A-Z]{2}[A-Z0-9]{9,11}\b(?<!\bSEDWS12WW04)
To explain, this searches for a word boundary + ID + word boundary, and then it looks back to make sure that the preceding string does not match [word boundary + excluded ID]. In a similar vein, you can do something like
(?<!\bSEDWS12WW04|\bSEDWS12WW05|\bSEDWS12WW05)
to exlude several IDs.
Multiple Find & Replace is quite powerful: you can add any number of expressions (either using regular expressions or using Word's standard search syntax) to a list and then search the document for all of them, replace everything, display all matches in a list and replace only specific matches, and a few more things.
I created this tool for translators and editors, but it is great for any advanced search/replace operations in Word, and I am sure you will find it very useful.
Best regards, Stanislav
I'm using TextWrangler, the free version of BBEdit on the Mac, which I understand uses the PCRE engine.
What I want to do is match a specific number of lines and replace as well.
After a lot of searching I came up with this:
(^(.*\r)){25}
This lets me match up to 25 lines. It works great, but the problem comes when I want to actually replace something. I can't figure out how to do it.
For example, I would like to replace all of the returns "\r" with tabs "\t".
Hopefully this is actually possible. I'd appreciate any help. Thanks!
Regexp domain is searching. You cannot replace using regexp; a programming language or editor can use regexp as the search part of its search-and-replace function. Thus, the way to do 25 replacements is purely in the domain of said programming language or editor. If it does not provide such capability, either directly in search-and-replace or as a macro/loop/other, then you cannot do it automatically.
I've been searching a lot in the web and in here but I can't find a solution to this.
I have to make two replacements in all registry paths saved in a text file as follows:
replace all asterisc with: [#42]
replace all single backslashes with two.
I already have two expressions that do this right:
1st case:
Find: (\*) - Replace: \[#42\]
2nd case:
Find: ([^\\])(\\)([^\\]) - Replace: $1$2\\$3
Now, all I want is to join them together into just one expression so that I can do run this in one time only.
I'm using Notepad++ 6.5.1 in Windows 7 (64 bits).
Example line in which I want this to work (I include backslashes but i don't know if they will appear right in the html):
HKLM\SOFTWARE\Classes\*\shellex\ContextMenuHandlers\
I already tried separating it with a pipe, like I do in Jscript (WSH), but it doesn't work here. I also tried a lot of other things but none worked.
Any help?
Thanks!
Edit: I have put all the backslashes right, but the page html seem to be "eating" some of them!
Edit2: Someone reedited my text to include an accent that doesn't remove the backslashes, so the expressions went wrong again. But I got it and fixed it. ;-)
Sorry, but this was my first post here. :)
As everyone else already mentioned this is not possible.
But, you can achieve what you want in Notepad++ by using a Macro.
Go to "Macro" > "Start Recording" menu, apply those two search and replace regular expressions, press "Stop Recording", then "Save Current Recorded Macro", there give it a name, assign a shortcut, and you are done. You now can reuse the same replacements whenever you want with one shortcut.
Since your replacement strings are totally different and use data that come not from any capture (i.e. [#42]), you can't.
Keep in mind that replacement strings are only masks, and can not contain any conditional content.
I'm looking for a regular expression that can find and replace all the text "anytext" with "anything" in netbeans, some of the symbols also contain this text. I've done it a while back for a single file but now I want to change everything in my application & I'm struggling to get it right.
Just use find & replace to replace all instances of "anytext" with "anything". There is no difference between this and a regex find & replace, because there doesn't exist a pattern that can be easily exploited using regex. There is no difference in this case. Based on your comment, you still must manualy enter the word you want replaced and a word that will replace it.
I think you have misunderstood a bit what regular expressions are all about.
Were you looking for something like this? Where it wouldn't grab it inside word?
\banytext\b
I need to enhance the search functionality on a page listing user accounts. Rather than have multiple search boxes for each possible field, or a drop down menu where the user can only search against one field, I'd like a single search box and to use a gmail like syntax. That's the best way I can describe it, and what I mean by a gmail like search syntax is being able to type the following into the input box:
username:bbaggins type:admin "made up plc"
When the form is submitted, the search string should be split into it's separate parts, which will allow me to construct a SQL query. So for example, type:admin would form part of the WHERE clause so that it would find any record where the field type is equal to admin and the same for username. The text in quotes may be a free text search, but I'm not sure on that yet.
I'm thinking that a regular expression or two would be the best way to do this, but that's something I'm really not good at. Can anyone help to construct a regular expression which could be used for this purpose? I've searched around for some pointers but either I don't know what to search for or it's not out there as I couldn't find anything obvious. Maybe if I understood regular expressions better it would be easier :-)
Cheers,
Adam
No, you would not use regular expressions for this. Just split the string on spaces in whatever language you're using.
You don't necessarily have to use a regex. Regexes are powerful, but in many cases also slow. Regex also does not handle nested parameters very well. It would be easier for you to write a script that uses string manipulation to split the string and extract the keywords and the field names.
If you want to experiment with Regex, try the online REGex tester. Find a tutorial and play around, it's fun, and you should quickly be able to produce useful regexes that find any words before or after a : character, or any sentences between " quotation marks.
thanks for the answers...I did start doing it without regex and just wondered if a regex would be simpler. Sounds like it wouldn't though, so I'll go back to the way I was doing it and test it again.
Good old Mr Bilbo is my go to guy for any naming needs :-)
Cheers,
Adam