Copy Text that matches a regular expression - regex

Question

I have a regular expression that has several matches in a textfile.
I want to copy only the the matches to a second file. I dont want to copy the lines that contain the matches: I only want the matched text.
I dont find a way to do this in notepad++ (only copies complete lines, not only the matches). Also not in Visual Studio search.
Is there a way to copy only matches? Maybe in grepp or sed?

Answer 1

You can do it with both. Lets say I have a following file -
Sample file:
[jaypal:~/Temp] cat myfile
this is some random number 424-555
and my cell is 111-222-3333
and 42555 is my zip code
And I want to capture only numbers from myfile
Using sed:
With sed you can use the combination of -n and p option along with grouped pattern.
sed -n 's/.[^0-9]*\([0-9-]\+\).*/\1/p'
| | | | | ||
--- ---------- -- |
| | | ---------> `p` prints only matched output. Since
V V V we are suppressing everything with -n
Suppress Escaped `(` \1 prints we use p to invoke printing.
output start the group first matched
you can reference group
it with \1. If you
have more grouped
pattern then they can
be called with \2 ...
Test:
[jaypal:~/Temp] sed -n 's/.[^0-9]*\([0-9-]\+\).*/\1/p' myfile
424-555
111-222-3333
42555
You can simply re-direct this to another file.
Using grep:
You can use either -
egrep -o "regex" filename
or
grep -E -o "regex" filename
From the man page:
-E, --extended-regexp
Interpret PATTERN as an extended regular expression (see below).
-o, --only-matching
Show only the part of a matching line that matches PATTERN.
Test:
[jaypal:~/Temp] egrep -o "[0-9-]+" myfile
424-555
111-222-3333
42555
You can simply re-direct this to another file.
Note: Obviously these are simple examples but it conveys the point.

Answer 2

This might work for you:
sed -n 's/^.*\(matched text regexp\).*/\1/w matched_text_file' source_file

Answer 3

You can do it with Notepad++ by bookmarking the wanted lines then using menu => Search => Copy styled text => Find style (marked). The following lines show the method in more detail:
Example text:
aposidfupwoebfadbsf-mytext1-ausdfioabq
qoejbgaoudfb -mytext2-asdoufbnqub
foqiuebgf-mytext3- ñqloienbq
alkbnepaofub -mytext4- jafpoebqaf
Want to extract all -mytext?- words
Create a Regex to find text you want to copy: -mytext\d+-
Use the find function (ctlr + f) of Notepad++ and open the "Mark" Tab:
"Bookmark line" option on "Mark" Tab
Enter the regex, activate the option Bookmark line and then click on Mark All button on the Mark Tab.
Mark all text we need
Finally open the Search menu and select the option Copy Styled Text and then choos the correct color, like this:
Select all ocurrences of the regex
Then paste it where you need it.
Here an animation of the entire process:
Entire process Gif animation