Using regular expressions to do mass replace in Notepad and Vim

Question

So I ve got a big text file which looks like the following    lt option value value  1   gt A  lt option value value  2   gt B  lt option value value  3   gt C  lt option value value  4   gt D   It s several hundred lines long and I really don t want to do it manually  The expression that I m trying to use is    lt option value    1     gt    Which is working as intended when i run it through several online regular expression testers  I basically want to remove everything before A  B  C  etc  The issue is when I try to use that expression in Vim and Notepad    it can t seem to find anything

User · Answer

There are two problems with your original solution. Firstly, your example text:

<option value value='1' >A

has two occurences of the "value" word. Your regex does not. Also, you need to escape the opening brace in the quantifier of your regex or Vim will interpret it as a literal brace. This regex works:

:%s/<option value value='.\{1,}' >//g

User · Answer

In Notepad       lt option value value  1   gt A  lt option value value  2   gt B  lt option value value  3   gt C  lt option value value  4   gt D   Find what        gt      Replace with   3  Replace All   A B C D

User · Answer

This will work  Tested it in my vim  the single quotes are the trouble   1  s   lt option value value          gt

User · Answer

In Notepad   you don t need to use Regular Expressions for this   Hold down alt to allow you to select a rectangle of text across multiple rows at once  Select the chunk you want to be rid of  and press delete

User · Answer

It may help if you re less specific  Your expression there is  greedy   which may be interpreted different ways by different programs  Try this in vim    s   lt    gt    gt

User · Answer

Very simple just Find    lt option value value     gt    and Click Replace

User · Answer

Vim     s

User · Answer

In Notepad       lt option value value  1   gt A  lt option value value  2   gt B  lt option value value  3   gt C  lt option value value  4   gt D   Find what        gt      Replace with   3  Replace All   A B C D

User · Answer

In vim    s  lt option value     1     gt      or    s  lt option value        gt      In vim regular expressions you have to escape the one-or-more symbol  capturing parentheses  the bounded number curly braces and some others   See  help  magic to see which special characters need to be escaped  and how to change that

User · Answer

A little after the fact  but in case its useful to anyone  I was able to follow one of the examples on here  by sdgfsdg  and quickly pick up Regular Expressions for Notepad     I had to similarly pull out some redundant data from a list of HTML select dropdown options  of the form    lt select gt     lt option value  AC  gt saint helena  gt Ascension Island lt  option gt     lt option value  AD  gt andorra  gt Andorra lt  option gt     lt option value  AE  gt united arab emirates  gt United Arab Emirates lt  option gt     lt option value  AF  gt afghanistan  gt Afghanistan lt  option gt          lt  select gt    And what I really wanted was    lt select gt     lt option value  AC  gt Ascension Island lt  option gt     lt option value  AD  gt Andorra lt  option gt     lt option value  AE  gt United Arab Emirates lt  option gt     lt option value  AF  gt Afghanistan lt  option gt         lt  select gt    After some hair-pulling I realized that as of version 5 8 5  Sep  2010  the Regular Expressions still don t seem to allow certain loops in the expressions  unless there is another syntax   for example  the following would find even   united arab emirated emirates   despite its additional separating underscores      gt    a-z        a-z        gt     This query worked in most generic RegEx tools but while within Notepad    I had to account for the maximum number of nested underscores  which unfortunately was 8  by hand  using the much uglier      gt    a-z       a-z       a-z       a-z       a-z        a-z       a-z       a-z       a-z     gt     If someone knows a way to simulate a Regex loop in Notepad   s replace feature  please let me know     Find what         a-z      a-z     a-z     a-z     a-z      a-z     a-z     a-z     a-z          Replace with        Result  255 occurrences were replaced

User · Answer

It may help if you re less specific  Your expression there is  greedy   which may be interpreted different ways by different programs  Try this in vim    s   lt    gt    gt

User · Answer

Vim     s

User · Answer

This will remove the option tag and just leave the letters in vim     s  lt option   gt   g

User · Answer

In vim    s  lt option value     1     gt      or    s  lt option value        gt      In vim regular expressions you have to escape the one-or-more symbol  capturing parentheses  the bounded number curly braces and some others   See  help  magic to see which special characters need to be escaped  and how to change that

User · Answer

In Notepad   you don t need to use Regular Expressions for this   Hold down alt to allow you to select a rectangle of text across multiple rows at once  Select the chunk you want to be rid of  and press delete

User · Answer

Here s a nice article on Notepad   Regular expressions http   markantoniou blogspot com 2008 06 notepad-how-to-use-regular-expressions html

User · Answer

It may help if you re less specific  Your expression there is  greedy   which may be interpreted different ways by different programs  Try this in vim    s   lt    gt    gt

User · Answer

There is a very simple solution to this unless I have not understood the problem  The following regular expression         gt         will match the pattern specified in your post   So  in notepad   you find       gt       and replace it with  3   The regular expressions are basically greedy in the sense that if you specify      it will match the whole line and what you want to do is break it down somehow so that you can extract the string you want to keep  Here  I have done exactly the same and it works fine in Notepad   and Editplus3

User · Answer

Notepad      Search Mode   Regular expression  Find what            Replace with   2

User · Answer

This will work  Tested it in my vim  the single quotes are the trouble   1  s   lt option value value          gt

User · Answer

In Notepad       lt option value value  1   gt A  lt option value value  2   gt B  lt option value value  3   gt C  lt option value value  4   gt D   Find what        gt      Replace with   3  Replace All   A B C D

User · Answer

This will remove the option tag and just leave the letters in vim     s  lt option   gt   g

User · Answer

This will remove the option tag and just leave the letters in vim     s  lt option   gt   g

User · Answer

In Notepad       lt option value value  1   gt A  lt option value value  2   gt B  lt option value value  3   gt C  lt option value value  4   gt D   Find what        gt      Replace with   3  Replace All   A B C D

User · Answer

In notepad    Search    lt option value   w w  gt   w   gt        Replace with   1 2

User · Answer

Vim     s

User · Answer

There is a very simple solution to this unless I have not understood the problem  The following regular expression         gt         will match the pattern specified in your post   So  in notepad   you find       gt       and replace it with  3   The regular expressions are basically greedy in the sense that if you specify      it will match the whole line and what you want to do is break it down somehow so that you can extract the string you want to keep  Here  I have done exactly the same and it works fine in Notepad   and Editplus3

User · Answer

There is a very simple solution to this unless I have not understood the problem  The following regular expression         gt         will match the pattern specified in your post   So  in notepad   you find       gt       and replace it with  3   The regular expressions are basically greedy in the sense that if you specify      it will match the whole line and what you want to do is break it down somehow so that you can extract the string you want to keep  Here  I have done exactly the same and it works fine in Notepad   and Editplus3

User · Answer

Having the same problem  with jQuery   done     strings   but only in Notepad    I asked  received good friendly replies  that made me understand what I had missed   then spent the time to build a detailed step-by-step explanation  see Finding Line Beginning using Regular expression in Notepad    Versailles  Tue 27 Apr 2010 22 53 25  0200

User · Answer

There is a very simple solution to this unless I have not understood the problem  The following regular expression         gt         will match the pattern specified in your post   So  in notepad   you find       gt       and replace it with  3   The regular expressions are basically greedy in the sense that if you specify      it will match the whole line and what you want to do is break it down somehow so that you can extract the string you want to keep  Here  I have done exactly the same and it works fine in Notepad   and Editplus3

User · Answer

Here s a nice article on Notepad   Regular expressions http   markantoniou blogspot com 2008 06 notepad-how-to-use-regular-expressions html

User · Answer

This will remove the option tag and just leave the letters in vim     s  lt option   gt   g

User · Answer

This will work  Tested it in my vim  the single quotes are the trouble   1  s   lt option value value          gt

User · Answer

Everything before the A  B  C  etc   That seems so simple I must be misinterpreting you  It s just    s  lt    gt

User · Answer

There are two problems with your original solution. Firstly, your example text:

<option value value='1' >A

has two occurences of the "value" word. Your regex does not. Also, you need to escape the opening brace in the quantifier of your regex or Vim will interpret it as a literal brace. This regex works:

:%s/<option value value='.\{1,}' >//g

User · Answer

Everything before the A  B  C  etc   That seems so simple I must be misinterpreting you  It s just    s  lt    gt

User · Answer

Notepad      Search Mode   Regular expression  Find what            Replace with   2

User · Answer

There are two problems with your original solution. Firstly, your example text:

<option value value='1' >A

has two occurences of the "value" word. Your regex does not. Also, you need to escape the opening brace in the quantifier of your regex or Vim will interpret it as a literal brace. This regex works:

:%s/<option value value='.\{1,}' >//g

User · Answer

In notepad    Search    lt option value   w w  gt   w   gt        Replace with   1 2

User · Answer

It may help if you re less specific  Your expression there is  greedy   which may be interpreted different ways by different programs  Try this in vim    s   lt    gt    gt

User · Answer

Very simple just Find    lt option value value     gt    and Click Replace

User · Answer

In vim    s  lt option value     1     gt      or    s  lt option value        gt      In vim regular expressions you have to escape the one-or-more symbol  capturing parentheses  the bounded number curly braces and some others   See  help  magic to see which special characters need to be escaped  and how to change that

User · Answer

Having the same problem  with jQuery   done     strings   but only in Notepad    I asked  received good friendly replies  that made me understand what I had missed   then spent the time to build a detailed step-by-step explanation  see Finding Line Beginning using Regular expression in Notepad    Versailles  Tue 27 Apr 2010 22 53 25  0200

User · Answer

Vim     s

User · Answer

A little after the fact  but in case its useful to anyone  I was able to follow one of the examples on here  by sdgfsdg  and quickly pick up Regular Expressions for Notepad     I had to similarly pull out some redundant data from a list of HTML select dropdown options  of the form    lt select gt     lt option value  AC  gt saint helena  gt Ascension Island lt  option gt     lt option value  AD  gt andorra  gt Andorra lt  option gt     lt option value  AE  gt united arab emirates  gt United Arab Emirates lt  option gt     lt option value  AF  gt afghanistan  gt Afghanistan lt  option gt          lt  select gt    And what I really wanted was    lt select gt     lt option value  AC  gt Ascension Island lt  option gt     lt option value  AD  gt Andorra lt  option gt     lt option value  AE  gt United Arab Emirates lt  option gt     lt option value  AF  gt Afghanistan lt  option gt         lt  select gt    After some hair-pulling I realized that as of version 5 8 5  Sep  2010  the Regular Expressions still don t seem to allow certain loops in the expressions  unless there is another syntax   for example  the following would find even   united arab emirated emirates   despite its additional separating underscores      gt    a-z        a-z        gt     This query worked in most generic RegEx tools but while within Notepad    I had to account for the maximum number of nested underscores  which unfortunately was 8  by hand  using the much uglier      gt    a-z       a-z       a-z       a-z       a-z        a-z       a-z       a-z       a-z     gt     If someone knows a way to simulate a Regex loop in Notepad   s replace feature  please let me know     Find what         a-z      a-z     a-z     a-z     a-z      a-z     a-z     a-z     a-z          Replace with        Result  255 occurrences were replaced

User · Answer

This will work  Tested it in my vim  the single quotes are the trouble   1  s   lt option value value          gt

User · Answer

Everything before the A  B  C  etc   That seems so simple I must be misinterpreting you  It s just    s  lt    gt

User · Answer

Everything before the A  B  C  etc   That seems so simple I must be misinterpreting you  It s just    s  lt    gt

User · Answer

There are two problems with your original solution. Firstly, your example text:

<option value value='1' >A

has two occurences of the "value" word. Your regex does not. Also, you need to escape the opening brace in the quantifier of your regex or Vim will interpret it as a literal brace. This regex works:

:%s/<option value value='.\{1,}' >//g

User · Answer

In vim    s  lt option value     1     gt      or    s  lt option value        gt      In vim regular expressions you have to escape the one-or-more symbol  capturing parentheses  the bounded number curly braces and some others   See  help  magic to see which special characters need to be escaped  and how to change that

[regex] Using regular expressions to do mass replace in Notepad++ and Vim

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