Search and Replace Tricks

Suppress all empty lines

Find: "^\n" (without quotes)
Replace: "" (without quotes)
RegExp
Note: You may have to repeat it several times to remove all empty lines (until the editor can't find the string to replace), because only the first one of a series of consecutive empty lines will be edited.

Suppress all non-empty lines

Find: "^.+$" (without quotes)
Replace: "" (without quotes)
RegExp

Comment out lines

Find: "^" (without quotes)
Replace: "// " (without quotes)
RegExp
Note: Empty lines will not be affected. This example actually adds a text at the beginning of every non empty line, the comment symbol used ("//") is the one of PHP.

Comment lines

Find: "$" (without quotes)
Replace: " // Comment here" (without quotes)
RegExp
Note: Empty lines will not be affected. This example actually adds a text at the end of every non empty line, the comment symbol used ("//") is the one of PHP.

Join lines

Find: "\n" (without quotes)
Replace: "," (without quotes)
RegExp
Note: Turn separated lines into comma separated values. Empty lines will be affected as well.

Split lines

Find: "," (without quotes)
Replace: "\n" (without quotes)
RegExp
Note: Turn comma separated values into separated lines. Consecutive commas will generate empty lines.

Remove all leading spaces and tabs from every line

Find: "^[ \t]+" (without quotes)
Replace: "" (without quotes)
RegExp
Note: this will obviously remove any indentation

Remove all trailing spaces and tabs from every line

Find: "[ \t]+$" (without quotes)
Replace: "" (without quotes)
RegExp

Remove consecutive spaces

Find: "  +" (without quotes)
Replace: " " (without quotes)
RegExp
Example: before: "this  is an   example", after: "this is an example"

Fix punctuation

Find: "([\.\,\;\:\?\!])([a-zA-Z])" (without quotes)
Replace: "\1 \2" (without quotes)
RegExp
Example: before: "How are you?I'm fine,thanks.", after: "How are you? I'm fine, thanks."
Note: If you want to use this statement in a Wiki context, remove "\:" from the search string, otherwise you may break Wiki metatags, for example [[Category:Example]] will be replaced by [[Category: Example]]

Wrap a tag pair around a text

Find: "(bold)" (without quotes)
Replace: "<b>\1</b>" (without quotes)
RegExp
Example: before: "bold", after: "<b>bold</b>"

Wrap a tag pair around every line

Find: "^(.+)$" (without quotes)
Replace: "<li>\1</li>" (without quotes)
RegExp
Note: this example wraps the tag pair <li></li> every line to create a list of items; you'd probably want to apply changes only to a selected text.

Delete everything inside a tag pair (keeping tags)

Find: "(<delete>).+(</delete>)" (without quotes)
Replace: "\1\2" (without quotes)
RegExp
Note: Tags must be on the same line.
Example: before: "this <delete>is an</delete> example", after: "this <delete></delete> example"

Delete everything inside a tag pair (removing tags too)

Find: "<delete>.+</delete>" (without quotes)
Replace: "" (without quotes)
RegExp
Note: Tags must be on the same line.
Example: before: "this <delete>is an</delete> example", after: "this  example"

Delete all lines containing a given string

Find: "^.*STRING.*$" (without quotes)
Replace: "" (without quotes)
RegExp
Note: Lines will be emptied but not suppressed. See #Suppress all empty lines to suppress empty lines.

Replace only the first occurrence of a character

Find: ";(.*)" (without quotes)
Replace: "|\1" (without quotes)
RegExp
Note: In this example, only the first occurrence of ";" for each line will be replaced with "|".
Example: before: "this;is;an;example", after: "this|is;an;example"

Replace only the last occurrence of a character

Find: "(.*);" (without quotes)
Replace: "\1|" (without quotes)
RegExp
Note: In this example, only the last occurrence of ";" for each line will be replaced with "|".
Example: before: "this;is;an;example", after: "this;is;an|example"

Truncate a string at the first occurrence of a marker (keeping the marker)

Find: "^([^;]*;).*$" (without quotes)
Replace: "\1" (without quotes)
RegExp
Note: In this example, the marker is ";".
Example: before: "this;is;an;example", after: "this;"

Truncate a string at the first occurrence of a marker (removing the marker too)

Find: "^([^;]*);+.*$" (without quotes)
Replace: "\1" (without quotes)
RegExp
Note: In this example, the marker is ";".
Example: before: "this;is;an;example", after: "this"

Truncate a string at the last occurrence of a marker (keeping the marker)

Find: "^(.*;).*$" (without quotes)
Replace: "\1" (without quotes)
RegExp
Note: In this example, the marker is ";".
Example: before: "this;is;an;example", after: "this;is;an;"

Truncate a string at the last occurrence of a marker (removing the marker too)

Find: "^(.*);.*$" (without quotes)
Replace: "\1" (without quotes)
RegExp
Note: In this example, the marker is ";".
Example: before: "this;is;an;example", after: "this;is;an"

Truncate a string up to the first occurrence of a marker (keeping the marker)

Find: "^[^;]*(;.*)$" (without quotes)
Replace: "\1" (without quotes)
RegExp
Note: In this example, the marker is ";".
Example: before: "this;is;an;example", after: ";is;an;example"

Truncate a string up to the first occurrence of a marker (removing the marker too)

Find: "^[^;]*;(.*)$" (without quotes)
Replace: "\1" (without quotes)
RegExp
Note: In this example, the marker is ";".
Example: before: "this;is;an;example", after: "is;an;example"

Truncate a string up to the last occurrence of a marker (keeping the marker)

Find: "^.*(;.*)$" (without quotes)
Replace: "\1" (without quotes)
RegExp
Note: In this example, the marker is ";".
Example: before: "this;is;an;example", after: ";example"

Truncate a string up to the last occurrence of a marker (removing the marker too)

Find: "^.*;(.*)$" (without quotes)
Replace: "\1" (without quotes)
RegExp
Note: In this example, the marker is ";".
Example: before: "this;is;an;example", after: "example"

Turn a list of names last first(s) into first(s) last

Find "^([^ ]*) (.*)$" (without quotes)
Replace: "\2 \1" (without quotes)
RegExp
Note: Names are separated by a space character " ".
Example: before: "Smith John Jack", after: "John Jack Smith"

Remove e-mail addresses

Find "[a-zA-Z0-9\.\-_]+@[a-zA-Z0-9\.\-_]+\.[a-zA-Z0-9\.\-_]+" (without quotes)
Replace: "xxx@yyy.zzz" (without quotes)
RegExp
Example: before: "user@example.net", after: "xxx@yyy.zzz"

Remove note numbers

Find "\[[0-9]+\]" (without quotes)
Replace: "" (without quotes)
RegExp
Example: before: "as listed in his book[1], and other sources[2][3].", after: "as listed in his book, and other sources."

Turn a CSV table into a list of PHP if conditions

"^([^\,]+)\,([^\,]+)\,([^\,]+)$" (without quotes)
"elseif (vcmp$=="\1") {$v2="\2"; $v3="\3";}" (without quotes)
RegExp
Example: before: "Italy,Rome,Euro", after: elseif (vcmp$=="Italy") {$v2="Rome"; $v3="Euro";}
Note: In this example, there are three values per record, and the CSV separator is a comma (,), you may need to replace it with another character like \t for tab. Remember to change the first "elseif" to "if".

Truncate last value from a MySQL INSERT query

Find: "(VALUES \(.+), *.+\);" (without quotes)
Replace: "\1);" (without quotes)
RegExp
Example: before: "INSERT INTO table VALUES ('value1','value2','value3');", after: "INSERT INTO table VALUES ('value1','value2');"

Keep only last value in a MySQL INSERT query

Find: "(VALUES \(.+,)(.+\);)" (without quotes)
Replace: "VALUES (\2" (without quotes)
RegExp
Example: before: "INSERT INTO table VALUES ('value1','value2','value3');", after: "INSERT INTO table VALUES ('value3');"

Turn MySQL fields into empty values

Find: "`[^`]*`([\,\)\'\"])" (without quotes)
Replace: "''\1" (without quotes)
RegExp
Example: before: "INSERT INTO table (`phone`,`phonecell`,`fax`) VALUES (`phone`,`phonecell`,`fax`);", after: "INSERT INTO table (`phone`,`phonecell`,`fax`) VALUES ('','','');". (Only the second instance of "(`phone`,`phonecell`,`fax`)" must be selected and search and replace must be applied to such selection).
Note: this is meant to replicate the values in a INSERT query according to the specified fields (and use the empty values as a placeholder): you simply need to copy the fields and past them after VALUES, and then replace them this way.

Wikification: Link all elements of a list

Find: "(\*)(.*)$" (without quotes)
Replace: "\1[[\2]]" (without quotes)
RegExp
Example: before: "*Example", after: "*[[Example]]"

Wikification: Link all elements of a list, changing the linked text

Find: "(\*)(.*)$" (without quotes)
Replace: "\1[[\2_(category)|\2]]" (without quotes)
RegExp
Example: before: "*Example", after: "*[[Example_(category)|Example]]"

See also

• Regular Expressions