regex s/r for defined pattern while keeping some of the existing text

Peter Schrandt

Hi all,

After studying the Wiki as well as the Community forum I am still drawing a blank on my question.

I receive loads of HTML files containing headlines marked in specific DIV containers.

Example:
<div class=“head2”>A headline text I need to keep</div>
<div class=“head2”>A different headline text which needs to stay</div>
<div class=“head2”>Even another headline we still need</div>

I need to mark them as h2, opening with <h2> and closing with </h2> instead of the DIV tags.

The files contain more div containers like just <div> or <div class=“some_other_classname”> which need to remain unchanged. Otherwise I’d just do a search and replace and would be done.

I can still do that for the exclusively used opening tag, find <div class=“head2”> and replace with <h2>, but replacing </div> with </h2> would mess up all other lines where I need to keep the </div>.

Could you please tell me how I modify the example above to

<h2>A headline text I need to keep</h2>
<h2>A different headline text which needs to stay</h2>
<h2>Even another headline we still need</h2>

***while leaving all other lines containing DIV tags unchanged ***?

I’d really appreciate it! :o)

Thanks
Peter

Claudia Frank

Hello @Peter-Schrandt,

maybe the following regex could help

find what:<div class="head2">(.*)</div>
replace with:<h2>\1</h2>

\1 holds the text between the div tags.
If the head2 is also different than you might use

<div class=".*">(.*)</div>

instead.

Cheers
Claudia

Peter Schrandt

Claudia, thank you so much for your instant reply and helpful advice!
I’ll try this as soon as I am back at the worksstation, it looks exactly as it will do the trick.

Enjoy the Easter holidays! :o)
Peter

Claudia Frank

Enjoy the Easter holidays!

Thank you and I wsh you the same.

Cheers
Claudia

Peter Schrandt

I just tried it – it works perfectly fine and will save me tons of repetitive, boring and error-prone work in the future.

With the solution you provided, I studied http://docs.notepad-plus-plus.org/index.php/Regular_Expressions again and start to understand which character does what in this combination. I would have never figured that out myself though without your help.

Thanks again, Claudia! :o)

Claudia Frank

Hello Peter,

I’m not sure if the site you mentioned reflects the current state.
I would advise to read this for searching
and that for replacing.

Cheers
Claudia