Searchin with wildcards

Fernando Conti

Hi.

Well, I dont know if this could be possible , but I’d like to search and replace arguments with anothers using wildcards.

For example, I’d like to find all the worlds between symbols [] and replace them with others or simply erase them.
So if my text file have ocurrences like [one] , [two], [three], etc. I’d like to replace all these at the same time with [nothing] or simply search all the worlds that are between [] and erase them including the [] symbols.

Any idea?

Thanks in advance and apologize for my english.

guy038

Hi, @fernando-conti,

Very easy with regular expressions, indeed !

Open your file, in Notepad++
Move back at the very beginning ( CTRL + Origin )
Open the Find / Replace dialog ( Ctrl + H )
Check the Regular expression search mode
Check, if necessary, the Match case option
In the Find what: zone, type the regex \[.+?\]
In the Replace with: zone, simply type the text that must replace all the [......] zones or leave it empty if you prefer to delete the [......] zones
Click on the Replace All button

Et voilà,

Notes :

As the symbols [ and ] have special meaning in regular expressions, they have to be escaped, both, to be considered as literal characters
The part .+? stands for the smallest range of characters, between the symbols [ and ]

For instance, given the example text, below :

This is a [123] test for searching [abc] all the [.......] zones !

The regex :

SEARCH \[.+?\]

REPLACE Leave EMPTY

modifies the text as below :

This is a  test for searching  all the  zones !

If the regex was \[.+\], it would have select the largest zone between the symbols [ and ], that it to say, the string “[123] test for searching [abc] all the [.......]”, in our example. Certainly not what you’re looking for !

Best Regards,

guy038