How do I replace strings of text while retaining numbers in middle of the line?

Juuso Uu

So, I am modding a game and have a .txt file in which I need to replace multiple, possibly hundreds of lines of this type :

owns = 116

to this

116 = { country_or_non_sovereign_subject_holds = ROOT }

The numbers after ‘owns =’ can be anything between 1-5000, so it can have 1 to 4 digits

What would be the easiest way to replace all of the lines in this file?

astrosofista

Hi @Juuso-Uu

A regular expression would be fine here. I assume the matching string is placed at the begining of a line. If this is not the case, please remove the ^ symbol from the Search expression.

Search: ^owns = (\d{1,4})
Replace: $1 = { country_or_non_sovereign_subject_holds = ROOT }

Put the caret at the very beginning of the document, select just the Regular Expression mode and click on Replace All.

Take care and have fun!

Juuso Uu

Worked perfectly, thank you so much!!

Anandkumar Prajapati

Hello,
You can replace strings of text while retaining numbers in the middle of the line using RegEx.
Follow the steps:
Open your document in N++.
Go to the start of the document by clicking on ctrl+home.
Open The Replace Dialogue Box (ctrl+h).
Under search, mode Select regular expression.
write the following in the fields.
Find what: (?i)(?s)owns = (\d{1,4})
Replace with: $1 = { country_or_non_sovereign_subject_holds = ROOT }
Click on Replace All.

Description:
(?s) enables dot matching newlines.
(?i) makes match case insensitive.
(owns) represents a literal string.
(\d) (digit) matches any single digit (same as [0-9] ).
{1,4} matches with a 1 to 4 digit number.
$1 refers to the first match (in this case $1 will refer to the number i.e. 116).