How to add spaces at the beginning of a line in a block between lines in regular expression?

Piotr Przeklasa

ex

for
aaa
bbb
ccc
next

It should look like this:

for
  aaa
  bbb
  ccc
next

Mark Olson

for
  aaa
  bbb
  ccc
next

would be matched by the regular expression ^for\R\x20{2}aaa\R\x20{2}bbb\R\x20{2}ccc\Rnext$

More generally a block with at least n spaces of indentation would just be (?-s)(?:\x20{n}.*)+

Note that you could just use a literal space instead of \x20, but \x20 is preferred for readability reasons. Of course, \x20{n} could be replaced with \t if you are using tabs for indentation.

Alan Kilborn

@Mark-Olson said in How to add spaces at the beginning of a line in a block between lines in regular expression?:

would be matched by the regular expression

I’m confused by this response because it solves a problem that wasn’t asked…

Mark Olson

Yep, AlanKilborn is right, I misunderstood your question.

Assuming you’re trying to use a find/replace to convert the first example to the second example, I recommend

FIND: (?s-i)(?:^for\R|(?!\A)\G)(?:(?!\Rnext$).)*?\K^
REPLACE WITH \x20\x20