(\W)'(\w) Regex replace failure

[M Andre Z Eckenrode]

I’m aware that there are other ways to achieve this, and that’s indeed what I ended up doing, but I’m still hoping to understand why my initial method did not work…

In ANSI text, I sought to replace selected instances of the straight single quote (') that were preceded by any non-word character and followed by any word character, with the right/closing curly single quote (’), using FIND WHAT string (\W)'(\w) and REPLACE WITH string \1’\2. Some example text I tried it on:

this
'Cos I am
that

this
'Round and 'round
that

My FIND WHAT string successfully matched everything it was intended to, shown as marked here:

However, my REPLACE WITH string only replaced the third instance ( 'r) and reported no error messages for the first two before jumping to the next instance when I clicked on REPLACE. Anybody? @guy038?

[Note to @Coises: I also tried this with Search++ , which also failed to work as expected — though in a different way than NPP’s native find/replace feature — which I will report separately.]

Debug:

Notepad++ v8.9.7   (32-bit)
Build time: Jul 14 2026 - 01:11:31
Scintilla/Lexilla included: 5.6.4/5.5.1
Boost Regex included: 1_90
pugixml included: 1.16
nlohmann JSON included: 3.12.0
Path: C:\Program Files (x86)\Notepad++\notepad++.exe
Command Line: 
Admin mode: OFF
Local Conf mode: OFF
Cloud Config: OFF
WinGUp: present
disableNppAutoUpdate.xml: absent
Periodic Backup: ON
Placeholders: OFF
Scintilla Rendering Mode: SC_TECHNOLOGY_DIRECTWRITE (1)
Multi-instance Mode: monoInst
asNotepad: OFF
File Status Auto-Detection: cdEnabledNew (for current file/tab only)
Dark Mode: OFF
Display Info:
    primary monitor: 1920x1080, scaling 100%
    visible monitors count: 1
    installed Display Class adapters: 
        0000: Description - Intel(R) HD Graphics 620
        0000: DriverVersion - 31.0.101.2140
        0001: Description - NVIDIA GeForce 940MX
        0001: DriverVersion - 30.0.15.1169
OS Name: Windows 10 Enterprise (64-bit)
OS Version: 22H2
OS Build: 19045.7548
Current ANSI codepage: 1252
Plugins: 
    BetterMultiSelection (1.5)
    ColumnsPlusPlus (1.3.1)
    ColumnTools (1.4.5.1)
    ComparePlus (3)
    DSpellCheck (1.5)
    ExtSettings (1.3.1)
    HTMLTag_unicode (1.6)
    mimeTools (3.1)
    MultiClipboard (2.1)
    MultiReplace (6.0.0.36)
    NppCalc (1.5)
    NppConverter (4.7)
    NppExport (0.4)
    NPPJSONViewer (2.2)
    NppTextFX (2.0.3)
    NppXmlTreeviewPlugin (2)
    PreviewHTML (1.4.5)
    PythonScript (2.1)
    RegexTrainer (1.2)
    Search++ (0.6.3.1)
    SessionMgr (1.4.4)

[Coises]

@M-Andre-Z-Eckenrode said:

I’m still hoping to understand why my initial method did not work…

Notice what happens if you change your line endings to Unix (Edit | EOL conversion | Unix). With View | Show Symbol | Show End of Line enabled, watch carefully what gets highlighted as you click Replace repeatedly. Now undo to restore your straight quotes and return to Windows line endings, move the caret back to the beginning, and compare what happens when you click Replace repeatedly.

Notepad++ won’t let the selection that results from a search split a CRLF line ending. As you can see, it moves the start of the selection from the actual location of the match to after the line ending.

When you click Replace, Notepad++ decides whether to replace or find the next occurrence by first checking whether Find what matches the current selection. If it does, Notepad++ does a replace; otherwise, it does a find.

The selection doesn’t match, because there is no character before the curly single quote.

That’s the why. Whether it’s a bug is… I suppose a matter of opinion.

[M Andre Z Eckenrode]

@Coises said:

Notepad++ won’t let the selection that results from a search split a CRLF line ending.

Noted, thanks.