CODEWITHSUNDEEP
regexsublimetext
Jason Li
Jason Li

Reputation: 1585

Using regex in Find/Replace to replace multiple matches

I'm using Sublime Text, and I want to use Find/Replace to make HTML to Markdown. One problem I encountered is how to replace multiple matches?

The HTML is below:

<blockquote>
    <p> text 1 </p>
    <p> text 2 </p>
    <p> text 3 </p>
    <p> text 4 </p>
</blockquote>

And I want to change it to 

><p> text 1 </p>
><p> text 2 </p>
><p> text 3 </p>
><p> text 4 </p>

I use 

<blockquote>\n(^.+$\n)+?.+</blockquote>

to capture the p tag within the blockquote. But how to replace it?

Thanks a lot.

Upvotes: 1

Views: 680

Answers (2)

nhahtdh
nhahtdh

Reputation: 56829

I have tested this for your simple test case. The main problem is, it may or may not work for more complex input, where you may need to further customize the regex.

Find what:

(?:<blockquote>\s*+|(?<!\A)(?<!</blockquote>)\G)(.*)\s++(?:</blockquote>)?

This solution will clean the closing tag as it match the last line. It fixes the caveat in the first solution where the end tag </blockquote> is not removed.

Replace with:

\n> $1

Use regular expression mode and highlight matches to check what will be replaced.

It will strip all leading spaces, and leave only 1 space between > and the text.

The regex above is built based on my own answer to the question of solving this class of problem with regex alone: Collapse and Capture a Repeating Pattern in a Single Regex Expression.

My earlier solution is based on the second construct, while the current solution is based on the first construct. The initial solution is quoted here, in case you want to customize the regex to be more flexible with its end tag (e.g. free spacing):

(?:<blockquote>\s*+|(?!\A)\G\s++(?!</blockquote>))(.*)

Upvotes: 2

vks
vks

Reputation: 67998

You can do this in two steps.

1)<blockquote>((?:(?!<\/blockquote>).)*)<\/blockquote> replace by $1.

See demo.

http://regex101.com/r/dZ1vT6/35

2)^\s+ replace by <

See demo.

http://regex101.com/r/dZ1vT6/36

Upvotes: 0

Related Questions