CODEWITHSUNDEEP
regexnotepad++
Ajay
Ajay

Reputation: 6590

notepad++ remove text between two string using regular expression

I want to remove text between two strings using regular expression in notepad++. Here is my full string 

[insertedOn]) VALUES (1, N'1F9ACCD2-3B60-49CF-830B-42B4C99F6072',

I want final string like this

[insertedOn]) VALUES (N'1F9ACCD2-3B60-49CF-830B-42B4C99F6072',

Here I removed 1, from string. 1,2,3 is in incremental order.

I tried lot of expression but not worked. Here is one of them (VALUES ()(?s)(.*)(, N')

How can I remove this?

Upvotes: 2

Views: 5665

Answers (2)

revo
revo

Reputation: 48711

You should first escape literal ( before VALUES: \(

By doing so, .* in your regex in addition to s (DOTALL) flag causes engine to greedily match up to end of input string then backtracks to stop at the first occurrence of , N' which means unexpected matches.

To improve your regex you should 1) make .* ungreedy 2) remove (?s) 3) escape (:

(VALUES \().*?, (N')

To be more precise in matching you'd better search for:

VALUES \(\K\d+, *(?=N')

and replace with nothing.

Breakdown:

  • VALUES \( March VALUES ( literally
  • \K Reset match
  • \d+, * Match digits preceding a comma and optional spaces
  • (?=N') Followed by N'

Upvotes: 1

Wiktor Stribiżew
Wiktor Stribiżew

Reputation: 626728

You may use

(VALUES \().*?,\s*(N')

and replace with $1$2. Note that in case the part of string to be removed can contain line breaks, enable the . matches newline. If the N and VALUES must be matched only when in ALLCAPS, make sure the Match case option is checked.

Pattern details

  • (VALUES \() - Group 1 (later referred with $1 from the replacement pattern): a literal substring VALUES (
  • .*? - any 0+ chars, as few as possible, up to the leftmost occurrence of the sunsequent subpatterns
  • ,\s* - a comma and 0+ whitespaces (use \h instead of \s to only match horizontal whitespace chars)
  • (N') - Group 2 (later referred with $2 from the replacement pattern): a literal substring N'.

enter image description here

Upvotes: 1

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