Regular Expression to remove space from lines starting with specific string

Question

I'm using notepad++ and I'm trying to edit objects from a script that have spaces in them. The specific lines would start with "edit".

edit test-object-1
set subnet 1.1.1.1 0.0.0.0
next
edit test-object-2
set subnet 1.1.1.1 0.0.0.0
next
edit test object 3
set subnet 1.1.1.1 0.0.0.0
next
edit test-object-4
set subnet 1.1.1.1 0.0.0.0
next
edit test-object-5
set subnet 1.1.1.1 0.0.0.0

What I would like to do is replace the spaces in "test object 3" to "test-object-3"

So far it seems that I would start with something like ''' "^edit\s" ''' but I'm getting stuck at being able to search only words that contain a \s between words. Any help on finding and replacing in notepad would be appreciated and I'm sure it's something simple too :(

Answer 1

You could use

 (?:\G(?!^)|^edit\h)\S*\K\h+

Explanation

• (?: Non capture group
  • \G(?!^) Assert the position at the end of the previous match, but not at the start of the string
  • | Or
  • ^edit\h match edit at the start of the string followed by a horizontal whitespace char (according to the comment)
• ) Close group
• \S* Match 0+ non whitespace chars
• \K\h+ Clear the match buffer (forget what is matched until now) and match 1+ horizontal whitespace characters

Regex demo

In the replacement use -