Multiline Regular Expression search and replace!

Question

I've hit a wall. Does anybody know a good text editor that has search and replace like Notepad++ but can also do multi-line regex search and replace? Basically, I am trying to find something that can match a regex like:

search oldlog\(.*\n\s+([\r\n.]*)\);
replace newlog\(\1\)

Any ideas?

Answer 1

Notepad++ can now handle multi line regular expressions (just update to the latest version - feature was introduced around March '12).

I needed to remove all onmouseout and onmouseover statements from an HTML document and I needed to create a non-greedy multi line match.

onmouseover=.?\s*".*?"

Make sure you check the:

[ ] . matches newline

checkbox if you want to use the multi line match capability.

Answer 2

EditPad Pro has better regex capabilities than any other editor I've ever used.

Also, I suspect you have an error in your regex — [\r\n.] will match only carriage returns, newlines, and full stops. If you're trying to match any character (i.e. "dot operator plus CR and LF), try [\s\S] instead.

Answer 3

My personal recommendation is IDM Computing's UltraEdit (www.ultraedit.com) - it can do regular expressions (both search and replace) with Perl, Unix and UltraEdit syntax. Multi-line matching is one of the capabilities in Perl regex mode in it.

It also has other nice search capabilities (e.g search in specific character column range, search in multiple files, search history, search favorites, etc...)

_{(source: ultraedit.com)}

Answer 4

The Zeus editor can do multi-line search and replace.

Answer 5

I use Eclipse, which is free and that you may already have if you are a developer. '\R' acts as platform independent line delimiter. Here is an example of multi-line search:

search:

\bibitem.(\R.)?\R?{([^{])}$\R^([^\].[^}]$\R.$\R.)

and replace:

\defcitealias{$2}{$3}

Answer 6

I'm pretty sure Notepad++ can do that now via the TextFX plugin (which is included by default). Hit Control-R in Notepad++ and have a play.

Answer 7

TextPad has good Regex search and replace capabilities; I've used it for a while and am pretty happy with it.

From the Features:

Powerful search/replace engine using UNIX-style regular expressions, with the power of editor macros. Sets of files in a directory tree can be searched, and text can be replaced in all open documents at once.

For more options than you could possibly need, check out "Notepad++ Alternatives" at AlternativeTo.net.

Answer 8

you can use Python Script plugin for Multiline Regular Expression search and replace! - http://npppythonscript.sourceforge.net/docs/latest/scintilla.html?highlight=pymlreplace#Editor.pymlreplace

# This example replaces any <br/> that is followed by another on the next line (with optional spaces in between), with a single one
editor.pymlreplace(r"<br/>\s*\r\n\s*<br/>", "<br/>\r\n")

Answer 9

I use Notepad++ all the time but it's Regex has alway been a bit lacking.

Sublime Text is what you want.

Answer 10

EditPlus does a good job at search/replace using regex (including multiline)

Answer 11

You can use a recent version of Notepad++ (Mine is 6.2.2).

No need to use the option ". match newline" as suggested in another answer. Instead, use the adequate regular expression with ^ for "begin of line" and $ for "end of line". Then use \r\n after the $ for a "new line" in a dos file (or just \n in a unix file as the carriage return is mainly used for dos/windows text file):

Ex.: to remove all lines starting with tags OBJE after a line starting with a tag UID (from a gedcom file - used in genealogy), I did use the following search regex:

^UID (.*)$\r\n^(OBJE (.*)$\r\n)+

And the following replace value:

UID \1\r\n

This is matching lines like this:

UID 4FBB852FB485B2A64DE276675D57A1BA
OBJE @M4@
OBJE @M3@
OBJE @M2@
OBJE @M1@

and the output of the replacement is

UID 4FBB852FB485B2A64DE276675D57A1BA

550 instances have been replaced in less than 1 sec. Notepad++ is really efficient!

Otherwise, to validate a Regular expression I like to use the .Net RegEx Tester (http://regexhero.net/tester/). It's really great to write and test on the fly a Reg Ex...

PS.: Also, you can use [\s\S] in your regex to match any character including new lines. So, if you look for any block of "multi-line" text starting with "xxx" and ending with "abc", the following Regex will be fine:^xxx[\s\S]*?abc$ where "*?" is to match as less as possible between xxx and abc !!!

Answer 12

You could use Visual Studio. Download Express for free if you don't have a copy.

VS's regex is non-standard, so you'd have to use \n:b+[\r\n] instead.

Answer 13

The latest version of UltraEdit has multiline find and replace w/ regex support.

Or if you're OK with using a more specialized regular expression tool for this, there's Regex Hero. It has the side benefit of being able to do everything on the fly. In other words, you don't have to click a button to test your regular expression because it's automatically tested after every keypress.

Personally, I'd use UltraEdit if I'm looking to replace text in multiple files. That way I can just select the files to replace as a batch and click Replace. But if I'm working with a single text file and I'm in need of writing a more complex regular expression then I'd paste it into Regex Hero and work with it there. That's because Regex Hero can save time when you see everything happen in real-time.

Answer 14

ED for windows has two versions of regex, three sorts of cut and paste (selection, lines or blocks, AND you can shift from one to the next (unlike ultra edit, which is clunky at best) with just a mouse click while you are highlighting -- no need to pull down a menu. The sheer speed of getting the job done is incredible, like reading on a Kindle, you don't have to think about it.