how to invert keys and values in a YAML file (key : value)

Question

I have a big .yml translation file, in which I would like to invert the keys and the values.

what I have :

some english sentence : une phrase en francais
another one : une autre

what I would like to get :

une phrase en francais : some english sentence
une autre : another one

I'm sure there might be a bunch of easy regex to do so, but I could not figure out how to do this ...

I dont search a script, just a regex

Are all your keys and values so simple? In particular does none of the sentences have a `:` embedded? Like the valid YAML `'He said: "Some English sentence"': 'Il dit: "une phrase en francais"'` — Anthon, Aug 04 '16 at 14:27
I only had one containing double dots, I changed it manually. thats indeed something to care about — singe batteur, Aug 04 '16 at 14:34
So after we all agreed that [parsing XML with regex is a bad idea](http://stackoverflow.com/a/1732454/347964), we now try do parse YAML with regex instead? — flyx, Aug 04 '16 at 15:36

Dmitry Egorov · Accepted Answer · 2016-08-04T13:48:39.000

2

The regex:

(.*)\s+:\s+(.*)

The substitution:

$2 : $1

edited Aug 04 '16 at 13:48

answered Aug 04 '16 at 13:38

Dmitry Egorov

Thanks, I had to invert 1 and 2 but its exactly what i was looking for ! – singe batteur Aug 04 '16 at 13:42
Oops, sorry. Fixed – Dmitry Egorov Aug 04 '16 at 13:49

score 2 · Answer 2 · answered Aug 04 '16 at 13:40

you can start with a simple regex :

^(.*):(.*)$

^ = start of line

(.*) = first match group

: = catch :

(.*) = second match group

$ = end of line

Using for exemple notepad++ you can do :

search : ^(.*):(.*)$

replace \2:\1

where \2 :content of second match group and where \1 :content of first match group

This method work only if you sentence don't contain :

2 Answers2