Regular expression to select from X to Y

Question

I have the folowing HTML:

<Some Html above....../>
<!--Template Start -->
<div>
<p>Some text</p>
...
<div>
<!--Template End -->
<Some Html below/>

Now how can I write regular expression to match all text from Template Start to Template End

here it says that notepad++ use Scintilla engine. Notepad++ non-greedy regular expressions

score 9 · Answer 1 · answered Sep 25 '11 at 08:19

9

<!--Template Start -->(.*?)<!--Template End -->

s modifier should be switched on.

answered Sep 25 '11 at 08:19

Karolis

9,396
29
38

@Howard actually 4 seconds :) – Karolis Sep 25 '11 at 08:24
how to switch s modifier, I am new to regular expression. – jasin_89 Sep 25 '11 at 08:27
@user637307 What programming language do you use? – Karolis Sep 25 '11 at 08:28
I am using Notepad++ text editor, which is written I think in Visual C++(with Microsoft Visual Studio) – jasin_89 Sep 25 '11 at 08:31

score 2 · Answer 2 · answered Sep 25 '11 at 08:19

2

Assuming that there are no nested templates:

<!--Template Start -->(.*?)<!--Template End -->

Note to switch on mode DOT_ALL to also cover newlines.

answered Sep 25 '11 at 08:19

Howard

38,639
9
64
83

how to switch on mode DOT_ALL, because I am new to regular expression. – jasin_89 Sep 25 '11 at 08:26
@user637307 Which language do you use? – Howard Sep 25 '11 at 08:27
I am using Notepad++ text editor, which is written I think in Visual C++(with Microsoft Visual Studio) – jasin_89 Sep 25 '11 at 08:30
I don't know which kind of regular expressions Notepad++ supports. You can also try `((.|\n)*?)` instead of `(.*?)`. – Howard Sep 25 '11 at 08:38
here it says it use Scintilla engine. http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3971052/notepad-non-greedy-regular-expressions/5753921#5753921 – jasin_89 Sep 25 '11 at 09:06

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Sep 26 '11 at 20:57

It's a shame, but Notepad++ doesn't support matching newlines (\r\n) natively in regex mode. It does support matching newlines only in extended mode. However it DOES support INSERTING newlines in both modes.

To achieve desired results, you can do a workaround:

Delete all newlines in extended mode (replace \r\n with nothing) so you have one-liner.
Do regex manipulations in regex mode.
Add newlines back in extended mode (e.g. replace <div> with <div>\r\n and so on) or regex mode.

I've read somewhere that PythonScript plugin for N++ adds better support for regexes but I haven't checked it.

Regular expression to select from X to Y

3 Answers3