I would like to replace all names in an XML file tagged by with let's say xyz. In other words, replace everything (including whitespace) between the tags. What am I doing wrong?
Search: (<name>)(.*)(</name>)
Replace: \1xyz\3
-
2What goes wrong when you try it?itsbruce– itsbruce2012-11-02 12:44:43 +00:00Commented Nov 2, 2012 at 12:44
Add a comment
|
1 Answer
You are trying to parse XML with regular expressions.
However, what you are doing wrong anyway is using a greedy repetition. This will go all the way from the first <name> to the very last </name> (even if they do not belong together), because the .* will try to consume as much as possible while still fulfilling the match condition.. Use this instead:
Search: (<name>).*?(</name>)
Replace: \1xyz\2
Or to be on the safe side you can also escape the < and >, since they are meta-characters in some specific cases (not in this one though):
Search: (\<name\>).*?(\</name\>)
Replace: \1xyz\2
In both cases, this makes the .* ungreedy, i.e. it will consume as little as possible.
And make sure you upgrade to Notepad++ 6, because before that there were a few issues with Notepad++'s regex engine.
Lastly, as hoombar pointed out in a comment . by default matches every character except line break characters. In Notepadd++ you can change this behavior by ticking the . matches newline checkbox.
4 Comments
Ben Pearson
you might also want to check the box ". matches new line"
Ari McBrown
I generally escape the
<> to prevent unexpected behaviour \<\>
Martin Ender
@Ariaan It's probably a matter of taste (I usually prefer the readability), and would only differ inside a named capturing group, wouldn't it?
Ari McBrown
@m.buettner You're correct, but I'd prefer to be prepared for reuse in larger regular expressions, in case you'd need to extend your expression. I don't think it's a bad habit when writing complicated expressions.