How to use regex to replace text between tags in Notepad++

Question

I have a code like this:

<pre><code>Some <a href="">HTML</a> code</code></pre>

I need to escape the HTML between the <pre><code></code></pre> tags. I have lots of tags, so I thought - why not let regex do it for me. The problem is I don't know how. I've seen lots of examples using Google and Stackoverflow, but nothing I could use. Can someone here help me?

Example:

<pre><code>Some <a href="http">HTML</a> code</code></pre>

To

<pre><code>Some &lt;a href=&quot;http&quot;&gt;HTML&lt;/a&gt; code</code></pre>

Or just a regex so I can replace anything between the <pre><code> and </code></pre> tags one by one. I'm almost certain that this can be done.

If you have multiple levels of nested tags, I don't believe regex can do this for you. HTML is not a regular language. — jpmc26
– jpmc26, Commented Jul 26, 2013 at 23:35

animuson · Accepted Answer · 2014-02-18 18:48:15Z

3

This regex will match the parts of the anchor tag you need to put back:

<pre><code>([^<]*?)<a href="(.*?)">(.*?)</a>(.*?)</code></pre>

See a live demo, which shows it matching correctly and also shows the various parts being captured as groups which we'll refer to in the replacement string (see below).

Use the regex above with the following replacement:

<pre><code>\1&lt;a href=&quot;\2&quot;&gt;\3&lt;/a&gt;\4</pre></code>

The \1, \2 etc are the captured groups in the regex that put back what we're keeping from the match.

edited Feb 18, 2014 at 18:48

animuson♦

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answered Jul 27, 2013 at 5:31

Bohemian♦

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Floris · Accepted Answer · 2013-07-27 03:31:19Z

1

A regular expression to return "the thing between <pre><code> and </code></pre>" could be

/(?<=<pre><code>).*?(?=<\/code><\/pre>)/

This uses lookaround expressions to delimit the "thing that gets matched". Typically using regex in situations with nested tags is fraught with danger and you are much better off using "real tools" made specifically for the job of parsing xml, html etc. I am a huge fan of Beautiful Soup (Python) myself. Not familiar with Notepad++, so not sure if its dialect of regex matches this expression exactly.

answered Jul 27, 2013 at 3:31

Floris

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