help! regular express

[李唯任]

Hello, I want to add brackets around multi-line text

before
some text
some text
some text
…

after
{
some text
some text
some text
…
}

[guy038]

Hello, @李唯任 and All,

Not difficult with regular expressions !

---

• Do a normal selection of your first text part to modify

• Open the Replace dialog ( Ctrl + H )

• Untick all box options

• Tick the Wrap around box option

• Select the Regular expression search mode

• Enter (?-s)(?:.+(\R))+.+ in the Find what: zone

• Enter {\1$0\1}, in the Replace with: zone

• FIRST possibility :

  • Tick the In selection box option

  • Click on the Replace All button

• SECOND possibility :

  • Do not tick the In selection box option

  • Click on the Find Next button

  • Click on the Replace button if the present selection must be replaced (A)

  • Click again on the Find Next button, if the present selection must stay unchanged

  • Return to line (A)

  • And so on…

=> the FIRST possibility just produce one global replacement on your selection whereas the SECOND possibility allows you to choose the zones of text to modify or not !

---

Notes :

• First, the in-line modifier ( (?-s) ) means that the regex character . represents a unique standard char only ( not EOL )

• Then the (?:.+(\R))+ part represents a bunch of, at least, 1 complete line(s), surrounded by a non-capturing group ( (?:.......) ), each with :

  • 1 or more standard characters

  • Any kind of End of Line ( \R ), so \r\n or \n or \r, stored as the group 1 , which will be re-used in replacement

• Finally the .+ part match a LAST non-empty line ( Thus, the case if your last section is at the very end of file, without any EOL, will be matched, too )

• In replacement, we simply write the { character first, followed with an EOL character ( the group \1 ), followed with the whole regex ( $0 ) and, again, followed with a second EOL character and, finally, the } character

Best Regards,

guy038