Regex replace within match

Question

In Notepad++ RegEx, I want to search for all strings starting with a tilde and terminating with \n, and within each match replace all spaces with non-breaking spaces.

That is, I want to find all instances of \~.*^, and within the resulting $0, replace all [Space]s with [Non-breaking Space].

Is this possible?

yes it's possible but it would help if you gave an example line that you want to run the regex on (and expected output) — jcuenod
– jcuenod, Commented Jun 6, 2015 at 13:47
Not sure if notepad++ regex engine is powerful enough for this sort of thing but here is a php solution stackoverflow.com/questions/18581227/… — CrayonViolent
– CrayonViolent, Commented Jun 6, 2015 at 13:56

Community · Accepted Answer · 2017-05-23 11:58:33Z

2

You can use the following to match:

(?:~|\G(?<!^))\S*\K\s

Or try:

(?:~|\G(?!^))\S*\K[ ]

And replace with non breaking space

See DEMO

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edited May 23, 2017 at 11:58

CommunityBot

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answered Jun 6, 2015 at 14:06

karthik manchala

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3 Comments

Kapitano Over a year ago

Sorry, in N++ that just replaces all spaces. Maybe a weakness in N++'s implementation of regex. I'll try to reverse engineer from the demo.

Jonny 5 Over a year ago

Good idea! Maybe not working for @Kapitano because of \s at the end. Try (?:~|\G(?!^))\S*\K[ ]

karthik manchala Over a year ago

@Jonny5 hmm.. maybe.. I tried it with \s in N++ and it works.. in anycase.. updated with your suggestion too.. :)

bjfletcher · Accepted Answer · 2015-06-06 14:36:42Z

0

With fixed-width pattern lookbehind regex engines (e.g., Perl):

s/(~.*?) {2,}/\1 /g

with variable-width pattern lookbehind regex engines:

s/(?<=\~.*) {2,}/  /g

or with Vim:

s/\(\~.*\)@<= \{2,}/  /g

I'm not sure about Notepad++. Hopefully you can work it out based on the above.

answered Jun 6, 2015 at 14:36

bjfletcher

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