VSCode regex find & replace submatch math?

Question

%s@{fileID: \(213[0-9]*\)@\='{fileID: '.(submatch(1)-1900)@

I am using this regex search and replace command in vim to subtract a constant from each matching id.

I can do the regex find in VSCode but how can I reference the submatch for maths & replace? submatch(1) does not work in VSCode?

Thanks.

Answer 1

Given a regular expression of (foobar) you can reference the first group using $1 and so on if you have more groups in the replace input field.

Answer 2

To augment Benjamin's answer with an example:

Find        Carrots(With)Dip(Are)Yummy
Replace     Bananas$1Mustard$2Gross
Result      BananasWithMustardAreGross

Anything in the parentheses can be a regular expression.

Answer 3

Just to add another example:

I was replacing src attr in img html tags, but i needed to replace only the src and keep any text between the img declaration and src attribute.

I used the find+replace tool (ctrl+h) as in the image:

Answer 4

For beginners, the accepted answer is correct, but a little terse if you're not that familiar with either VSC or Regex.

So, in case this is your first contact with either:

To find and modify text,

1. In the "Find" step, you can use regex with "capturing groups," e.g. I want to find (group1) and (group2), using parentheses. This would find the same text as I want to find group1 and group2, but with the difference that you can then reference group1 and group2 in the next step:

2. In the "Replace" step, you can refer to the capturing groups via $1, $2 etc, so you could change the sentence to I found $1 and $2 having a picnic, which would output I found group1 and group2 having a picnic.

Notes:

• Instead of just a string, anything inside or outside the () can be a regular expression.

• $0 refers to the whole match

Answer 5

In my case $1 was not working, but $0 works fine for my purpose.

In this case I was trying to replace strings with the correct format to translate them in Laravel, I hope this could be useful to someone else because it took me a while to sort it out!

Search: (?<=<div>).*?(?=</div>)
Replace: {{ __('$0') }}

Regex Replace String for Laravel Translation

Answer 6

Just another example for someone figuring out.

In this example, I've added #### to the start of the string and placed the first group $1 after that. Everything outside group (.*) is going to be deleted.

<h4.*">(.*)</h4>
#### $1

# before: 
<h4 id="extract-inline-json-with-regex">Extract inline JSON data with Regex</h4>

# after:
#### Extract inline JSON data with Regex

Answer 7

Another simple example:

Search: style="(.+?)"
Replace: css={css`$1`}

Useful for converting HTML to JSX with emotion/css!

Answer 8

In "files to include"

./REPONAME/**/{application_stress*,application_k8s*}
./REPONAME/**/application_*{stress*,k8s*}
./REPONAME/**/{*_stress*,*_k8s*}

Answer 9

Find: (loadImage([^"]))(.[^"])

Replaces <img [loadImage]="act.landing.image"

and then you can replace if you needed to replace "act.landing.image" Replace: src]=$3

Answer 10

I had the same bug in my vscode and $1 would not fill in the capturing group but literally $1. (I was searching and replacing globally). It seemed that global search was finding results with a "wrong/weird" regex.

I solved it using the following steps:

1. Test if your regex is working in a specific file first. (using windows ctrl + h)
2. If your regex is working inside a single file it should work as expected using global search and replace with $1 etc.

In my specific case

• (formcontrol(?:name)?[^>\n]*)\[disabled\] was giving results in global search but not in a single file.
• I changed it to (formcontrol(?:name)?(?:[^>]|[\r\n])*)\[disabled\] for it to work in a single file. It then also worked globally.

I hope this helps someone.