copy to clip all text matching regex pattern
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I want to find all the text matching a given regular expression pattern and then copy that text to the clipboard. I can't figure out how to do it. I'm NOT trying to copy all the lines that the matches reside in. I want to copy the matched text only.
By the way, you can do all of this at once... though not in Notepad++.
There are two tools I use to find (non- and) regex matches in files: TextCrawler and Agent Ransack.
TextCrawler can be used to directly extract all (non- and) regex matches at once.
You can also replace matches in files, or simply search for them.
Agent Ransack can be used to find files by pattern or regular expression.
It can also search inside files for (non- and) regex matches.
Agent Ransack can be used to extract all _lines_ containing matches at once.
Both tools are freeware!
The descriptions below are copied from the websites referred to.
TextCrawler 1.0.6
http://www.digitalvolcano.co.uk/textcrawler.html
A fantastic tool for anyone who works with text files. This program enables you to instantly find and replace words and phrases across multiple files and folders. It utilises a powerful Regular Expression engine to enable you to create sophisticated searches.
Some Features...
Find and Replace across files
Fast searching, even on large files.
Simple to use interface
Flexible search parameters
Text Extractor - rip text into a new file
Search and replace using Regular Expressions. Create sophisticated searches.
Regular Expression test tool
Regular Expression library - Save your searches.
Create backup files
Highlighted search results
Export Results
Here's a screenshot:
http://www.digitalvolcano.co.uk/tc1.jpg
Agent Ransack
http://www.mythicsoft.com/agentransack
Agent Ransack is a free tool for finding files and information on your hard drive fast and efficiently. When searching the contents of files Agent Ransack displays the text found so you can quickly browse the results without having to separately open each file!
Agent Ransack provides compelling advantages over similar search tools:
Regular expressions that allow complex rule based searches.
Immediate contents results view.
Various wizards to walk the user through the searching process.
Agent Ransack is provided FREE of charge for the benefit of the Windows community.
Here are some screenshots:
http://www.mythicsoft.com/agentransack/Page.aspx?page=screenshots
Perhaps you can think of a way to combine both methods, that is to use the one to finally get the other done?
Did you already find out how to copy all the complete lines?
Let me sohw you.
If you didn't know this already, read the following thread and referred messages:
"How to: copy lines by regex using TextFX Viz"
http://sourceforge.net/forum/forum.php?thread_id=1964719&forum_id=331754
This tells you how to get all lines (not or) containing some regular expression.
Copy these lines to a new document to work on them only from there.
Since you seem to (have) be(en) able to find all these lines by some regex, can you figure a way to now only keep the matches???
1. If there is only one match on each of the lines, you can remove anything else on them.
In the Find/Replace dialog, enter in the Find field:
^.*([RegexToFindMatches]).*$
In the Replace field, enter:
\1
[RegexToFindMatches] : put the same regex here that you used to find the matches, without the square brackets.
^___ = Beginning-of-line anchor
.*__ = find any string of 0 or more characters (before the actual to-be-matched-regex)
(..) = the to-be-matched-regex is grouped to be able to use it in the Replace field
.*__ = find any string of 0 or more characters (after the actual to-be-matched-regex)
$___ = End-of-line anchor (not strictly necessary)
So, you can simply replace each line by _only_ the regex match that made you filter this one out in the first place.
2. If there can be more than one match on any line, then you can cut there lines first.
In the Find/Replace dialog, enter in the Find field:
([RegexToFindMatches])
In the Replace field, enter:
\r\n\1\r\n
(..) = put parentheses around the regex that you used to find the matches
\r__ = CR (Carriage Return)
\n__ = LF (Line Feed)
\r\n is a Windows linebreak. One will be added before and one after the match.
So this will separate each single match on a line from anything before and anything after it.
Use the advanced Find/Replace dialog (CTRL+R) for this, since the normal Replace dialog (CTRL+H) will keep the cursor position right before the regex on the new line. So it separate the same match over and over again if you click Replace. I think I may be glad that I didn't try Replace All...
By the way, I consider this a _bug_ in the CTRL+H regex replacing engine.
Each match will be on a separate line now.
Now you can use the method described above (again) to filter _only_ the lines with matches, leaving you with only the matches, each on its own line.
Of course you can use method 2 right from the start to first put each match on a separate line and then use the filtering method only once. It might be best to first copy the complete original document to a new one that may be scratched.
> Use the advanced Find/Replace dialog (CTRL+R) for this, since the normal Replace dialog
> (CTRL+H) will keep the cursor position right before the regex on the new line. So it
> separate the same match over and over again if you click Replace. I think I may be glad
> that I didn't try Replace All...
This goes for method 1 as well. I didn't check that before.
I just ran a simple test with the regex "space[^ ]+".
There is a problem here, since this would also consider the word space at the end of a line as a match. Regardless of whether linebreaks are shown, this match will _always_ include the Carriage Return CR character, which eventually will remain as an empty line in the final list of filtered matches. In my case "space[^ ]*" would work, but this regex does not require the word(part) space to be followed by at least 1 other non-space character.
Also, TextFX left the first line of the document visible, while it did _not_ contain the regex.
One other thing about TextFX, it doesn't handle (simply ignore) the grouping parentheses. When added, "(space)", it didn't find any matches at all.