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BBEdit-TextWrangler Regular Expression Cheat-Sheet
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BBEdit / BBEdit-Lite / TextWrangler Regular Expression Guide Modified: 2018/08/10 01:19 | |
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NOTES: | |
The PCRE engine (Perl Compatible Regular Expressions) is what BBEdit and TextWrangler use. | |
Items I'm unsure of are marked '# PCRE?'. The list while fairly comprehensive is not complete. | |
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PATTERN MODIFIERS (switches) | |
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i Case-insensitive | |
m Multiline : allow the grep engine to match at ^ and $ after and before at \r or \n. | |
s Magic Dot : allows . to match \r and \n | |
x Free-spacing: ignore unescaped white space; allow inline comments in grep patterns. | |
(?imsx) On | |
(?-imsx) Off | |
(?i-msx) Mixed | |
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Regex Meta-Characters: | |
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. Any character except newline or carriage return | |
[ ] Any single character of set | |
[^ ] Any single character NOT of set | |
* 0 or more previous regular expression | |
*? 0 or more previous regular expression (non-greedy) | |
+ 1 or more previous regular expression | |
+? 1 or more previous regular expression (non-greedy) | |
? 0 or 1 previous regular expression | |
| Alternation | |
( ) Grouping regular expressions | |
^ Beginning of a line or string | |
$ End of a line or string | |
{m,n} At least m but most n previous regular expression | |
{m,n}? At least m but most n previous regular expression (non-greedy) | |
\1-9 Nth previous captured group | |
\& Whole match # BBEdit: '&' only - no escape needed | |
\` Pre-match # PCRE? NOT BBEdit | |
\' Post-match # PCRE? NOT BBEdit | |
\+ Highest group matched # PCRE? NOT BBEdit | |
\A Beginning of a string | |
\b Backspace(0x08)(inside[]only) # PCRE? | |
\b Word boundary(outside[]only) | |
\B Non-word boundary | |
\d Digit, same as[0-9] | |
\D Non-digit | |
\G Assert position at end of previous match or start of string for first match | |
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Case-Change Operators | |
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\E Change case - acts as an end delimiter to terminate runs of \L & \U. | |
\l Change case of only the first character to the right lower case. (Note: lowercase 'L') | |
\L Change case of all text to the right to lowercase. | |
\u Change case of only the first character to the right to uppercase. | |
\U Change case of all text to the right to uppercase. | |
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White-Space or Non-White-Space | |
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\t Tab | |
\n Linefeed | |
\r Return | |
\R Return or Linefeed or Windows CRLF (matches any Unicode newline sequence). | |
\f Formfeed | |
\s Whitespace character equivalent to [ \t\n\r\f] | |
\S Non-whitespace character | |
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\W Non-word character | |
\w Word character[0-9A-Za-z_] | |
\z End of a string | |
\Z End of a string, or before newline at the end | |
(?#) Comment | |
(?:) Grouping without backreferences | |
(?=) Zero-width positive look-ahead assertion | |
(?!) Zero-width negative look-ahead assertion | |
(?>) Nested anchored sub-regexp stops backtracking | |
(?imx-imx) Turns on/off imx options for rest of regexp | |
(?imx-imx:…) Turns on/off imx options, localized in group # '…' indicates added regex pattern | |
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PERL-STYLE PATTERN EXTENSIONS : BBEdit Documentation : '…' indicates added regex pattern | |
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Extension Meaning | |
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(?:…) Cluster-only parentheses, no capturing | |
(?#…) Comment, discard all text between the parentheses | |
(?imsx-imsx) Enable/disable pattern modifiers | |
(?imsx-imsx:…) Cluster-only parens with modifiers | |
(?=…) Positive lookahead assertion | |
(?!…) Negative lookahead assertion | |
(?<=…) Positive lookbehind assertion | |
(?<!…) Negative lookbehind assertion | |
(?()…|…) Match with if-then-else | |
(?()…) Match with if-then | |
(?>…) Match non-backtracking subpattern (“once-only”) | |
(?R) Recursive pattern | |
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POSITIONAL ASSERTIONS (duplicatation of above) | |
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POSITIVE LOOKAHEAD ASSERTION: (?='pattern') | |
NEGATIVE LOOKAHEAD ASSERTION: (?!'pattern') | |
POSITIVE LOOKBEHIND ASSERTION: (?<='pattern') # Lookbehind Assertions are of fixed-length | |
NEGATIVE LOOKBEHIND ASSERTION: (?<!'pattern') | |
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SPECIAL CHARACTER CLASSES (POSIX standard except where 'Perl Extension' is indicated): | |
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CLASS MEANING | |
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[[:alnum:]] Alpha-numeric characters | |
[[:alpha:]] Alphabetic characters | |
[[:ascii:]] Character codes 0-127 # Perl Extension | |
[[:blank:]] Horizontal whitespace | |
[[:cntrl:]] Control characters | |
[[:digit:]] Decimal digits (same as \d) | |
[[:graph:]] Printing characters, excluding spaces | |
[[:lower:]] Lower case letters | |
[[:print:]] Printing characters, including spaces | |
[[:punct:]] Punctuation characters | |
[[:space:]] White space (same as \s) | |
[[:upper:]] Upper case letters | |
[[:word:]] Word characters (same as \w) # Perl Extension | |
[[:xdigit:]] Hexadecimal digits | |
Usage example of multiple character classes: | |
[[:alpha:][:digit:]] | |
«Negated» character class example: | |
[[:^digit:]]+ | |
** POSIX-style character class names are case-sensitive | |
** The outermost brackets above indicate a RANGE; the class name itself looks like this: [:alnum:] | |
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CONDITIONAL SUBPATTERNS | |
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Conditional subpatterns allow you to apply “if-then” or “if-then-else” logic to pattern matching. | |
The “if” portion can either be an integer between 1 and 99, or an assertion. | |
The forms of syntax for an ordinary conditional subpattern are: | |
if-then: (?(condition)yes-pattern) | |
if-then-else: (?(condition)yes-pattern|no-pattern) | |
and for a named conditional subpattern are: | |
if-then: (?P<NAME>(condition)yes-pattern) | |
if-then-else: (?P<NAME>(condition)yes-pattern|no-pattern) | |
If the condition evaluates as true, the “yes-pattern” portion attempts to match. Otherwise, the | |
“no-pattern” portion does (if there is a “no-pattern”). | |
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REVISION NOTES: | |
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2016/02/29 17:23 | |
\G metacharacter added. | |
Tested with BBEdit 11.5.1 & TextWrangler 5.0.2. | |
Also available in ICU RegEx: | |
http://userguide.icu-project.org/strings/regexp#TOC-Regular-Expression-Metacharacters | |
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Excellent guide Chris! 👍
Thanks for sharing.
Thanks!!
Dude, this. Is. AWESOME. Thank you so much!! I used TW until it was EOLed and then I bought BBEdit (probably why they EOLed TW? lol) and I consider myself fairly expert with regex find/replace using it. But this... man this blows the doors off what I can do with the tool. Thank you so much.
Excellent job . Thank you!
Sweet, thanks!
great, thanks!!
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Named capture groups:
(?P...)
Back-reference of those named capture groups:
(?P=name)
But as far as I know it's not yet possible to use the named groups in replacement/substitution in textwrangler as "\g" did not work for me.