Old Pattern (egrep) Search and Replace

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Use this filter to find a text pattern. You can also use this filter to find multi-line text. This filter is slower and less flexible than using a perl pattern, but is maintained for backward compatibility.

The length of each string is shown above it, and a warning is displayed on the status line if they are not the same. This can be very useful when replacing strings in binary files.

Find pattern (old egrep style)

The pattern to find. The right-click (or context) menu on this field supports Undo, Cut, Copy, Paste, Delete, Clear Entire Field, Select All and Select All And Copy, and entering unprintable and special characters and inserting pattern match characters.

See also

An Introduction to Pattern Matching
Example patterns
Pattern matching reference Note: This pattern type does NOT support perl-style {...} quantifiers, or perl-style (?:....) brackets.

Pattern options button [...]

Maximum match size

Changes the maximum search buffer size. If you need to match a string that is longer than 4096 bytes (4k), increase the Maximum text buffer size to be at least as large as the string you need to match.

Match Case

When checked, the case of the string found must match the case of the Find Pattern exactly.

Find Whole Words Only

Only match the Find Pattern when it is not part of a larger word e.g. find "the" but not "them", "there", "worth" etc.

Replace With

The text to replace the found text with. The right-click (or context) menu on this field supports Undo, Cut, Copy, Paste, Delete, Clear Entire Field, Select All and Select All And Copy, entering unprintable and special characters and inserting pattern replacement specifiers:

$0 - is replaced by the entire matched expression
$1 - is replaced with the first parenthesised expression.
$2 - is replaced with the second parenthesised expression
$3 - $9, $a - $z and so on.

If you need to put a dollar sign $ in the Replace With section, simply double it i.e. $$.

The replacement text is passed to any sub filters.

Case Sensitive Replace

If the Find Pattern matches text that is entirely in UPPERCASE, this forces the replace string to all UPPERCASE. If the Find Pattern matches text that is entirely in lowercase, this forces the replace string to all lowercase.

Replace First Only

Only replace the first occurrence found - skip all remaining matches.

Prompt On Replace

By checking this option, you can manually verify each match before it gets replaced. You can choose to replace or ignore single matches, the remainder of the file or the entire job.

Skip Prompt If Identical

If the find string and replace string are identical, this option can be enabled to skip prompting. This can happen when the case of the search string is identical to the case of the replace string during a case-insensitive search.

Extract matches

When this option is checked all non-matching text will be discarded, leaving only the replacement text. This can be handy for data mining content from web sites or data files.