One of the nice feature in all version of visual studio that I would love to use is Find and Replace using regular expression. This feature is very useful while you need to perform any repeating pattern based task. and offcourse it saves a lot time.
Lets take a simple example to understand it. We have list of countries and its code in a excel file or table. We want to create a dropdownlist from it so text field contains Country name and Value field contains Code in it.
Step 1: Select the both columns from excel file an copy it in text file in visual studio. Don’t forget to put cursor at the start.
Step 2: Now click Ctrl+h to open the find replace dialog. Checkmark the last checkbox 'Use' and select ‘Regular Expression’ from the dropdown. Now we will need to define the regular expression in ‘Find What:’ and ‘Replace with:’ textboxes. You can see them in following screenshot (again i will explain how to define it? and how does it work? in my next post)
Step 3: Click on ‘Replace All’ button on the dialog. and Here is the result we need.
Lets take a simple example to understand it. We have list of countries and its code in a excel file or table. We want to create a dropdownlist from it so text field contains Country name and Value field contains Code in it.
The step by step procedure:
Step 2: Now click Ctrl+h to open the find replace dialog. Checkmark the last checkbox 'Use' and select ‘Regular Expression’ from the dropdown. Now we will need to define the regular expression in ‘Find What:’ and ‘Replace with:’ textboxes. You can see them in following screenshot (again i will explain how to define it? and how does it work? in my next post)
Step 3: Click on ‘Replace All’ button on the dialog. and Here is the result we need.
Can you please describe above used regular expression if possible..
ReplyDeleteThanks..
{[^\t]*} takes first word and it is considered as "1"
Delete\t consider the space
{[^\n]*} takes all other letters and it is considered as "2"
"1" and "2" are replaced in "replace with" text