Find and replace with a newline in Visual Studio Code

534
votes

I am trying out the new Microsoft Visual Studio Code editor in Linux Fedora environment. I would like to know how to replace new line (\n) in place of some other text.

For example, I have html text like this

<tag><tag>

which I would like to replace as 

<tag>
<tag>

In sublime I would use regex pattern and find "><" and replace with ">\n<" How do I accomplish this in Visual Studio Code?

9
visual-studio-code
Possible duplicate of Use a carriage return in VS Code replace string – Robert MacLean
@RobertMacLean this question was asked before the above tagged question – Sriram
@RobertMacLean creating a duplicate cycle – Kishan Kumar
Actually not a duplicate: The other question asks about carriage return, this one about newline, and no the answer does not work for carriage return for some reason. – Jason Young
Shift + Enter will do the job – Shayan

9 Answers

856
votes

In the local searchbox (ctrl + f) you can insert newlines by pressing ctrl + enter.

Image of multiline search in local search

If you use the global search (ctrl + shift + f) you can insert newlines by pressing shift + enter.

Image of multiline search in global search

If you want to search for multilines by the character literal, remember to check the rightmost regex icon.

Image of regex mode in search replace

In previous versions of Visual Studio code this was difficult or impossible. Older versions require you to use the regex mode, older versions yet did not support newline search whatsoever.

170
votes

With VS Code release 1.38 you can press CTRL + Enter in the editor find box to add a newline character.

enter image description here

With VS Code release 1.30 you can type Shift + Enter in the search box to add a newline character without needing to use regex mode.

enter image description here

Since VS Code release 1.3, the regex find has supported newline characters. To use this feature set the find window to regex mode and use \n as the newline character.

Multiline find in VS Code gif

70
votes

In version 1.1.1:

  • Ctrl+H
  • Check the regular exp icon .*
  • Search: ><
  • Replace: >\n<
31
votes

Also note, after hitting the regex icon, to actually replace \n text with a newline, I had to use \\n as search and \n as replace.

18
votes

A possible workaround would be to use the multi-cursor. select the >< part of your example use Ctrl+Shift+L or select all occurrences. Then use the arrow keys to move all the cursors between the tags and press enter to insert a newline everywhere.

This won't work in all situations.

You can also use Ctrl+D for select next match, which adds the next match to the selection and adds a cursor. And use Ctrl+K Ctrl+D to skip a selection.

5
votes

CTRL + H, then select regex (*) and write \n

Shorter version: CTRL+H ALT+R \n

4
votes

On my mac version of VS Code, I select the section, then the shortcut is Ctrl+j to remove line breaks.

1
votes

with v1.31.1 in RegEx mode the Replace All functionality is broken. clicking that button replaces only one instance

0
votes
  • Control F for search, or Control Shift F for global search
  • Replace >< by >\n< with Regular Expressions enabled

enter image description here