Multi-line regular expressions in Visual Studio Code

82
votes

I cannot figure a way to make regular expression match stop not on end of line, but on end of file in VS Code? Is it a tool limitation or there is some kind of pattern that I am not aware of?

2
regexvisual-studio-code
Doesn't [\s\S] work? - Wiktor Stribiżew
@WiktorStribiżew no, first of all it maches a single character, and with * quantifier it stops on EOL - Dima Ogurtsov

2 Answers

134
votes

It seems the CR is not matched with [\s\S]. Add \r to this character class:

[\s\S\r]+

will match any 1+ chars.

Other alternatives that proved working are [^\r]+ and [\w\W]+.

If you want to make any character class match line breaks, be it a positive or negative character class, you need to add \r in it.

Examples:

  • Any text between the two closest a and b chars: a[^ab\r]*b
  • Any text between START and the closest STOP words:
    • START[\s\S\r]*?STOP
    • START[^\r]*?STOP
    • START[\w\W]*?STOP
  • Any text between the closest START and STOP words:
    • START(?:(?!START)[\s\S\r])*?STOP

See a demo screenshot below:

enter image description here

7
votes

To matcha multi-line text block starting from aaa and ending with the first bbb (lazy qualifier)

aaa(.|\n)+?bbb

To find a multi-line text block starting from aaa and ending with the last bbb. (greedy qualifier)

aaa(.|\n)+bbb