VSCode wildcard Search and Replace Regex

Question

I'm trying to do a project wide search and replace

from:

drivers[i].findElement(By.id("elementID")).click();

to:

findAndClick(driver[i], "elementID", true)

The issue is the elementID can be anything so I'm trying to wildcard search and replace with what's in the wildcard?

These are not wildcards, that is a regex. You need to escape `[`, `(`, `)` and to match any chars, use `.*` or `.*?`. — Wiktor Stribiżew, Oct 17 '17 at 17:13
I tried this but got nothing: `drivers[i].findElement(By.id[(".*?")])].click[()]` — Batman, Oct 17 '17 at 17:16
I also forgot to mention dots: `drivers\[i]\.findElement$By\.id\(".*?"$\)\.click;` — Wiktor Stribiżew, Oct 17 '17 at 17:20
Does this answer your question? [Visual Studio Code Search and Replace with Regular Expressions](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/43577528/visual-studio-code-search-and-replace-with-regular-expressions) — IsmailS, Feb 12 '21 at 17:12

score 85 · Accepted Answer · edited Jun 20 '20 at 09:12

85

You'll need to use .+? instead of * here since this uses regular expressions.

In regular expressions a dot . means "any character", the plus + means "one or more times", and the question mark ? after this means "try to match this as few as possible times" - which is useful so it won't keep matching past your quote marks

edit

To be clear though, you have to make a valid regex, which means you'll need to escape your parenthesis, dots, etc.

Here's the full solution

Find: drivers\[i\]\.findElement$By\.id\("(.+?)"$\)\.click;

replace with: findAndClick(driver[i], "$1", true)

Note the added unescaped parentheses in there around the "wildcard" (.+) this creates a capture group in a regex, which is what translates to $1 in the replacement since it's the 1st capture group.

edited Jun 20 '20 at 09:12

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answered Oct 17 '17 at 17:13

Chris Barr

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This gives me an error `drivers[i].findElement(By.id(".+")).click();` – Batman Oct 17 '17 at 17:15
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One does not have to escape `]` outside of the character class. – Wiktor Stribiżew Oct 17 '17 at 17:34
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`(.+?)` surrounding parenthesis are must. I had missed those at first – IsmailS Feb 12 '21 at 17:10
I only had to use `.` instead of `.+?`, both gave me the same result. – Neerkoli Nov 29 '21 at 09:54

VSCode wildcard Search and Replace Regex

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