I need a regex expression that will replace all spaces inside square brackets with underscores in Visual Studio Project

Question

I am able to write a regex expression to find all underscores in a VS SQL Project.

\[[a-z]+\s[a-z]+\] (looks inside a string that starts and ends with []).

I need a regex replace expression in VS so I can replace in files so it will replace all spaces with underscores _ only inside of [].

Does this answer your question? [Learning Regular Expressions](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/4736/learning-regular-expressions) — jonrsharpe, Jul 26 '22 at 14:42
Any example test case? You say you tried `\[[a-z]+\s[a-z]+]`, right? But you have not even captured the letters and the brackets. Also, does that mean you do not want to touch spaces that are immediately after `[` and before `]`? Is it Visual Studio, or Visual Studio Code? — Wiktor Stribiżew, Jul 26 '22 at 14:45
For example I have a column name in a table create script [Skip a Payment] [decimal](18,2) I would like this to be [Skip_A_Payment] [decimal](18,2) Thank you! — Andrew Hopkinson BI Guru, Jul 26 '22 at 14:57
Is it Visual Studio or VS Code? And you want to titlecase the words? — Wiktor Stribiżew, Jul 26 '22 at 14:59
It is SQL Create table scripts inside a VS 2019 SQL Server Project. I would like to keep whatever casing the word is. Thank you! — Andrew Hopkinson BI Guru, Jul 26 '22 at 15:11
Try replacing `(?<=\[[^][]*)\b\s+\b(?=[^][]*])` with `_`. See [demo](https://regex101.com/r/RkBbgi/1). — Wiktor Stribiżew, Jul 26 '22 at 15:20
Oh, except some start with #, example [# Delq 120 Days] this ends up being [# Delq_120_Days] — Andrew Hopkinson BI Guru, Jul 26 '22 at 16:29
Cool, so use `(?<=\[[^][]*)\s+(?=[^][]*])`, see my answer below, especially the note at the bottom. — Wiktor Stribiżew, Jul 27 '22 at 08:57

Wiktor Stribiżew · Answer 1 · 2022-07-27T09:19:05.420

0

You can use

(?<=\[[^][]*)\s+(?=[^][]*])

Replace with _. See this regex demo.

Details:

(?<=\[[^][]*) - a positive lookbehind that matches a location that is immediately preceded with [ and then zero or more chars other than [ and ]
\s+ - one or more whitespaces
(?=[^][]*]) - a positive lookahead that matches a location that is immediately followed with zero or more chars other than [ and ] and then a ] char.

NOTE: If the spaces right after [ and right before ] and between non-word chars must not be replaced, add word boundaries, \b: (?<=\[[^][]*)\b\s+\b(?=[^][]*]). See this regex demo.

edited Jul 27 '22 at 09:19

answered Jul 26 '22 at 16:23

Wiktor Stribiżew

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Shouldn't you also replace trailing spaces? I only ask because you seemed to write a test for it and didn't match them – Blindy Jul 26 '22 at 16:31
@Blindy Exactly, they must not be matched. I added a NOTE. – Wiktor Stribiżew Jul 26 '22 at 16:32
The above works great, except for two exceptions, when there is a # at the beginning (i.e. [# My Column Name] comes out as [# My_Column_Name] and if there is a "(", i.e. [My Column (Name)] becomes [My_Column (Name)] – Andrew Hopkinson BI Guru Jul 26 '22 at 16:55

I need a regex expression that will replace all spaces inside square brackets with underscores in Visual Studio Project

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