How to replace a specific character in a substring using regex?

Question

This question is about Visual Studio Code search box.

I want to replace all the "spaces" by the character "_" inside the my substring with spaces of mystring

for example:

-> From

{
    "Show_details": mystring("my substring with spaces"),
    "Type_of_event": mystring("my substring with spaces2"),
}

-> To

{
    "Show_details": mystring("my_substring_with_spaces"),
    "Type_of_event": mystring("my_substring_with_spaces2"),
}

I only managed to get the `my_substring_with_spaces`. But I do not understand how to proceed further.

Search: mystring\("([a-z]*?( )[a-z]*?)"\)

Wiktor Stribiżew · Accepted Answer · 2020-11-13 18:17:02Z

3

You can use

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

Details

(?<=mystring\("[^"]*) - immediately to the left, there must be mystring(" and then 0 or more chars other than "
\s+ - one or more whitespaces (remove + if two consecutive spaces must be converted to two consecutive _s)
(?=[^"]*"\)) - immediately to the right, there must be 0 or more chars other than " and then ").

See the screenshot:

answered Nov 13, 2020 at 18:17

Wiktor Stribiżew

631k41 gold badges502 silver badges632 bronze badges

Sign up to request clarification or add additional context in comments.

3 Comments

regex killer 😆

In the Edit->Find in Files it shows the error Regex parse error: Lookbehind assertion is not fixed length. Any idea ?

@micaball Yes, do not use this regex in Find in files, it uses a different regex flavor.