Find and Replace

About Find and replace

Find and replace swaps one piece of text for another across a whole block at once, either literally or with a regular expression. A preview tab highlights exactly which spans change before you copy anything. It is for editors, developers and analysts who need to rewrite many occurrences and want to see the effect first.

How to use it

1. Paste the text to edit into the Text box.
2. Choose a Match mode, Plain text or Regex, then fill in Find and Replace with.
3. Adjust the switches: Case sensitive, Whole word only (plain mode), and Replace all matches, or set Replace only the first N.
4. Check the match and replaced counts, open the Preview changes tab, and then use Copy or Download.

Reordering dates with capture groups

Order 2024-05-17 shipped; order 2025-01-03 pending
Find: (\d{4})-(\d{2})-(\d{2})  Replace: $3/$2/$1

Order 17/05/2024 shipped; order 03/01/2025 pending

When to use it

• Renaming a term throughout a long document or exported page in one pass.
• Reformatting dates, phone numbers or IDs with a regex and capture groups.
• Removing a repeated phrase by replacing it with nothing.
• Editing only the first few occurrences with the Replace only the first N option.

Questions about Find and replace

Which regular expression syntax does it use?

JavaScript syntax. Groups are inserted with $1, $2 and so on, $& means the whole match, and a named group is referenced with a dollar sign followed by its name in angle brackets. If the pattern is invalid, an error appears instead of a result.

Do dollar signs mean anything in plain mode?

No. In plain mode both boxes are taken literally, so a replacement of $1 is inserted as those two characters. Group references only work when Regex is selected.

What does Whole word only do?

It adds word boundaries around your search text so cat does not match inside category. It applies to plain mode only and is hidden in regex mode, where you can write \b yourself.

Is there a limit on matches?

Scanning stops after 200,000 matches to keep your browser responsive. The preview highlights the first 300 replacements, though the output text contains all of them.

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