VSCode regex find & replace submatch math?

Given a regular expression of (foobar) you can reference the first group using $1 and so on if you have more groups in the replace input field.


Just to add another example:

I was replacing src attr in img html tags, but i needed to replace only the src and keep any text between the img declaration and src attribute.

I used the find+replace tool (ctrl+h) as in the image: Find and replace


To augment Benjamin's answer with an example:

Find        Carrots(With)Dip(Are)Yummy
Replace     Bananas$1Mustard$2Gross
Result      BananasWithMustardAreGross

Anything in the parentheses can be a regular expression.


For beginners, the accepted answer is correct, but a little terse if you're not that familiar with either VSC or Regex.

So, in case this is your first contact with either:

To find and modify text,

  1. In the "Find" step, you can use regex with "capturing groups," e.g. I want to find (group1) and (group2), using parentheses. This would find the same text as I want to find group1 and group2, but with the difference that you can then reference group1 and group2 in the next step:

  2. In the "Replace" step, you can refer to the capturing groups via $1, $2 etc, so you could change the sentence to I found $1 and $2 having a picnic, which would output I found group1 and group2 having a picnic.

Notes:

  • Instead of just a string, anything inside or outside the () can be a regular expression.

  • $0 refers to the whole match