BBEdit Grep Patterns

Author: Andrew Kingdom Note: These are grep patterns I find useful for the BBEdit text editor on MacOS. Some templates may need modification/changes before use on your specific data.

• Remove Blank Lines

  • Find: ^\s*$\n
  • Replace: (empty string)

• Pascal Comment to C Comment

  • Find: {([^}]*)}
  • Replace: /* \1 */

• C++ Comment to C Comment

  • Find: //(.*)
  • Replace: /* \1 */

• Run of Spaces to One Tab

  • Find: +
  • Replace: \t

• C Function Header

  • Find: ^[^ \t#\n/@][^\n]*\([^\n]*\)$
  • Replace: (empty string)

• C Comment to Pascal Comment

  • Find: /\*([^\n]*)\*/
  • Replace: { \1 }

• Shift Variables Right

  • Find: (.*)(\t\t*)(.*)
  • Replace: \1\2\t\3

• Shift Variables Left

  • Find: (.*)(\t)(\t*)(.*)
  • Replace: \1\3\4

• Lower Case SRC values in IMG tags

  • Find: (<img [^>]*src\s*=\s*")([^"]+)("[^>]*>)
  • Replace: \1\L\2\E\3

• Lower Case HREF values in A tags

  • Find: (<a [^>]*href\s*=\s*")([^"]+)("[^>]*>)
  • Replace: \1\L\2\E\3

• Column #2

  • Find: ^[^\t]+\t([^\t]+)
  • Replace: \1

• Dotted Quad

  • Find: (\d+\.){3}\d+
  • Replace: foo bar

• Xcode Logs: Strip Prefix — requires the newlines versus \n

  • Find: `2022-02-15 13:\d\d:\d\d.\d\d\d\d\d\d+1100 [A-Za-z]*

[\d*:\d*] `

• Replace: (empty string)

• Xcode Logs: Strip Context

  • Find: Context@0x[0-9A-F]*: ............ \d\d\d\d-\d\d-\d\d \d\d:\d\d:\d\d.\d\d\d
  • Replace: (empty string)

• BBEdit Find: Remove Path

  • Find: .*:\d*:\s(.*)
  • Replace: \1

• Xcode Find: Remove Time and Process — requires the newlines versus \n

  • Find: `.*]

\s*(.*)`

• Replace: \1

• List to Objective-C Dictionary

  • Find: (.*)\r
  • Replace: @"\1" : \1,\r

• Replace 2 or More Spaces with Tab

  • Find: \s\s\s*
  • Replace: \t

• JavaScript Object Function to Plain Function

  • Find: (\s*)([a-zA-Z_]*):\sfunction\s*(\(.*\))(\s*)
  • Replace: \1function \2 \3\4

• Split Delimited Text into Two Columns

  • Find: ([^\|]*)\|([^\|]*)\|
  • Replace: \1\t\2\r

• Extract "prompt": "..."

  • Find: "prompt":"(.*?(?:\\.|[^"])*)"
  • Replace: \1\r—\r

• Find Mid-Prompt Monsters

  • Find: ^.* monster .*$\r—\r
  • Replace: (empty string)

• Remove // Comments

  • Find: //.*$
  • Replace: (empty string)

• Remove Blank Line Whitespace

  • Find: \r[\s\t]*$
  • Replace: (empty string)

• Extract <img> Elements

  • Find: <img id="([^"]*)" .*src="([^"]*)" .*alt="([^"]*)".*>
  • Replace: {"title":"\1","path":"\2","description":"\3"},

• 2× Leading Spaces → Tabs (Repeat Until None Found)

  • Find: ^(\t*)( {2})
  • Replace: \1\t