Find and fix text faster with regular expressions

Use this guide when you need to find patterns rather than exact words, such as every date, postcode or email address in a file, or to tidy hundreds of lines at once. You need a code editor with regex search (for example VS Code) or a scripting language, plus a copy of the text to practise on.

Step by step

1. Practise on a copy with a live tester

   Copy a sample of your real text into a new file or an online regex tester and never experiment on the only copy. Turn on the regex option in your editor's search box, usually shown as .* in VS Code. Seeing matches highlight as you type is the fastest way to learn.