Find and replace text using regular expressions

Last modified: 11 October 2024

When you want to search and replace specific patterns of text, use regular expressions. They can help you in pattern matching, parsing, filtering of results, and so on. Once you learn the regex syntax, you can use it for almost any language.

The IDE uses Java Regular Expressions, which are the regular expressions included in the JDK that the IDE runs on. For more information about patterns, please refer to Class Pattern at docs.oracle.com. These expressions are mostly, but not entirely, PCRE (Perl Compatible Regular Expressions) compatible.