Find and Replace

Features

• Plain-text or regular-expression matching
• Capture group references such as $1 in the replacement
• Case-sensitive and whole-word modes
• Live preview highlighting every match before you commit
• Undo the last replacement

How to use it

1. Paste your text into the top box.
2. Type what to find and what to replace it with.
3. Check the preview, matches are highlighted.
4. Press Replace all, then copy the result.

Using regular expressions safely

With regex mode off, your search text is escaped and matched literally, so characters like . and * mean exactly themselves. That is almost always what you want for ordinary editing, and it prevents the surprise of a full stop matching every character in the document.

Turn regex mode on and the pattern gains real power. \d+ matches runs of digits, \s+ matches whitespace, and parentheses create capture groups you can reference in the replacement as $1, $2 and so on. Swapping (\w+), (\w+) for $2 $1 reverses comma-separated pairs across an entire file in one pass.

Two cautions. First, always read the preview before replacing, a pattern that matches more than you expected is the single most common way to damage a document, and the highlighting exists precisely to catch that. Second, certain nested-quantifier patterns such as (a+)+b can take exponential time on non-matching input, freezing the tab. If the preview stops updating after you type a complex pattern, simplify it.