[Auto Select Text Between two given words in a notepad++]

Question

I have a large text files.I have a given specific keyword [with spaces in between like "ABC DEF G"]. It either occurs in the text file exactly two times or does not occur at all.

I want to have a notepad++ search such that all the text between these two keywords (around 300 to 1000 lines) gets selected automatically. I will then do some operation on this selected text via my plugin.So my first question is:

Is this autos-election possible(via regular expression or some already built plugin).

If yes ,can some one please suggest.

As of now I am reading entire text file to search which is time and memory consuming. Thanks.

Answer 1

Try this Regex:

(?<=ABC DEF G)[\s\S]*(?=ABC DEF G)

Click for Demo

Explanation:

• (?<=ABC DEF G) - Positive Lookbehind to find the position which is preceded by the text ABC DEF G
• [\s\S]* - matches 0+ occurrences of any character
• (?=ABC DEF G) - Positive lookahead to find the position immediately followed by the text ABC DEF G

Output: