I needed to format a bunch of strings in SQL Management Studio (this works for VS also) and finally took the time to figure out Find/Replace with Regular Expressions. The first thing to note is that VS/SSMS use different regex codes (don’t know why but I’m sure they have their reasons). You can find the list of codes here . I have list of 3 strings containing 10 digits followed by a space and then 3 letters. I wanted to replace the digits with the word Descriptor. Here’s my data: 1234567870 ABC 1234567880 DEF 1234567890 GHI Here’s my find expression: [0-9]^10 {[A-Z]^3} Here’s my replace expression: Descriptor: \1 Here’s my result: Descriptor: ABC Descriptor: DEF Descriptor: GHI The key is the {} brackets and \1. The {} brackets tell the engine I want to keep whatever matches the expression. This is called a Tagged Expression. The \1 says place the first tagged expression here. I can create multiple tagged expressions and place by using \1, \2, etc. I can even chan...
