Find & Replace

Introduction

Find & Replace is a free online tool that allows you to easily search for a letter, number, word, or phrase in your text document and substitute it with something else. It can be very useful when it comes to editing a huge chunk of text. This tool will automatically find all exact matches and replace them all in a single click of a button.

Usage

Find & Replace is pretty straightforward to use.

1. First, fill the "Find this" field with the word you want to change and the "Replace with" field with the new word you want to use.
2. Next, paste your text in the text box. Alternatively, you can click the "Open File" button in the menu bar to directly load a file from your computer. See supported file extensions below.
3. Lastly, click the "Replace All" button to start the process.

File types

The File Reader only supports opening plain text documents such as .txt, .html/.htm, .css, .js, .bat, .nfo and .md. If you are working on a rich text editor, you can just directly copy your content in the text box.

About

Find & Replace gives you an option to use Regular Expressions to perform a more complex type of search and replace operations. Below is a list of basic examples that you can use as a cheat sheet.

Basic Examples

Using the or condition to search for multiple words.

• Input: one two three
• Find: one|two|three and Replace with: number
• Result: number number number

Switching the positions of the words.

• Input: hello world
• Find: (hello) (world) and Replace with: $2 $1
• Result: world hello

Wrapping a word.

• Input: This is a sample text
• Find: (sample) and Replace with: <b>$1</b>
• Result: This is a <b>sample</b> text

Replace only if followed by certain characters. For negation, simply replace = with !.

• Input: upgrade
• Find: up(?=grade) and Replace with: down
• Result: downgrade
• It will not match the "up" in the word "update" since it is not followed by "grade".

Matching an unknown number.

• Input: width="356"
• Find: width="([0-9]+)" and Replace with: width="100%"
• Result: width="100%"

Special characters

You must place a backslash '\' before a special character. The tool will generate an error message that says: "SyntaxError: Invalid regular expression: / . ^ $ * + ? \ [ ( { |/: Unterminated character class" if you have forgotten to escape the backslash .

For example, to match Where? use Where\? - the \? is taken to mean ?.

• Input: Where?
• Find: Where\? and Replace with: What?
• Result: What?