Search and Replace

Sublime Text features two main types of searches:

Regular Expressions

Search functions in Sublime Text support regular expressions, a powerful tool for searching and replacing text. Regular Expressions find complex patterns in text.

Regular expression patterns are composed of symbols and special constructs. To the non-initiated, regular expression patterns look undecipherable because common characters double as operators and cannot always be interpreted literally.

This is how a regular expression might look:

(?:Sw|P)i(?:tch|s{2})\s(?:it\s)?of{2}!

The term regular expression is usually shortened to regexp or regex.

To take full advantage of the search and replace facilities in Sublime Text, you should at least learn the basics of regular expressions. This guide doesn’t teach you how to use regular expressions.

The Replace box in a search and replace panel also supports special symbols called format strings that look similar to regular expressions. Format strings allow you to perform complex text transformations before inserting the result into the buffer.

Sublime Text uses the Perl Compatible Regular Expressions (PCRE) engine from the Boost library to power regular expressions in search panels.

Using Regular Expressions in Sublime Text

To use regular expressions in Sublime Text, first activate them in the corresponding search panel by clicking on the available buttons or using keyboard shortcuts.

If you don’t activate regular expressions before performing a search, the search terms will be interpreted literally.

../_images/search-and-replace-regex-sample.png

A search panel with the regular expressions option enabled

See also

Boost library documentation for regular expressions
Documentation on regular expressions.
Boost library documentation for format strings
Documentation on format strings. Note that Sublime Text additionally interprets \n as $n.