Bdtyktl

I was given the replacement "n1=2". My job is to create a search pattern so that the replacement is successful.

My data goes like this:

There are Spanish translations for some names like Mary (Maria), John (Juan), Michael (Miguel) and Joseph (Jose). 

My goal is to make it look like this:

There are Spanish translations for some names like 

Mary = Maria

John = Juan

Michael = Miguel

Joseph = Jose.

The search I had so far was "are.|,.|and. + (^[a-z]S)+(.*S)". Even if the first part of the search works, it is not grouping correctly for when replacement comes. I don't know what to change from the search or how it should be changed to make it work.

• 
  Ctrl+H
  


• Find what: (w+)h+((w+))h*(?:,|and)?h*(.)?
  


• Replace with: n$1 = $2$3
  


• check Wrap around


• check Regular expression


• Replace all

Explanation:

(w+)       # group 1, 1 or more word characters, English name

h+         # 1 or more horizontal spaces

(          # openning parenthesis

(w+)       # group 2, 1 or more word characters, the Spanish name

)          # closing parenthesis

h*         # 0 or more horizontal spaces

(?:         # non capture group

    ,       # a comma

  |         # OR

    and     # literally and

)?          # end group, optional

h*         # 0 or mor horizontal spaces

(.)?       # group 3, a dot, optional

Replacement:

n          # linefeed, you can use rn for windows linebreak

$1          # content of group 1

 =          # space, equal sign, space

$2          # content of group 2

$3          # content of group 3

Result for given example:

There are Spanish translations for some names like 

Mary = Maria

John = Juan

Michael = Miguel

Joseph = Jose. 

Screen capture:

I’m not specifically familiar
with the search-and-replace capability of Notepad++,
but Unix’s sed is pretty similar.

I believe that there’s no way you can get the exact result that you want
with the exact replacement string you showed,
because you want spaces before the Spanish names ( Maria,  Juan, etc.),
but there are no such spaces present in the input text. 
You’ll need to add at least one space to the replacement string.

The -r option tells sed to use “extended regular expressions”. 
We don’t absolutely need that option, but

• 
  sed (by default) uses ( and ) to match parentheses,
  and (…) to capture a group, while


• 
  sed -r uses ( and ) to match literal parentheses,
  and (…) to capture a group.

You seem to be expecting to be able to use (…) to capture a group,
so I’ll do this with -r.

You can do this is a single substitution in sed with

sed -r 's/s([A-Za-z]*)s(([A-Za-z]*))(,| and)*/n1 = 2/g'

That can be broken down into

sed -r 's/   s   ([A-Za-z]*)   s   (   ([A-Za-z]*)   )   (,| and)?   /   n1 = 2   /g'

• 
  s/ — begin a substitute command.


• 
  s — a space. 
  In sed, you can use actual space characters;
  I suspect that that’s true for Notepad++ as well. 
  In sed you can also use [[:space:]]. 
  Of course a space matches just a space,
  but s and [[:space:]] match space or tab.


• 
  ([A-Za-z]*) — a capture group of any number of letters
  (upper or lower case), to match the English version of the name. 
  In sed you can also use [[:alpha:]]
  (or [[:upper:]] or [[:lower:]], as desired).


• 
  s — another space.


• 
  ( — a literal left parenthesis
  (the one before the Spanish version of the name).


• 
  ([A-Za-z]*) — same as above — a capture group of any number of letters
  (upper or lower case), to match the Spanish version of the name.


• 
  ) — a literal right parenthesis
  (the one after the Spanish version of the name).


• 
  (,| and)? — a group that matches , or  and, zero or one time. 
  This matches the stuff that comes between
  the right parenthesis after the Spanish version of the name,
  and the next English-version name. 
  We need to be able to handle zero occurrences of this group
  because we need to match Joseph (Jose),
  even though there’s not comma or “and” after it.
  
  Note that we could use sand instead of  and;
  I believe that  and is much more readable. 
  Also note that we could use * (zero or more, with no limit)
  instead of ?.


• 
  / — end of search string; beginning of replacement string.


• 
  n1 = 2 — your replacement string
  (newline, the first capture group,  = , and the second capture group). 
  As mentioned earlier, I have added spaces before and after the =.


• 
  /g — end of command. 
  The g stands for “global” and specifies that the substitution
  should be performed as many times as possible (the default is once per line).

So the Notepad++ command is probably very similar.