Exclude terms from Regex Search

You can structure a Regex search so that the string you are looking for does not appear in the beginning, middle, or end of another string of numbers and/or letters. For example when we want to search for a 4 digit number, we enter the search: [0-9]{4} - any four digit sequences of the digits 0 through 9. In order to exclude instances of a four digit number such 1977881 or AA1122ZZ, we precede and follow this search with [^0-9a-zA-z].

[^0-9a-zA-z][0-9]{4}[^0-9a-zA-z]

See this example in NotePad ++

Regex search to flip date format

You can run a Regex search that will flip the format of dates from the mm/dd/yyyy format to the yyyy/mm/dd format.

So if we go into the well-beloved text editor, NotePad++ and enter Find and Replace we just need to find:

([0-9]+)/+([0-9]+)/+([0-9]+)

. . . and Replace it with:

\3/\1/\2

. . . and the result is:

Voila! Hope this last tip of 2016 is a lot of help to one and all. Happy New Year!!

Regex search to find the first two lines of files

You can use this Regex search to find the first two lines of text in electronic files:

\A([^\r\n]*\r\n){2}

Here we see an example of how to run this search in NotePad++. I am working with a sample set of text files saved to a folder on my C drive. See how the first two lines of the first text file are:

zebra

giraffe

In NotePad++ just go to Search . . . Find in files . Enter the Regex search in the Find what box, and select the directory. Click Find All.

As you can the results include only the first two lines of each file. The results can be selected and copied, so you can parse them in Excel or elsewhere.

Thanks to Bohemian for posting this Regex code on stackoverflow.