✏️ Find & Replace With Regex

Something like "delete every line that starts with a digit" is beyond plain string search — that's where regex comes in.

When you need regex

Regex is for finding text that matches a "pattern" rather than an exact string. For example, \d+ means one or more digits and \s+ means one or more whitespace characters, letting you match structured text like a phone number or email in one shot.

Capture groups in replacements

A parenthesized part ((...)) is a capture group, referenceable in the replacement string as $1, $2, and so on. For example, capturing a phone number with (\d{2,3})-(\d{3,4})-(\d{4}) lets you reformat it as $1)$2-$3.

Commonly used patterns

A rough email match: [\w.-]+@[\w.-]+\.\w+; collapsing repeated whitespace: \s{2,}; stripping trailing whitespace on each line (multiline mode): \s+$ — these come up constantly in practice.

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