Notepad++ - regex : replace first occurrence of a

Question

Someone would know the regex expression can be used (in notepad++) in order to replace the first occurence of a characters group in each line?

eg:

abcdefg//ijkl//m.
qsdflkj//sdqlmkf//jqsmdl.

to

abcdefg\\ijkl//m.
qsdflkj\\sdqlmkf//jqsmdl.

so replace // by \\ in each line, but only the first occurence of , not the next.

If regex can't achieve it, is there another method with notepad. If not, I will code a program to split line and do the job, but need more time.

Thnaks in advance.

Answer 1

• Ctrl+H
• Find what: ^[^/]+\K//
• Replace with: \\\\
• check Wrap around
• check Regular expression
• Replace all

Explanation:

^               : begining of line
  [^/]+         : 1 or more any character that is not a slash
  \K            : forget all we have seen until this position
  //            : 2 slashes

Replacement:

\\\\     : 2 backslashes, each one must be escaped

Result for given example:

abcdefg\\ijkl//m.
qsdflkj\\sdqlmkf//jqsmdl.

Answer 2

Enter this regex in Find what field

(.*?)//(.*)

Enter this in Replace with field

$1\\$2

Select Regular expression in Search Mode and Uncheck . matches newline