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regexnotepad++

Matching all occurrences of a html element attribute in notepad++ regex

I have a file which has hundreds of links like this:

<h3>aspnet</h3>
<a href="http://example.com/1" icon="data:image/png;base64,iwl1zecylifzn3fz9fr3l4cdjqhigcmjo9m">Ex 1</a>
<a href="http://example.com/2" icon="data:image/png;base64,ivborw0kggoaaaansuheugaaaqcayaaaaf8">Ex 2</a>
<a href="http://example.com/3" icon="data:image/png;base64,jmiaw+f2pwdohka6t+hnyfanbkwoa1olmug">Ex 3</a>

So I want to remove all the elements

icon="data:image/png;base64,ivborw0kggoaaaansuheugaaabaaaaaqcayaaaaf8..."

from all the lines. I went through the official Notepad++ regex wiki and have come up with this after several trials:

icon=\"[^\.]+\"

The problem with this is, it is selecting past the second double quote and stopping at the next occurring double quote. To illustrate, this will select the following content:

icon="data:image/png;base64,...jbvebich4sec9zgth1sfue1cdt...">EX 1</a> <a href="

If I modify the above regex to, 

icon=\"[^\.]+\">

Then it is almost perfect, but it is also selecting the >:

icon="data:image/png;base64,...jbvebich4sec9zgth1sfue1cdt...">

The regex I am looking for would select like this:

icon="data:image/png;base64,...jbvebich4sec9zgth1sfue1cdt..."

I also tried the following, but it doesn't match anything at all

icon=\"[^\.]+\"$
Solution

  • Just match anything but a quote, followed by a quote:

    icon="[^"]+"

    Just tested with notepad++ 6.2.2 and confirmed that this matches correctly as written.

    Broken down:

    icon="

    This is fairly obvious, match the literal text icon=".

    [^"]+

    This means to match any character that is not a ". Adding the + after it means "one or more times."

    Finally we match another literal ".