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notepad++ convert \section{text} to # text

I have some tex files with \section{text} and \subsection{text}, etc. And I want to convert them to # text and ## text in markdown files using regular expressions in Notepad++. How can I achieve that?

Solution

  • Open the replace window with Ctrl + H. Check the radio button "Regular Expression" and search for:

    \\section\{([^}]*)}

    And replace with:

    # \1

    For subsections:

    \\subsection\{([^}]*)}
## \1

    What we're doing:

    • \\ is an escaped backslash matching the litteral backslash of your expression
    • { needs to be escaped as well otherwise it would be recognized as quantifier, hence \{
    • ([^}]*) is a group made of 0 or more characters that are NOT }
    • \1 is a reference to the first and only group of our regular expression