This is a many-in-one question.
I want to inject newlines into the xml documentation of my C# project.
Going from
/// <summary>
/// Event for lazy async var reading.
/// Contains all vars that partecipated to a certain poll,
/// indepentently of the fact it succeded or the value changed </summary>
to
/// <summary>
/// <br>Event for lazy async var reading. </br>
/// <br>Contains all vars that partecipated to a certain poll,</br>
/// <br>indepentently of the fact it succeded or the value changed </br></summary>
My first approach was running a Regex find & replace, and i managed to correctly select the comments accounting for different indentations and such.
When it comes to capturing groups tho, i'm not finding a way to reference the lines making up the body.
Both the line's capturing group and inner capturing groups seem to go missing.
My regex:
(?x:
(?(DEFINE)
(?'line'\/\/\/\s*([^\n]+)\n*)
)
(?'head'<summary>(?:\s*\n | \s*[^\n]+\n*)) #select summary tag and skip the first line.
(?P>line)+ #select each line, capturing both the line and a subset of its content
(?'foot'(?:\/\/\/\s*)*<\/summary>) #select summary closure and the empty comment-lines preceding it
)
this expression produces
{0}: full match
{1 (named head)}: \<summary\>...
{4}: last matched (?P>line)
{5 (named foot)}: ...\</summary\>
where did capturing groups {2} and {3} go?
where did (?'line'..)'s inner capturing group go?
Is there an Visual studio extension that's up to the task instead?
Even if the regex worked, i don't know how to reference all the in-between groups, as their number is variable.
My plan is referencing all numbered group explicitly up to some number, and have the others named to avoid selection. Is there a better alternative?
p.s. if there is a way to post regex "code" formatted in a color-coded pretty way, i didn't find it. Any pointers are welcome.
p.p.s. EDIT: related questions i was apparently unable to find stated that "it's not feasable by regex alone, just through functions in actual languages"
This can clearly be done by regex alone.
Visual Studio does not have a usable regex engine.
This can however be done in C# using Capture Collections.
You can bite the bullet and use the Pcre engine too.
Here is an idea for you.
(?m)(?:^///\h*<summary>\h*(?:\s*^///\h*)*\K(?'line'(?:(?!</?summary\s*>)\S)+(?:\h*(?:(?!</?summary\s*>)\S)+)*)|\G(?:\s*^///\h*)*\K(?&line))
Substitute <br>$0</br>
https://regex101.com/r/bdbVMw/1
Rx layout:
(?m)
(?:
^ /// \h* <summary> \h*
(?: \s* ^ /// \h* )*
\K
(?'line' # (1 start)
(?: (?! </?summary \s* > ) \S )+
(?: \h* (?: (?! </?summary \s* > ) \S )+ )*
) # (1 end)
| \G
(?: \s* ^ /// \h* )*
\K (?&line)
)