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csvvisual-studio-codereplacefind

Find and replace n-th occurrence in VS Code

I have a large data set that I'd like to convert into a workable csv file. The dataset currently looks like this:

[att1]; [att2]; [att3]; [att1]; (...)

To make this a workable csv-file, I'd need to insert a line-break after every third semi-colon.

[att1]; [att2]; [att3];
[att1]; [att2]; [att3]; (...)

Using VS Code's find and replace feature, how can I achieve this?

Solution

  • See regex101 demo

    If your data is all on one line with the formatting you showed - [.*?]; then

    Find: ((\[.*?\]; ?){3})
    Replace: $1\n

    seems to do the job. It finds 3 of those att's with an optional space between them and adds a newline after that group of three.

    If your data doesn't actually have the []'s, like att1; att2; att3; you can use this find:

    Find: ((.*?; ?){3})