Question

How do I remove the special characters [ and ] below using regex, while preserving the square brackets at the back of the sentence?

From

468620188,[2012-07-07 00:00:00,057],[Thread-20],INFO,BIZ,Handler,getJobs,[Result] Retrieving broadcast []

To

468620188,2012-07-07 00:00:00,057,Thread-20,INFO,BIZ,Handler,getJobs,[Result] Retrieving broadcast []

Answer 1

This works with perl REs, using a lookahead:

s/[\[\]](?=.*,)//g;

It removes any [ or ] character that has a , character somewhere after it.

If you’re not using perl, this probably won’t be as useful.

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EDIT:

This might work:

1. Search for \[([^\n]*,), replace with \1. Hit Replace All
2. Search for \]([^\n]*,), replace with \1. Hit Replace All.

Please note I don’t have access to Notepad++ to test this; I’m just going off some screen shots of the search box I found online.