Question

I am aware of nano‘s search and replace functionality, but is it capable of using regular expressions for matching and substitution (particularly substitutions that use a part of the match)? If so, can you provide some examples of the syntax used (both for matching and replacing)?

I cut my teeth on Perl-style regular expressions, but I’ve found that text editors will sometimes come up with their own syntax.

Answer 1

You need to add, or un-comment, the following entry in your global nanorc file (on my machine, it was /etc/nanorc):

set regexp

Then fire up a new terminal and press CTRL + / and do your replacements which should now be regex-aware.

EDIT

---

Search for conf->(\S+):

---

Replace with \1_conf

---

Press a to replace all occurrences:

---

End result: