Question

I want to search through 250 files with a program which supports regex but I don’t know how to build the query.

This is an example file:

//////////////////////////////Crown Area Effects///////////////////////////////

// Super Spies
DbAreaEffectInfo SuperSpies
{
    name = text_carea_sprspies_name
    desc = text_carea_sprspies_desc
    effects = [
        // scale sabotage super-effect duration

        EffectDuration {
            range = SpaceTime

            player = Self
            // which effect's duration is this scaling
            effect = "SabotageBuilding"
            scale = 1.25
        }

        EffectDuration {
            range = SpaceTime

            player = Self
            // which effect's duration is this scaling
            effect = "ImprovedSabotageBuilding"
            scale = 1.25
        }

        EffectSpeed {
            range = Global
            mask = Spies
            player = Self
            // 25% faster
            scale = 1.25
        }

        EffectMaxHitPoints {
            range = Global
            mask = Spies
            player = Self
            // 25% more hit points
            scale = 1.25
        }

        EffectVisualGlow {
            range = Global
            mask = Spies
            player = Self
            GlowType = Good
            OwnerOnly = true
            Icon = icon_crown_superspies_s
            Tooltip = text_carea_sprspies_name
            VTooltip = vtt_power_unitinfo_SuperSpies
        }

        EffectIsACrown {
            range = Global
            mask = Spies
            player = Self

            crownType = kCrownType_Imperial
        }
    ]
}

and I want to look for a pattern like this one:

<ANYTHING, EVEN NULL>//<ANYTHING, EVEN NULL><MyString><AnyThing, EVEN NULL>

For example for this:

<anything>//<anything>super<anything>

Which would yield this results:

 // scale sabotage super-effect duration

What regex query would give me the wanted results?

Thanks in advance for your time and effort!

Edit:

I am using Effective File Search – http://www.sowsoft.com/search.htm

Answer 1

The standard regex wildcard is . (for one character). Arbitrary repetition is represented by *. So this should do the trick for you:

~//(.*)super(.*)~

Depending on your regex engine you might be able/have to leave out the delimiters ~. Also, since . by default does not match line breaks, the second wildcard will always go to the end of the line and the super has to appear on the same line as //.