Question

In linux sed, we can use the matched regex using “&”. Can i do the same in notepad++ ? in find and replace, can i use the matched string by regex to be used in replace section ?

Answer 1

Update

Notepad++ version 6.x has been released, using PCRE as its regex engine for find-and-replace. You can now refer to the entire match in the replacement string using $0 or $& (but not \& or &), without having to capture the entire pattern anymore.

For example, replacing foo with $&bar$& yields foobarfoo.

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Old answer

There isn’t a way to do this in Notepad++ regex I’m afraid. You have to manually capture the entire pattern and use \1 in the replacement field.

As an example, for the following sed command:

sed s/foo/\&bar\&/

Which outputs foobarfoo for the input string foo, the equivalent in Notepad++ regex is:

Find:

(foo)

Replace with:

\1bar\1