Find and replace text
Replace every occurrence of a plain string with another. Case-sensitive, no regular expressions, matches inside words, and an empty Replace deletes.
Enter text to see output.
What to know
The Find field takes a literal string and the Replace with field takes what should stand in its place. Every occurrence in the whole text is swapped in one go, with nothing to confirm one by one. Find cat, replace with dog, and cat concatenate Cat becomes dog condogenate Cat.
That example shows the two traps. Matching is case-sensitive, so Cat is untouched, and it is also a plain substring match, so the cat inside concatenate is replaced. Run the operation twice for both capitalizations, and add spaces around the Find text when you only want whole words.
Nothing is interpreted as a pattern. A dot matches a dot, not any character, so replacing . with - turns a.b.c into a-b-c.
Leave Replace with empty and the Find text is deleted everywhere, which is the quickest way to strip a tag or a prefix. If Find is empty, the text passes through unchanged.
One quirk comes from the underlying string replacement: in the Replace field, $$ produces a single dollar sign and $& re-inserts the matched text, while a lone $5 is kept as is. The Find field is a single-line box, so it cannot match a line break; use join lines or remove line breaks for that.
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How to use Find and replace text
- Paste the text, for example a list of paths such as C:\docs\a.txt, into the Text input box.
- Type the old text in Find (a backslash, say) and the new text in Replace with (a forward slash).
- Read the Output panel to confirm that only the intended spots changed, then add spaces to Find if some words were hit too.
- Copy the result, or press Reset to clear both fields before the next replacement.
Quick answers
Does it support regular expressions?
No. Find is treated as a literal string, so characters like . or * match themselves.
Is the search case-sensitive?
Yes. Cat and cat are different, so run the replacement once per capitalization you need to catch.
Why did my dollar sign change?
In Replace with, $$ becomes a single $ and $& inserts the matched text. A dollar followed by a digit, such as $5, stays unchanged.
How do I delete text instead of replacing it?
Fill in Find and leave Replace with empty. Every occurrence of the Find text is removed.