Regex in Notepad++

Question

Can anyone provide a regex for notepad++ for the below search and replace (conversion)

ADD  ( PRIMARY KEY (xxx) ) ;

to

ADD  PRIMARY KEY (xxx) ;

basically, removed a () around primary key expression. the value xxx is different among statements.

If not notepad++, I may also try the regex for vim or any shell script.

thanks a lot. Babu.

Answer 1

You don't need a reg-ex. Search for a '( ' and replace with a space. Then search for a ') ' and replace with nothing.

That is '([space]' and ')[space]'.

Answer 2

Search for:

ADD  \( PRIMARY KEY \((.+)\) \) ;

Replace with:

ADD  PRIMARY KEY (\1) ;

Answer 3

In perl assuming you read the line into $line

$line =~ s/([^(]+)\((.*)\)/$1$2/

would do the job. This also saves you from cutting an pasting ADD PRIMARY KEY ...(with the right number of spaces. What the regex is doing here is

a) Matching everything upto the first ( and capturing it into $1

b) Matching (

c) Matching the all the characters upto but not including the final ) and capturing it into $2.

d) Matching the trailing )

e) Replace the original string with $1$2.