Simple regular expression question (search in VS2008)

Question

Hello,

I am trying to change one of the legacy code that declares everything in arrays to a collection. I'd like to do a simple search-and-replace using regular expressions and I was wondering if anyone could help me out.

For example, if arrays are declared this way:

array[0] = "1"; array[1] = "2"; array[2] = "3"; array[3] = "4"; array[4] = "5"; array[5] = "6"; array[6] = "7"; array[7] = "8";

I would like to grep array[{number}] and replace it with something like list.add(

The regular expression that I am trying to use is array[[0-9]+] but I am getting a syntax error. If anyone could give a helping hand, I would really appreciate it. Thanks a lot.

Answer 1

Try escaping the outer square brackets:

array\[[0-9]+\]

Answer 2

I believe you will have to escape your square brackets, as they would normally signify an option group. Use the \ to escape each of your outer square brackets

Answer 3

Google Regex workbench It is an interactive free tool to let you try out regular expressions on your samples to see what works. It also explains how the regex is being interpreted.

Answer 4

regexpal is a really useful tool for testing regular expressions, you should try it.