Notepad++ - replace every first space of a line

Question

I know there are a lot of these types of questions but I can not find a way to alter one of the existing solutions for my problem. My text file looks like this:

word<tab>word<space>words_with_spaces

I would like to replace every first space of each line with an html linebreak (br). Is there a simple way to do this?

Solution 1

You'll have to use RegEx to search and replace.

In the search, type: (.+?)[ ](.+)
In the Replace field, type: $1<br>$2

Make sure you are not searching for \r \n (its a checkbox) otherwise it will do a multi-line search.

Solution 2

It was a slightly tricky expression to find, but the following works:-

• Find: ^([^ ]*) [this is ^([^_]*)_, showing space as underscore for display clarity]
• Replace: \1<br>

The search string is a line beginning with any number of non-space characters (marked as a subexpression) followed by a space (therefore the first on the line).

The replacement is the first subexpression (the leading non-spaces) followed by the string to replace the first space.

Comments

[Ƭᴇcʜιᴇ007]

"Is there a simple way to do this?" Yes, use RegEx (just like you tagged your question). What have you tried already? Where are you getting stuck exactly?

[Trynox]

I just recently started playing around with RegEx. In fact, yesterday. I got as far as searching for (.*?)[ ] and replacing with \1<br> and I was stuck at the "do it only once per line"-part. I got it thanks to the answers. Thanks for your response, too!

[AFH]

Having seen LPChip's answer, I should add that the . matches newline setting does not affect my solution. I tested with it set and again with it clear.

[LPChip]

2 different methods to achieve the same thing. I'll vote yours up as well as its just as good as my answer. :) I could've edited my answer to use the ^ operator so the multi-line search has no effect

[Trynox]

Thanks for your answer. This one works, except it does not replace the space but puts the linebreak in front of it.

[AFH]

You must have put an extra space in the replacement string (the display with back-quotes is confusing). It works perfectly for me.