regular expression to add characters before and after numbers

Question

I have a list of numbers between square brackets, and I need to add words before and after the exact numbers (i.e. keep the same numbers). I use notepad++ to replace, but if you have a solution with other program please advise.

Example:

text [121] othertext
moretext [16] othertextmore
andtext [5940] othertextplus

outcome:

text xxxxxxxxx [121] xxxxxxxxx othertext
moretext xxxxxxxxx [16] xxxxxxxxx othertextmore
andtext xxxxxxxxx [5940] xxxxxxxxx othertextplus

The numbers are of course \d+ but I want to tell it to keep the same numbers when looking.

Solution 1

Find What: (\[\d+])

Replace With: xxxxxxxxx \1 xxxxxxxxx

Solution 2

Regular expression:

Find regex = \[\d+\]
Replace regex = xxxxxxxxx$&xxxxxxxxx

Refer: regexr

Solution 3

C#:

line=Regex.Replace(line,@"([^\[])(\[\d+\])(.*)","$1xxxxxxxxx $2 xxxxxxxxx$3");

Other languages analogous

Comments

[manojlds]

@Mike - You can accept as answer by clicking on the tick on the left.

[Tim Pietzcker]

No need for parentheses if you're going to use the entire match anyway - replace with xxxxxx \0 xxxxxx.

[Tim Pietzcker]

Really? Interesting but not surprising given Notepad++'s lackluster regex support.

[JinSnow]

don't forget to put your search statement into parenthesis