Regular Expression to Add Space After 10 Digits

Question

How would I go about writing a regular expression to do a find/replace operation in order to add a space after 10 digits of ever number that is 20 digits long?

I have a long list of phone numbers where some of them are accidentally 20 digits long and I need to add a space in between each instance of that.

Edit: I tried \d\d\d\d\d\d\d\d\d\d\d\d\d\d\d\d\d\d\d\d which selects 20 digit numbers, but replacing that with a space will just replace all 20 digits with blank whitespace rather than inserting a space after 10 digits.

I am attempting to do this with Sublime Text on a MacBook Pro.

Solution

you need to use Capture groups if you want to perform replacement operations while preserving components of the original string.

your regex would follow something like:

pattern: "^([\d]{10})([\d]{10})" //two groups of 10

replace: "$1 $2"

The parentheses around each pattern for a block of ten, define a capture group. so we are saying, "the first ten digits in group $1, and the second 10 are in group $2". then we just say "print group 1, add a space, and print group 2".

Note that each platform is different in terms of its Regex syntax and replace syntax. many use $number (like sed), others use \number (like notepad++), so be sure to consult the documentation for your product.

Comments

[THE DOCTOR]

Modified my question and added what I have tried so far and what I am using for this.