Global Find and Replace in Visual Studio

Question

I have a solution with multiple projects and we need to do some serious global replacements.

Is there a way to do a wildcard replacement where some values remain in after the replace?

So, for instance if I want every HttpContext.Current.Session[“whatevervalue”] to become HttpContext.Current.Session[“whatevervalue”].ToString() the string value being passed in will be respected? I don’t want to replace “whatevervalue” I just want to append a .ToString() where the pattern matches.

Is this possible in Visual Studio?

Answer 1

First, Backup your Projects, just in case... Always a good idea before mass replacements.

Then, in the Find/Replace Dialog, select the Use Regular Expressions checkbox:

In the Find box, use the pattern:

HttpContext\.Current\.Session\["{.@}"\]

and in the Replace box, use:

HttpContext.Current.Session["\1"].ToString()