How can I Find/Replace part of a wildcard search in Notepad++

Question

Simple Example.
When I'm editing CSS. I want to Find all "backgrounds" regardless of the number sequence, so I'm using .*

~~~Example:
Find background: #.*;

(Found 4 Matches)

Line12: background: #111111;

Line24: background: #222222;

Line36: background: #333333;

Line48: background: #444444;

"Found (#) of lines matching"
Great, works perfect!

(The next part is the where I'm having trouble)

Now I want to Replace, or in this case wrap all these lines with /* */, without removing the individual numbers.
(To remove certain backgrounds, when I'm done editing the page.)

~~~Example:
Replace With /* background: #.*; */

Doesn't give me this:

Line12: /* background: #111111; */

Line24: /* background: #222222; */

Line36: /* background: #333333; */

Line48: /* background: #444444; */

Instead, it give me this:

Line12: /* background: #.*; */

Line24: /* background: #.*; */

Line36: /* background: #.*; */

Line48: /* background: #.*; */

I can't figure out how to keep the numbers (regardless of the variety of combinations) from changing in the code and only add /* around the code */

Answer 1

Search pattern: background: #([0-9]+);

Replace: /* background: #\1 */

([0-9]+) will match the numbers and save it in a group \1. You can re-use \1 in the "Replace" input.

Answer 2

Change your search to something little less reliant on having one space (say you hit tab on one or two).

(background:.*?;)

And for your replace, use:

/* \1 */

What you were failing to do was to capture the matched value to reuse in your replace regex. The () in the search will store in a parameter which can be used as \1.