Match everything between but exclude words - notepad++

Question

Input:

start
some
T1
random
T2
text
T3
end

should result in:

start
T1
T2
T3
end

I tried using

>(?<=start)[\S\s]*?(?=end)

to match everything between start and end

and exclude T1 T2 T3 with:

^(?!T\d)

Is it possible to combine them into a single regex that can be pasted into notepad++ for people not familiar with writing code to do it in several passes?

Answer 1

You could use this regular expression:

       Find: ^(?!T\d|start).*\R(?=(^(?!start$).*\R)*end$)
       Replace: (empty)
       . matches newlines: No

Click "Replace All"

These assumptions are made:

• The start and end delimiters should each be the only text on their lines (so not ---start or start ///),
• They should appear in pairs in the correct order (so first start and then end)
• They should not be nested, so after a start cannot come another start before you have an end.

The look-ahead makes this a rather inefficient regular expression, as with each match it needs to check again the text that follows until the next end.