Multi-line regular expressions in Visual Studio Code

Question

I cannot figure a way to make regular expression match stop not on end of line, but on end of file in VS Code? Is it a tool limitation or there is some kind of pattern that I am not aware of?

Answer 1

It seems the CR is not matched with [\s\S]. Add \r to this character class:

[\s\S\r]+ 

will match any 1+ chars.

Other alternatives that proved working are [^\r]+ and [\w\W]+.

If you want to make any character class match line breaks, be it a positive or negative character class, you need to add \r in it.

Examples:

• Any text between the two closest a and b chars: a[^ab\r]*b
• Any text between START and the closest STOP words:
  • START[\s\S\r]*?STOP
  • START[^\r]*?STOP
  • START[\w\W]*?STOP
• Any text between the closest START and STOP words:
  • START(?:(?!START)[\s\S\r])*?STOP

See a demo screenshot below:

Answer 2

To matcha multi-line text block starting from aaa and ending with the first bbb (lazy qualifier)

aaa(.|\n)+?bbb 

To find a multi-line text block starting from aaa and ending with the last bbb. (greedy qualifier)

aaa(.|\n)+bbb