Search and replace outer tag in Atom using REGEX

Question

Using Atom, I'm trying to replace the outer tag structure for multiple different texts within a document. Also using REGEX, which I'm not versed enough to come up with my own solution

HTML to be searched <span class="klass">Any text string</span>

Replace it with <code>Any text string</code>

My REGEX (<?span class="klass">)+[\w]+(<?/span>)

Is there a wildcard to "keep" the [\w] part into the replaced result?

Answer 1

You can use a capture group to capture the text in between the <span> tags during the match, and then use it to build the <code> output you want. Try the following find and replace:

Find:

<span class="klass">(.*?)</span>

Replace:

<code>$1</code>

Here $1 represents the quantity (.*?) which we captured in the search. One other point, we use .*? when capturing between tags as opposed to just .*. The former .*? is a "lazy" or tempered dot. This tells the engine to stop matching upon hitting the first closing </span> tag. Without this, the match would be greedy and would consume as much as possible, ending only with the final </span> tag in your text.