Script regular expression searches

One search option for code in the Windows client script editor is to do a Regular Expression search. This option uses regular expressions to locate the search text and uses replacement pattern syntax for regular expressions. This allows for replacements at different matched capture points in the search pattern.

Regular Expression find-and-replace operations search for text by using syntax pattern matching for .NET regular expressions. The operation ignores pattern whitespace. Whitespace can be matched by using the \s character class.

The Regular Expression search option has a feature that the others do not have: In its Replace with patterns, you can specify substitutions. Replace with patterns recognize normal text characters, regular expression escape characters (\n meaning line feed, etc.), and substitution specifications ($1, etc.).

Substitutions place text from captures into the replacement text. For example, suppose that the text to search in is using System;, the Find what text is using \s+ (\w[\w\.]+);, and the Replace with text is Namespace: $1;. This operation looks for any C# using statement and outputs the namespace. The result in this scenario is Namespace: System;.