Notepad++ wildcard

In the Find and Replace dialog:

  • under Search Mode select Regular Expression
  • set Find What to /.*$
  • leave Replace With empty

This is replace any slash and all the text after it until the end of line with nothing. It uses a regular expression so it looks convoluted but it is well worth learning as regular expressions are insanely useful for lots of things.

Basically:

  • / isn’t a special character so it just matches a /
  • . is a wildcard that matches a single character. To match a literal . use \.
  • * is a wildcard that matches zero of more of the preceding character. So a* would match zero or more a and .* would match zero of more of any character.
  • $ matches the end of a line. To match a literal $ use \$

A few other special characters:

  • \ is the escape character – use it to turn special characters into normal characters. Yo match a literal \ use \\
  • + is a wildcard that matches one of more of the preceding character. So a+ would match one or more a and .+ would match one of more of any character.
  • ^ matches the start of a line. To match a literal ^ use \^
  • ( and ) make a match group. To match literal ( or ) use \( and \)

And there are more special characters including []{ and } along with others that I won’t mention.

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