Using regex with find-and-replace in VS Code

The context for how and why is [[Learning in public isn't so easy when you're buried by layers of engineering|too niche]] for me to go in to here, but I had a bunch of files where I needed to change all instances of this:

'FileClient:1643853467530'

to this:

'PenVersionFileClient:{"cpid":"1643853467530"}'

Except for each instance, the id value (the number) was different.

I wanted to keep the number in there, but change the text that wraps it.

Because I needed to replace text on either side of the number, a simple find-and-replace term wasn't going to work. I needed regex.

To turn on search using regex, you want to make sure this option is selected:

To replace the text on either side of text, you want a regular expression that follows this pattern:

/BEFORE_TEXT(.+?)AFTER_TEXT/

where BEFORE_TEXT and AFTER_TEXT match the text on the left and the right of the text you want to wrap-replace.

Then, in the Replace input of the Search UI, you add a $1 to wherever you want the original text to go.

NEW_BEFORE_TEXT$1NEW_AFTER_TEXT

For my case above, I used this:

Search: 'FileClient:(.+?)'
Replace: 'PenVersionFileClient:{"cpid":"$1"}'