Search and replace with regular expressions in VS Code#

I wanted to replace all instances of this:

1
`#90 <https://github.com/simonw/sqlite-utils/issues/90>`__

With this:

1
:issue:`90`

For sqlite-utils issue #306.

I used the VS Code’s Find and Replace tool with regular expression mode turned on (the .* button). I used the following for the find:

1
`#(\d+) <https://github.com/simonw/sqlite-utils/issues/\1>`__

Note the \1 reference to say “the same thing I captured earlier with parenthesis”. Then I used this as the replace string:

1
:issue:`$1`

Here the $1 means “the first thing captured with parenthesis”.

The resulting change can be seen in commit e83aef95.