SciTE regex replacement

[MilesAhead]

I can't seem to get SciTE to regex replace for me. All I'm trying to do is stick a '_' in front of every line where the start of the line has [a-zA-Z].

If I use ^[a-zA-Z]   in the search field, it pics it up. But no matter what I put in the Replace field after the underscore, it replaces the first character with the underscore instead of sticking the underscore in front. I think the '^' denoting start of line is messing me up.

Seems like it should be something simple that's done all the time.  Damned if I can figure it out though.

Here's an example.  I have functions like

MyFunc(param)
SomeFunc(param)
ThisFunc(param)


After the replacement I should have

_MyFunc(param)
_SomeFunc(param)
_ThisFunc(param)

Why is it so difficult?

[jgpaiva]

If you try to replace "^[a-zA-Z]" with an underscore, it'll always match the first character, it's supposed to. Have you tried using only "^" (which denotes only the start of the line)?

[MilesAhead]

Ok, a more accurate representation of the problem is this

funcName(param)
{
   ; some code
}

anotherFuncName(param1, param2)
{
  ; some more code
}

thirdFunc()
{
  ; yadda yadda
}

I only want the lines that start with [a-zA-Z] to start with _(funcnameline)

and not end up with
_funcName(param)
_{
_ ; some code
_}

[jgpaiva]

Right, that makes sense. Then you need the expression to match the first character in the way you were doing before.
One way to solve the problem is to use:
regex: ^([a-Z])
replace: _$$1
This means: match the first character, replace with "_" concatenated with the character that was matched.
Depending on the regex engine, the "(" can also be "\(", and the "$$1" can be "$1" or "\1". (yep, it's annoying that not everybody follows the same syntaxes).

[MilesAhead]

Thanks for your replies. In the meantime I got a response on ahk forum. Awk I could do a bit, but regex is not my strength. Easier just to write an app to read the input and spit out the output than figure this out.  Here's the solution Lexicos posted:

http://www.autohotke...amp;p=556410#p556399

[Edvard]

(yep, it's annoying that not everybody follows the same syntaxes).

Yep, in Textpad 5, you use the '&' symbol to spit out what you matched, so you would replace like so:

Find:      ^[a-Z]
Replace: _&

:shrug:

[MilesAhead]

The main thing messing me up was putting the start of line symbol inside the pattern. I found PsPad makes it a bit easier than SciTE. This works in PsPad

find
^([a-zA-Z])

replace
_$1

and

[Select]

func(param)
{
  jive()
}

func2(param2)
{
  jive2()
}

is magically transformed into

[Select]

_func(param)
{
  jive()
}

_func2(param2)
{
  jive2()
}

It's a lot less confusing without the backslashes.