Search and Replace, regexp question

I think you're confusing regular expressions with glob-style matching.
In a regular expression, the * operator is a qualifier for the group
preceding it. In your case, debug*/> would match debug/>, and
debugggg/>, but not debug=""/>.

I think a quick fix for your problem would be to use:
debug=".*?"

The . means "any character", and the ? means "match the shortest
possible sequence" (otherwise it would match the longest possible
sequence inside quotation marks, like everything from xx to yy in:
debug="xx"/>]]>

With the upcoming IDEA 5.0, you can use Structural Search and Replace
with XML, which would make this operation a little bit easier and more
accurate.

Darrel Riekhof wrote:

Hello,

I have several XML files in my project. I have many many tags that
look like this, and want to get rid of the debug attribute:

<twig val="1" target="sometarget" debug="somedebugtext"/>

I can't figure out how to use regular expressions in the search and
replace dialog to get rid of the debug attributes. I check the
regexp checkbox and try putting something like

Text to find: debug*/> Replace with: />

It doesn't work. How do I use regular expressions in search and
replace?

The pattern for any char is .* thus your "Text to find" would need to be : debug.*/>

From "Help -> Help Topics -> Navigation & Search -> Replace Options" :
For more information on regular expressions and their syntax,
please, refer to Javadoc for java.util.regex (Java SDK 1.4).

Thanks for explaining it. It works and I'm happy now. :)