[SOLVED] How to automate a simple regex-find and replace

How to automate a simple regex-find and replace

I am trying to create a simple regex-find and replace task in Visual Studio Code.

Currently, I copy from the AD some Users to a temporary file in Visual Studio Code and remove the CN= at the beginning of the line and all the additional information after the first , (regex: ,.*$). This works fine with Find&Replace in VS Code, but I have manually to type it in every time I want to remove this.

So the question is, is it possible to automate this kind of task? I know there are some external tools (https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/editor/tasks), but I'm struggling to get it working.

Example (my regex is working, that's not the problem. I need an example on how to automate this task):

CN=Test User,OU=Benutzer,OU=TEST1,OU=Vert,OU=ES1,OU=HEADQUARTERS,DC=esg,DC=corp

Expected Output:

Test User

Solution

This extension does the job: ssmacro

It seems like the regex adheres to JavaScript regular expressions

Example

Create a file regex.json:

[{
    "command": "ssmacro.replace",
    "args": {
        "info": "strip out EOL whitespace",
        "find": "\\s+$",
        "replace": "",
        "all": true,
        "reg": true,
        "flag": "gm"
    }
}]

"info" is just a reminder, doesn't do anything.

Set a shortcut in keybindings.json:

"key": "ctrl+9",
"command": "ssmacro.macro",
"args": {"path": "C:\\...\\regex.json"}

You can batch multiple commands together [{...},{...}] which is useful for applying a whole set of regex operations in one go.