VS Code Regex find and replace with lowercase, use \l or \L if possible

• Press Ctrl + F
• Select .* button and enter your RegEx
• Press Ctrl + Shift + L (Windows) or Cmd + Shift + L (Mac) to select all matched results
• Press Ctrl + Shift + P (Windows) or Cmd + Shift + P (Mac)
• Choose Transform to Lowercase

If you want to modify only part of the matching text you have to do 1 step extra.

If you press Ctrl + Shift + L in the Find dialog it selects the full matching text but you can't move the (multi) cursors and make a partial selection.

After entering the regex, VSC will show you which parts will match the find.

• Click somewhere in the file
• Press Ctrl + Shift + L (Select All)

or

• Press Alt + Enter (in the Find dialog)

Now you can move the (multi) cursors and make a partial selection and apply the needed transform.

There is support for the case modifiers \L, \l, \U and \u Find/Replace (from Build 1.47 for replacing strings in an editor, and from Build 1.49 it also works in the Find/Replace across the workspace (see https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/pull/105101)).

So you just have to put the \l modifier in front of all your matched uppercase groups, like

\l$1 see regex101 demo1

or just put the \L in front of it all, like \L(rest of replace here). see regex1010 demo2

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Note that these modifiers work a little differently than you might be used to. For instance:

(de)(pth) Search

\U$1$2 Replace

DEPTH expected result

DEpth vscode result

The case modifier only works on the immediate capture group. Not until it encounters \E or the end of the replace string.

I assume for this same reason \E isn't implemented in vscode at all, as it would be irrelevant given that only the immediate capture group is modified.

So to get DEPTH as the result you should use \U$1\U$2.

The modifiers can also be stacked - for example, \u\u\u$1 will uppercase the first 3 characters of the group, or \l\U$1 will lowercase the first character, and uppercase the rest.

Currently, these are only supported in the editor's find widget, and not in "Find in Files".

• from https://github.com/microsoft/vscode-docs/blob/vnext/release-notes/v1_47.md#case-changing-in-regex-replace and https://code.visualstudio.com/updates/v1_49#_workbench.