Find and replace using wildcard/regex characters in Notepad++

Question

I have a very long HTML Code with the following structure:

        <td class="tar">
      <div class="bubble in">
        Some Text, I want to keep! And maybe even an image.<br />
        <span class="time"><div style="text-align:right">17:14</span></div>
      </div>
    </td>
  </tr>

  <tr>
    <td class="tal">
      <div class="bubble out">
        Some Text, I want to keep! And maybe even an image.<br />
        <span class="time"><div style="text-align:right">17:15</span></div>
      </div>
    </td>
  </tr>

This is the structure of a chat with the two participants "bubble in" and "bubble out". As you can see every "block" (Chat-Message) has a timecode like "17:14". I want to extend this timecode with a space character and an image but only for the text-block coming from "bubble in".

I am trying to accomplish this with the find & replace feature in Notepad++.

Here is what I came up with:

Find what:

<div class="bubble in">[^"]*<span class="time"><div style="text-align:right">([0-9]*[0-9]*):([0-9]*[0-9]*)</span></div>

Replace with:

<div class="bubble in">\1<span class="time"><div style="text-align:right">\2\3\4\5\6&#160<img src= "test.png" width="16" height="10" alt="0"/</span></div>

The searching works but replacing \\1 doesn't work somehow. Can you help me out? I am new to RedEx and figured this out by searching the internet and just trying. I think I am pretty close but only the wildcard [^"] for the random text is not yet correct.

Answer 1

You can try with:

Find what:

(<div class="bubble in">.*?<span class="time"><div style="text-align:right">[0-9]{1,2}:[0-9]{1,2})(</span></div>)

Replace with:

\1 <img src= "test.png" width="16" height="10" alt="0"/> \2

Answer 2

Can you explain what you are trying to use \\1 for? Each backslash number corresponds to a capture group, which is the pattern enclosed in ( ) in your search pattern. You only have 2 capture groups, but you are referencing 6 unique groups when you go up to \\6. If you posted the output of the substitution, that could be helpful. Also using a site like regex101.com can help you debug your regex.