How do i replace all enters between two quotes in a text file. The first quote is always preceded by a tab or it is the first character in the row (csv file). I tried the following regex

/(\t"|^")([^"]*)(\n)([^"]*")/gm

but this regex only matches the first enter between two quotes, not all.

For example, the following text:

xx "xx 
xx 
xx" 
xx 
"xx"
xx 
xx
"xxx xxx 
xx"

should bee

xx "xx xx xx" 
xx 
"xx"
xx 
xx
"xxx xxx xx"

I read the following post ( javascript regex replace spaces between brackets ) which is very similar, but the regex suggested there is not useable in my situation.

How do i replace all enters between two quotes in a text file. The first quote is always preceded by a tab or it is the first character in the row (csv file). I tried the following regex

/(\t"|^")([^"]*)(\n)([^"]*")/gm

but this regex only matches the first enter between two quotes, not all.

For example, the following text:

xx "xx 
xx 
xx" 
xx 
"xx"
xx 
xx
"xxx xxx 
xx"

should bee

xx "xx xx xx" 
xx 
"xx"
xx 
xx
"xxx xxx xx"

I read the following post ( javascript regex replace spaces between brackets ) which is very similar, but the regex suggested there is not useable in my situation.

• javascript
• regex

• Which language is this? Javascript? Also, if you have a CSV file, use a CSV parser. – Tomalak Commented Jun 7, 2016 at 9:22
• 1 A regular expression to handle that at once will probably bee very ugly and slow. Consider a multi-pass approach: 1. extract all quoted texts; 2. replace all \n in the quoted texts; 3. reassemble the non-quoted parts with the corrected quoted parts. – Good Night Nerd Pride Commented Jun 7, 2016 at 9:27
• @Tomalak I updated the question, javascript is fine. I am using a csv parser but this parser is giving an error because of an enter at a wrong position. – Nebu Commented Jun 7, 2016 at 9:30
• Then use a better parser. For example, papaparse. deals with quoted values and line breaks in values just fine. Don't use regex for this. – Tomalak Commented Jun 7, 2016 at 11:33

2 Answers 2

With Javascript replace you can use a function as replacement.

var str = 'foo \n"a\n" bar\n';

str = str.replace(/"[^"]+"/g, function(m) {
 return m.replace(/\n/g, ' ');
});

console.log(str);

The regex "[^"]+" will match quoted stuff with one or more non-quotes in between.

Add conditions such as tab or start to the pattern as needed: (?:\t|^)"[^"]+"

\n(?=[^"]*"(?:[^"]*"[^"]*")*[^"]*$)

You can use this and replace by empty string.

See Demo

var re = /\n(?=[^"]*"(?:[^"]*"[^"]*")*[^"]*$)/g; 
var str = 'xx "xx \nxx \nxx" \nxx \n"xx"\nxx \nxx\n"xxx xxx \nxx"';
var subst = ''; 

var result = str.replace(re, subst);