Regex: Find Every Line that Begins with a Specific Word

To find every line that begins with a specific word, use the following regex command:



Let’s say you have a bunch of markdown articles that have a metadata structure, such as:

publishDate: 2021-01-18
title: "Bitcoin vs. Ethereum"
template: post
thumbnail: "../../thumbnails/crypto.png"
slug: bitcoin-vs-ethereum
  - Crypto
  - Ethereum
  - BitCoin

But unfortunately, someone misspelled Bitcoin when they created the meta template. Bitcoin is not spelled with capital C as in the tag example above.

To find every line that begins with - BitCoin, run this regex command:

^(  - BitCoin.*)

Notice that all the spaces in the regex command match the spaces in the metadata example.

How the regex command works:

  • ^ means that any match must be found at the start of a line.
  • ( - BitCoin.*) matches the text BitCoin on that line, including hyphen and surrounding white space.

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