Find and Replace: Practical Scenarios

Use Cases for Find and Replace

1. Content migration

When moving a site to a new domain, replace all old URLs with new ones in one operation.

2. Clearing text from HTML tags

Did you copy the text from the site along with the tags? Remove them by replacing them with an empty string.

3. Formatting phone numbers

Bring all numbers to a single format: +7 (XXX) XXX-XX-XX.

4. Replacing abbreviations

Expand the abbreviations in the text: “since” → “since”, “etc.” → “so on.”

5. Preparing data for import

Replace delimiters in CSV: semicolon with comma or tab.

6. Localization

Replacing text fragments when translating the interface into another language.

Example: CSV processing

Source format: first name; last name; email

Required format: first name, last name, email

See also: Removing duplicates, Sorting strings, Transliteration