How to capture a couple of lines around a regex match

pythonregex

I am searching for a regex expression to match couple of lines over the matched line. For example:

ABCDEFGHADEFGH
ABCDEFGHADEFGH
ABCDEFGHDEFGHABCDEFGH
ABCDEFGHDEFGHABCDEFGH
ABCDEFGHABCDEFGHABCDEFGH
ABCDEFGHABCDEFGHABCDEFGH
XXXXXXXX

I would like to capture the 2 lines above the XXXXXXXX.

Any help would be appreciated.
Note: with Python using library re

The following RegEx tests for a variable amount of lines before the XXXXXXXX line and returns them in the first capture group.

((.*\n){2})XXXXXXXX

Now in Python, you can use p.match(regex)[0] to return the first capture group.

All you need to do is check . matches newline in Notepad++ Search/Replace Search Mode:

enter image description here

This will make the dot . in your regex match newline, so .* will match any number of newlines.

You can use numbered sub groups. i.e:

Find:

([0-9]{6}),([0-9]{2})

Replace:

\1.\2

Example in Python:

import re
inp = '653433,78'
out = re.sub(r'([0-9]{6}),([0-9]{2})', r'\1.\2', inp)
print out

This would give you:

>>>'653433.78'