Sublime Text 3 Replace with regular expression - sublimetext3

Question

How to add string pieces to existing strings in Sublime Text 3?
Example: I have a text with strings like (23aa67) or (ret457) and I would like to transform them into \as{(23aa67)} or \as{(ret457)}.
Is it possible?

Answer 1

This solution will work if you have at least build number 4107 - you can tell by selecting Help → About Sublime Text.
Open your key bindings by selecting Preferences → Key Bindings. The pane on the right is your user key bindings file, and may simply look like this:
[
]
Position your cursor between the brackets and paste in the following:
{
"keys": ["ctrl+alt+super+a"],
"command": "chain",
"args":
{
"commands":
[
{
"command": "expand_selection",
"args": {"to": "smart"}
},
{
"command": "insert_snippet",
"args": {"contents": "\\as{${0:$SELECTION}}"},
}
]
},
"context":
[
{
"key": "selector",
"operator": "equal",
"operand": "text.tex",
"match_all": true
}
]
}
Here's how it works: The key combo CtrlAltSuperA (where Super is the Windows key) initiates two commands - expand_selection and insert_snippet.
You place your cursor between the two parentheses of your original text, and expand_selection expands the selection to include all of the text plus the opening and closing parens.
The second command wraps the selection - ${0:$SELECTION} - with \as{ at the beginning and } at the end. The "context" at the end only allows the command to run in TeX/LaTeX files. This can be removed if you'd like access to it everywhere.
If you want to change the key binding from CtrlAltSuperA to something else, just be sure that you're not overriding another keybinding. The FindKeyConflicts plugin is great for figuring that out.
Make sure you save the key bindings file when you're done. This shortcut will even work with multiple selections, so you can put multiple cursors in multiple places throughout your text, hit the key combo once, and they'll all be wrapped.

Answer 2

Using regular expression, you can do:
Ctrl+H
Find: (\(.+?\))
Replace: \\as{$1}
Replace all
Explanation:
( # start group 1
\( # opening parens, have to be escaped as it has special meaning in regex
.+? # 1 or more any character, not greedy
\) # closing parens
) # end group 1
Replacement:
\\ # backslash, have to be escaped
as{ # literally
$1 # content of group 1
} # literally
Screenshot (before):
Screenshot (after):