Regex to replace email address domains?

Question

I need a regex to obfuscate emails in a database dump file I have. I\'d like to replace all domains with a set domain like @fake.com so I don\'t risk sending ou

Answer 1

You may use the following command for Vim:

:%s/\(\<[A-Za-z0-9._%-]\+@\)[A-Za-z0-9.-]\+\.[A-Za-z]\{2,4}\>/\1fake.com/g

Everything between \( and \) will become a group that will be replaced by an escaped number of the group (\1 in this case). I've also modified the regexp to match the small letters and to have Vim-compatible syntax.

Also you may turn off the case sensitivity by putting \c anywhere in your regexp like this:

:%s/\c\(\<[A-Z0-9._%-]\+@\)[A-Z0-9.-]\+\.[A-Z]\{2,4}\>/\1fake.com/g

Please also note that % in the beginning of the line asks Vim to do the replacement in a whole file and g at the end to do multiple replacements in the same line.

One more approach is using the zero-width matching (\@<=):

:%s/\c\(\<[A-Z0-9._%-]\+@\)\@<=[A-Z0-9.-]\+\.[A-Z]\{2,4}\>/fake.com/g

Answer 2

SublimeText

SublimeText uses Boost syntax, which supports quite a large subset of features in Perl regex. But for this task, you don't need all those advanced constructs.

Below are 2 possible approaches:

1. If you can assume that @ doesn't appear in any other context (which is quite a fair assumption for normal text), then you can just search for the domain part @[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}\b and replace it.

2. If you use capturing groups (pattern) and backreference in replacement string.

   Find what

   \b([A-Z0-9._%-]+)@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}\b
   

   ([A-Z0-9._%-]+) is the first (and only) capturing group in the regex.

   Replace with

   $1@fake.com
   

   $1 refers to the text captured by the first capturing group.

Note that for both methods above, you need to turn off case-sensitivity (indicated as the 2nd button on the lower left corner), unless you specifically want to remove only emails written in ALL CAPS.