Regex find not working in SSMS query window?

Question

I'm trying to find the next BEGIN or END without missing any, so I want to search with a regex in the find. I want to find the next BEGIN or END.

For some reason it's not working. What's wrong with what I am doing?

Answer 1

SSMS (and Visual Studio too) uses a CRAZY Regex flavor, and it's always a huge pain to use. I CAN'T BELIEVE they don't use the .NET Regex engine!

Here's the documentation, which you should definitely bookmark if you ever plan on using Regex again.

The Regex you should use is:

<(begin|end)>

Unusual keys:
< beginning of a word
> end of word
() group -- however, for capturing (and replacing), you must use {}

You can also see a quick-list of "special characters" by clicking the little > button that appears to the right of the text box. This is basically a built-in cheat-sheet.