Notepad++ copy/paste part of each line with replace

Question

I am wondering if we can do the following with notepad++. I have an exhaustive list of all countries in the word, this is small part of it:

Afghanistan : '',
Albania : '',
Algeria : '',
American Samoa : '',
Andorra : '',
Angola : '',
Anguilla : '',
Antigua and Barbuda  : '',

I need to inject each of those countries between the single quotes, like this:

Afghanistan : 'Afghanistan',
Albania : 'Albania',
Algeria : 'Algeria',
American Samoa : 'American Samoa',
Andorra : 'Andorra',
Angola : 'Angola',
Anguilla : 'Anguilla',
Antigua and Barbuda  : 'Antigua and Barbuda',

Is there anyway where we can parse each line and inject the each country as indicated above using some kind or regular expression?

Answer 1

• Ctrl+H
• Find what: ^(.+?)\h+:\h+'
• Replace with: $0$1
• check Wrap around
• check Regular expression
• DO NOT CHECK . matches newline
• Replace all

Explanation:

^           : begining of line
  (.+?)     : group 1, 1 or more any character not greedy
  \h+       : 1 or more horizontal spaces
  :         : literally  colon
  \h+       : 1 or more horizontal spaces
  '         : single quote

Replacement:

$0      : whole match
$1      : content of group 1 (ie the country name)

Result for given example:

Afghanistan : 'Afghanistan',
Albania : 'Albania',
Algeria : 'Algeria',
American Samoa : 'American Samoa',
Andorra : 'Andorra',
Angola : 'Angola',
Anguilla : 'Anguilla',
Antigua and Barbuda  : 'Antigua and Barbuda',    

Answer 2

You can do that easily in Notepad++ with Regex Search & replace.

1. Open file in Notepad++
2. Open Search -> Replace from main menu (or Ctrl+H)
3. In Find what: line type ^(.*?)\s:\s'',$
4. In Replace with: line type $1 : '$1',
5. Check Regular expression radio in Search Mode panel
6. Click Replace All button.

Below you can see the result I got from your sample data.