replace - Notepad++ Regex - Issue with ^ anchor and repeating patterns

Question

When one tries to remove some characters from the start of a line and the anchored pattern can be found again after the first replace, it will be removed again.

For a very simple example given the input 012345, search pattern ^. and empty replacement, Notepad++ will remove the whole line when using replace all. This is most likely due to the case, that the cursor is still at the start of the line after the first replace and thus matches the ^ anchor again.

How can one ensure that only the actual first character is removed (in my case the expected output would be 12345)?

You can see my workaround in my answer, but maybe there is another nice trick to achieve it.

Answer 1

One can match the rest of the line, capture the match into a group and then use this group as replacement. The pattern in the question could be adjusted to ^.(.*) and be replaced by $1.

This will force the cursor to move forward in the string, so the ^ anchor can't match again.