Suppose I want to remove all lines matching a regex in my project. Is there a way to do that?
Using the global find and replace function with regexes enabled I've tried:
Replace foo|bar with an empty string. This doesn't work because it leaves the line there with an empty string. I want the newline removed.
Replace (foo|bar)\n with an empty string. This doesn't actually match anything.
Replace (foo|bar)$ with an empty string. Again, doesn't match anything.
Any ideas?
Edit: It seems like some of my files have Windows line endings so (foo|bar)\r?\n does match. However when you replace it with an empty string it actually still leaves the line endings there.
Here's a test case:
a
foo
b
It should end up like this:
a
b
Not like this:
a
b
foo\n^ and (foo|bar)\n^ both work.
I just tested in my vs code - and you leave the replacement string blank
Yes, it is possible to remove entire lines with the search-across-files feature.
I'm guessing the original problem was due to a bug or otherwise unwanted behavior in an older version of VSCode. With VSCode 1.37.1, so long as the \n is included in the regex, the line is removed. In particular, the regex (foo|bar)\n, described in the original question as not working, now works fine.
Before:
After pressing the "Replace All" button:
Related observations:
This same regex works even if I set the file line endings to CRLF.
Appending ^ makes no difference. That's a bit surprising, but perhaps "after newline" counts as "beginning of line".
Appending $ causes the regex to not match anything. That is quite surprising given the behavior of ^.
I looked through the search configuration settings, but nothing seemed like it could affect this.
Related
There seems to be a bug in the Notepad++ find/replace behaviour when using a backreference to find duplicate lines that may not necessarily be consecutive. I'm wondering if anyone knows what the issue could be with the regex or if they know why the regex engine might be bugging out?
Details
I wanted to use a regex to find duplicate lines in Notepad++. The duplicates needn't necessarily be contiguous i.e. on consecutive lines, there can be lines in between. I started with this post:
https://medium.com/#heitorhherzog/compare-sort-and-delete-duplicate-lines-in-notepad-2d1938ed7009
But realised that the regex mentioned there only checks for contiguous duplicates. So I wrote my own regex:
^(.+)$(?:(?:\s|.)+)^(\1)$
The above basically captures something on a whole line, then matches a load of stuff in between, then captures the same thing about on a line.
What's wrong
The regex works, but only sometimes. I can't figure out the pattern. I've whittled it down to this so far. If I do a "Replace All" on the replacement pattern \1\2 then the "replace all" leaves me with just line 3, which is "elative backreferences32". This is wrong:
dasfdasfdsfasdfasdfadsfasdf
elative backreferenceswe
elative backreferences32
elative backreferencesd
elative backreferencdesdfdasdfsdafsd
asfasdfasdfasdfasdfasfdsaasdfas
asdfasdfafds asdfasfdsafasd asdfdasfsd
elative backreferencessfhdfg
x
y
x
But if I delete any line from that file, then only the consecutive lines x then y then x are replaced by a single line xx as I'd expect.
Notes
I'd like to keep this question focused mostly on why the regex is
bugging out. Suggestions about alternative ways to find duplicate
lines are of course good but the main reason I'm asking this is to
figure out what's going on with the regex and Notepad++.
I don't really need the replace part of this, just the find, I was just using the replace to try to figure out what groups were being captured in an attempt to debug this
The find behaviour is also buggy. I noticed this first actually. It first finds the match I'm actually looking for, and then if I click "Find Next" again, it highlights all the text.
Hypotheses
There is a bug in Notepad++ v7.8.4 64 bit. I just updated today so maybe they haven't caught it yet.
Does the in-between part of the match, (?:(?:\s|.)+), maybe cycle
around past the end of file character and loop right back to the
original match? If so, I'd say that's still a bug, because AFAIK a
regex should only consume each character once.
I thought there might be a limit to the number of characters in the file, but I disproved this hypothesis by playing around with the file, adding characters here and there. Two files with the same number of lines and the same number of characters can behave differently: one with buggy behaviour, one without.
Screenshots
Before
After Without Matches Newline (The intended configuration)
After With Matches Newline (for Experimentation)
(?:\s|.) should be avoid as it causes unexpected behaviour, I suggest using [\s\S] instead:
Find what: ^(.+)$[\s\S]+?^(\1)$
Replace with: $1$2
I have a file which is structured like this:
Line
foo Änderbar: PM baz
Line
Line
foo Änderbar: OM baz
Line
Line
foo Änderbar: ++ baz
Line
Line
foo Änderbar: -- baz
Line
So the file consists of "blocks" which are separated by a newline (I have converted the file to Unix line endings). Each block can have an arbitrary number of lines. Each line of a block contains at least one character which is not a newline, and is finished by a newline character. The lines which separate the blocks consist of exactly one newline character.
In each block, there is exactly one line in the following format:
at least one character which is not newline, followed by
the literal string 'Änderbar: ', followed by
exactly one of the literal strings '++', '--', 'OM', 'PM', followed by
at least one character which is not newline, followed by
the line-terminating newline character
There is always at least one other non-empty line in the same block above this special line and one other non-empty line below this special line.
I need an effective method to find (and thereby select) all blocks where the literal after Änderbar: is -- (find / select one block after another, each one after hitting Find Next again, i.e. not selecting all of those blocks at the same time).
Normally, I have fun solving such problems with Notepad++. However, in that case, it seems that I either get more and more stupid as I get older, or that there is a bug in Notepad++'s regex handling engine.
Notepad++ uses BOOST (and supports PCRE expressions via BOOST). Since this is in wide use, I consider that problem important enough to post it here, just in case that BOOST really is the reason for the misbehavior.
Having said this: I loaded that file into Notepad++, fired up the Search and Replace dialog, ticked . matches newline, ticked Regular Expression and entered the following regex in the Find What: textbox:
\n([^\n]+\n)+[^\n]+(Änderbar\:\ --[^\n]+\n)([^\n]+\n)+
I was quite surprised that this made Notepad++ behave weirdly: When the cursor was placed in the empty line immediately before a block with Änderbar: --, hitting Find Next found / selected that block as expected. But when the cursor was at another place, hitting Find Next made Notepad++ find / select the whole rest of the file, i.e. all blocks below the cursor position.
I then have tested if it would find the blocks having ++ after Änderbar:, i.e. I changed my regex to
\n([^\n]+\n)+[^\n]+(Änderbar\:\ \+\+[^\n]+\n)([^\n]+\n)+
Guess what: This was working reliably in each situation. The same is true for the last both:
\n([^\n]+\n)+[^\n]+(Änderbar\:\ PM[^\n]+\n)([^\n]+\n)+
\n([^\n]+\n)+[^\n]+(Änderbar\:\ OM[^\n]+\n)([^\n]+\n)+
So Notepad++ / PCRE seems to have a problem with the correct interpretation of - under certain circumstances, or I have a subtle bug in my regex which only triggers when I am searching for -- (instead of ++, OM or PM) at the respective place.
Please note that I already have tried to leave away the \ in front of the space character (which actually could only make the situation worse, but I've tried just in case) and that I also have tried to use \-\- instead of -- (although the latter should be fine). That did not alter the (mis-)behavior in any way.
So what is the problem here? Is there a bug in my regex, or is there a bug in Notepad++?
UPDATE
I have stripped down the actual file in question and have uploaded it to https://pastebin.com/w62E57U5. To reproduce the problem, please do the following:
Download the file from the link above and save it somewhere on your HDD (do not copy the text directly into Notepad++).
Load the file into Notepad++. The cursor now is in the topmost line, and nothing is selected.
This is essential: Click Edit -> EOL Conversion -> Unix (LF).
Verify that the cursor is still in the topmost line (which is empty) and that nothing is selected.
Open the Find dialog and choose the settings and enter the search string as described above.
Click "Find Next".
Note that now the complete text is found / selected.
Keeping the Find window open, delete the third line of the file (it reads "Funktionspaket(e): ML"). Do not just empty that line, but really delete it so that no empty line remains between the line before and the line after.
Again, place the cursor in the topmost line (which is still empty) and make sure nothing is selected.
Click "Find Next".
Note that the regular expression now works as expected.
Obviously, somebody is trying to make a fool of me, right?
I think the key is: you need to begin your regex with ^ (beginning of line).
Your original regex becomes:
^\n([^\n]+\n)+[^\n]+(Änderbar\:\ --[^\n]+\n)([^\n]+\n)+
But you can simplify it with:
^\R(?:.+\R)+.+Änderbar: --.+\R(?:.+(?:\R|\z))+
Note: tick . matches newline
Where:
\R matches any kind of linebreak, no needs to change the EOL.
\z matches the end of file, if you don't use it, you can't match the last line of the file if there're no linebreak.
(?:...) is a non capture group, much more efficient (if you don't need to capture, of course)
Both works fine with your 2 sample files.
It's not a bug. You're just forgetting something very important - with Windows line endings, your lines have a \r before the \n, so the \n([^\n]+\n)+ part of your RegEx will also match your blank lines which is why clicking "Find Next" matches everything from the cursor position instead of from the start of the block.
Go to Edit > EOL Conversion > Unix (LF) and you'll see that it works now. If you want to support Windows and Unix line endings you'll have to change every [^\n] to [^\r\n] and every \n to \r?\n.
I have written a program that searches for 'opens' without matching 'closes' in a target file. It produces an output like this:
open
close
open
open
close
In this example here the second 'open' is not immediately followed by a matching 'close', so I consider that an error. My text-editor (editpad) has a regular-expression search/replace feature, which I would like to use to get rid of all correct pairs, so I can notice easily the incorrect situations. I tried replacing the following
open\r\nclose
I thought that this would match the two words and the line-break between them (I'm using Windows). This did not work.
Does anyone have an idea why it didn't?
If you select the Regex mode, your regex will work, but I also suggest making \r optional by appending ? after it to support LF endings, too:
open\r?\nclose
See the screenshot with settings and proof it works in EditPad:
I am looking for some regex help.
I have a textfile, nothing super important but I would like to delete every second line from it - I have tried following this guide: Delete every other line in notepad++
However I just can't get it to work, is the regex I am using ok? I am noob with regex
Find:
([^\n]*\n)[^\n]*\n
Replace with:
$1
No matter what I try (mouse position at the beginning, ctrl+a and Replace All) I just can't get it to work. I appreciate any help.
I've put the regex into here: http://regexpal.com/ and if I remove the final \n it highlights the individual rows.
Make sure you select regular expression for the search mode...
Also, you may want to make that final newline optional. In the case that there are an even number of lines and you do not have a trailing newline, it won't remove the last line.
([^\n]*\n)[^\n]*\n?
Update:
See how Windows handle new lines with \r\n instead of just \n. Try updating the expression to take this into account:
([^\r\n]*[\r\n]+)[^\r\n]*[\r\n]*
Final Update:
Thanks to #zx81, I now know that N++ uses PCRE so \R can be used for unicode newline characters. However [^\R] won't work (this looks for anything except R literally), so you will need to keep [^\r\n]. This can be simplified as:
([^\r\n]*\R)[^\r\n]*\R?
I’m working with a text file with 200.000+ lines in Notepad++. Each line has only one word. I need to strip out and remove all words which only contains one letter (e.g.: I) and words which contains only two letters (e.g.: as).
I thought I could just pas in regular regex like this [a-zA-Z]{1,2} but I does not recognize anything (I’m trying to Mark them).
I’ve done manual search and I know that there do exists words of that length so therefor can it only be my regex code that’s wrong. Anyone knows how to do this in Notepad++ ???
Cheers,
- Mestika
If you want to remove only the words but leave the lines empty, this works:
^[a-zA-Z]{1,2}$
Replace this with an empty string. ^ and $ are anchors for the beginning and the end of a line (because Notepad++'s regexes work in multi-line mode).
If you want to remove the lines completely, search for this:
^[a-zA-Z]{1,2}\r\n
And replace with an empty string. However, this won't work before Notepad++ 6, so make sure yours is up-to-date.
Note that you will have to replace \r\n with the specific line-endings of your file!
As Tim Pietzker suggested, a platform independent solution that also removes empty lines would be:
^[a-zA-Z]{1,2}[\r\n]+
A platform-independent solution that does not remove empty lines but only those with one or two letters would be:
^[a-zA-Z]{1,2}(\r\n?|\n)
I don't use Notepad++ but my guess is it could be because you have too many matches - try including word boundaries (your exp will match every set of 2 letters)
\b[a-zA-Z]{1,2}\b
The regex you specified should find 1-or-2 characters (even in Notepad++'s Find-dialog), but not in the way you'd think. You want to have the regex make sure it starts at the beginning of the line and ends at the end with ^ and $, respecitevely:
^[a-zA-Z]{1,2}$
Notepad++ version 6.0 introduced the PCRE engine, so if this doesn't work in your current version try updating to the most recent.
You seem to use the version of Notepad++ that doesn't support explicit quantifiers: that's why there's no match at all (as { and } are treated as literals, not special symbols).
The solution is to use their somewhat more lengthy replacement:
\w\w?
... but that's only part of the story, as this regex will match any symbol, and not just short words. To do that, you need something like this:
^\w\w?$