In Notepad++, I would like to (find-in-files and) replace several lines, but I fail to paste several lines into the "Replace what:" text-box.
I select the lines in an opened file, press Ctrl+Shift+F, and I get the lines copied into the "Find what:" text-box. "Extended" is pre-selected.
The problem is, when I try to copy the lines from the "Find what:" text-box to the "Replace with:" text-box, only the first line is copied. Had the lines appeared with \r\n it would have solved the problem, but they don't. (I did get once the lines to appear in "Find what:" with the \r\n, but I don't know what caused it.)
The Find what and Replace fields take a single line each. Those lines can match or generate, respectively, multiple lines by inserting the four characters \r\n where line breaks are needed; provided the Extended or Regular expression are selected.
To generate four lines of text the Replace field could be set to contain these 31 characters One\r\nTwo\r\nThree\r\nFour\r\n
Notepad has three search modes to control how the characters within the Find what and Replace fields are interpreted. See the Searching ... Normal search part of the Notepad++ help pages for more details.
Normal means
is handled literally. That means a Find what string such as s\t looks for the three letters s, \ and t in that order.
Extended means that \ characters are used to indicate special characters such as newline and tab characters, etc. That means a Find what string such as s\t looks for the two letters s and TAB in that order. To look for the three letters s, \ and t in that order needs the Find what string to be s\\t.
Regular Expression means that several other characters are interpreted, not as themselves but, specially as parts of a regular expression.
A cumbersome workaround:
open a file with the multiple-lines you want to copy (but can't) into the find/replace box.
replace (using "Extended") all \r\n into \\r\\n.
you can now copy the multiple-lines as one line (with the new \r\n as text) to the search-box.
Related
I managed to do most of my conversion in VBA Macro (Word > txt) but some changes were made also that I could not forego or get around. Unfortunately, I had not been in the habit of using styles and precise formatting in my docs... (Which is why a PanDoc conversion did not "pan" out well, if you'll excuse the pun.)
In my docs, I was using bold text/lines for in-text titles (not Heading 2 alas) but as I was converting mid-sentence one or two-word bold phrases into phrases to go between double square brackets, the makeshift titles/headings were also changed to [[some title]] format in the process.
With Find and Replace (a batch script that goes through all files in a folder would also do), I would like to search for each and any number of instances of CRLF [[some title CRLF]]CRLF and replace the brackets with ** (to make the title bold), or perhaps ## to make the headings I was missing back in MS Word (I would of course need the line breaks as well).
For better understanding, please see attached picture here:
I am fairly sure that all instances are similarly syntaxed. If not, I may be able to tailor your regex code to differing instances later on.
As you can see, I was trying to do it in two steps but that's not good, because the second step (which I couldn't even get right) would propably have altered other texts I need intact (there must be sentences that start with double brackets after CRLF).
I would need the two steps in one so that only the targeted double bracketed text would be changed to bold or Heading 2.
Basically what I could not do is: find the proper regex solution for matching double CRLF-ed and square-bracketed text for any number of words than may occupy more than one line and starts with a capital letter. I would need an empty line above and below the title as indicated in the image (the VBA macro somehow made two instances of CRLF and carried the brackets to a new line, which I do not like, either).
EDIT.
In the meantime I managed to cook something up but now I couldn't insert the CRLF in front of the match string. At this point this is not enough as other instances are also changed, even lowercase in-line items, for some reason...
Regex:
\[\[([A-Z][\S\s]+?)\]\]
Substitution:
## $1\r\n
https://regex101.com/r/mH6B9N/1
Since then, I made improvements towards what I wanted (I had to test in NotePad++ and not Regex101, for different results), but now in multiple documents I have found match across spill-over lines, as described in here:
Single line regex search in Notepad++
Is it possible that I cannot do what I want? The problem is having non-title text strings having line-break, double brackets and capitalized letters.
What it looks like in other documents:
See here.
I circled around with red in image for clarification. See also:
https://regex101.com/r/8XsIGx/1
Is it possible to match a certain word like "címnél" and not execute on that match if that word is present in a line?
Thanks very much in advance,
F.
You can use
(?s)\R\K\[\[((?:(?!\[\[|]]).)*)\R*]](?=\R)
Replace with ## $1. See the regex demo.
Details:
(?s) - equivalent of the . matches newline option
\R - a line break sequence
\K - omit the text matched so far (the newlines)
\[\[ - a [[ text
((?:(?!\[\[|]]).)*) - Group 1: any char, as many as possible occurrences, that does not start a [[ or ]] char sequence
\R* - zero or more line breaks
]] - a ]] text
(?=\R) - immediately to the right, there must be a line break.
I have a large text file, originally generated in Microsoft Word, that contains these four character sequences, alongside regular text:
?~#~\
?~#~]
?~#~X
?~#~Y
From the content of what is written in the file, it appears that the sequences respectively correspond to open double quotes, close double quotes, open single quote, and close single quote. When displayed in Vim, everything in the sequences other than the question mark appears in blue.
I cannot remove them with a command such as
:.,$s/?~#~Y//
This command results in the following error from vim:
E33: No previous substitute regular expression
E476: Invalid command
Press ENTER or type command to continue
These commands also produce errors:
:.,$s/\?~#~Y//
:.,$s/\?\~\#\~Y//
Specifically,
E866: (NFA regexp) Misplaced ?
E476: Invalid command
Press ENTER or type command to continue
What would be the correct way to automatically remove or replace the sequences? Ideally, I'd like to remove the double quotes, and replace the open/close single quotes with a traditional single quote or apostrophe.
Since "everything in the sequences other than the question mark appears in blue", all characters except the question mark are probably binary characters. I'd suggest this approach:
go to the first sequence and yank it: press v to start marking, extend the mark to the end of the sequence, then press y
paste the sequence as the replace pattern from the unnamed register: :%s/Ctrl-r"//gEnter
repeat for the remaining sequences.
If you’re using a unicode-compatible encoding (such as utf-8) and your font supports it, the smart quotes will show properly.
Additionally, the digraphs for them are 6', 6", 9', and 9". This makes it pretty easy to chain a couple of substitutes to swap them for straight variants:
%s/<C-k>6'\|<C-k>9'/'/g
Etc. Wrap it in a function or command to make it easier for later.
Sorry to bump an old thread but I stumbled upon this late at night while trying to figure out how to remove the exact same characters from a bind9 configuration file that I had pasted in from a website. The aberrant characters were "~#~X", "~#~Y", " | ", and I believe another but I can't remember it at the moment. Anyway, regular expressions couldn't seem to find and replace using the above methods, but I was able to find a solution.
If you can set VIM to show the special characters in their binary representation, then you can use regex to find that. Here's how I did it:
Steps to fix
Open the file with the problem characters in VIM
(a) original method - :set encoding=latin1|set isprint=|set display+=uhex
(b) easier method - :set encoding=utf-8
NOTE: either of these should display the digraph characters in their binary form <<<>>>
(e.g. <80>, <99>, ... )
Then search and replace with VIM regex like so
:%s:\%xNN:':g #replace NN with byte code (i.e. 80, 99, etc.)
Let's break that command down, shall we:
%s: - search command looking for all occurrences due to the % at the start and the 's' for search. The ':' (colon) has been used as the delimiter in this case, but you can use other symbols to delimit the search command.
\%x - the backslash escapes the %x which represents a byte code that we're looking for (i.e. <2 x numbers between brackets>)
NN - replace with the two chars inside of the <> that you're looking to replace in your file. In my case, the byte codes were <e2>, <80>, <99>, which I had to search for separately.
:' - then, the colon delimiting the replacement group where I'm specifying a single quote to replace the byte code, you could put whatever text you want here.
:g - finally, the last colon delineation and the letter 'g' which means to search the entire file top to bottom.
You can do more research in VIM's help with:
:help isprint
Anyway, I hope this helps someone else in the future.
References:
https://blog-en.openalfa.com/how-to-edit-non-printing-and-unicode-characters-in-vim-editor
https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/108020/can-vim-display-ascii-characters-only-and-treat-other-bytes-as-binary-data
VIM How do I search for a <XX> single byte representation
I have a files consisting of words:
ndkjsank ndjksandknsakj
dnsjakndjskndjknsakjn dsajkndksnakjndsnajkndjkas
dsnjak a
And I would like to replace the (sometimes multiple) spaces between them with a single tab:
dsnak**\t**ndsjka
njdkas**\t**ndksjankda
njdsaibdusai**\t**nkdsnakjdnas
Is this possible using a regular expression in Emacs? I thought I might get away with using a rectangular selection area but the words are of varying length (and the file is far too long to do it manually).
EDIT:
This comes close but it also selects the spaces/newlines/tabs to the right of the second word:
\s-
The regexp you want is +. Call M-x replace-regex then replace + with \t. Note there's an empty space before the + sign.
Also, to produce the tab you might have to hit the C-qC-i keys. I'm not sure if it accepts the \t syntax when called interactively.
Real quick question here that i cant work out.
I have a bunch of text files across many directories. Within these dirs are text files named init.txt
In these many text files, are lots of lines starting with
Effective =
What i need to do is replace any line that contains that string with another string,
preferably in Notepad++, or UltraEdit if need be.
In Notepad++, iv found Search -> Replace in Files... which lets me specify a starting directory, but i cant get to replace the entire line with my new line.
I have never used regular expressions before (if thats the best way to do this) as iv never needed to, so any help would be very much appreciated.
Thank you for helping me out.
For your problem, a litter regular expression may help a lot. I use regex search in Notepad++ nearly everyday, and it is really useful.
I do not want to itimidate you with some complicated regex grammar. Instead, I hope after reading my answer, you might see that the basics of regular expression is not so exotic, and it is for regular people's everyday use.
Follow these instructions:
In Notepad++ press Ctrl-F, and switch to the Find in Files tab, in Serach mode part(it is on the bottom of the dialog), select Regular expression
In the Find what field, what you need to input here may vary according to the specific pattern of the text you want to replace.
If the text fragment you want to substitute always
Shows up at the beginning of a line,
There is NO LEADING WHITESPACES before the text,
It containes EXACTLY ONE SPCACE CHARACTER before the = character
^Effective = should be used as the pattern in the Find what Field.
The ^ symbol in ^Effective = means matching begin of the line (so if Effectiv = appears in the middle of a line, it will be ignored ), and the rest is the exact words to be matched.
However, if the above conditions is not all satisfied, e.g.
the text segement may containe leading whitesapces,
the number of withspaces between the word Effective and = symbol may vary, from one to unlimited
Under such circumstance, you may need to use ^Effective\s+=.
The \s+ part in ^Effective\s+= matches one to unlimited number of whitespaces(including, spaces \0x20, tabs \t, carrige-return \r, and new-line \n)
If you want to match zero to unlimited spaces between Effective and =, you can replace \s+ to \s*
In the Rplace with field, input changeLine
In filters filed, select the file type you want to search
Check In all sub-folders
Click Replace in Files button
Set the search mode in Notepad++
Find: Effective =
Replace with: changeLine
Search Mode: Extended (\n, \t, etc)
From: https://superuser.com/questions/34451/notepad-find-and-replace-string-with-a-new-line
I have been fighting this problem with the help of a RegEx cheat sheet, trying to figure out how to do this, but I give up... I have this lengthy file open in Notepad++ and would like to remove all lines that do not start with a digit (0..9). I would use the Find/Replace functionality of N++. I am only mentioning this as I am not sure what Regex implementation is N++ using... Thank you
Example. From the following text:
1hello
foo
2world
bar
3!
I would like to extract
1hello
2world
3!
not:
1hello
2world
3!
by doing a find/replace on a regular expression.
You can clear up those line with ^[^0-9].* but it will leave blank lines.
Notepad++ use scintilla, and also using its regex engine to match those.
\r and \n are never matched because in
Scintilla, regular expression searches
are made line per line (stripped of
end-of-line chars).
http://www.scintilla.org/SciTERegEx.html
To clear up those blank lines, only way is choose extended mode, and replace \n\n to \n, If you are in windows mode change \r\n\r\n to \r\n
[^0-9] is a regular expression that matches pretty much anything, except digits. If you say ^[^0-9] you "anchor" it to the start of the line, in most regular expression systems. If you want to include the rest of the line, use ^[^0-9].+.
^[^\d].* marks a whole line whose first character is not a digit. Check if there are really no whitespaces in front of the digits. Otherwise you'd have to use a different expression.
UPDATE:
You will have to do ot in two steps. First empty the lines that do not start with a digit. Then remove the empty lines in extended mode.
One could also use the technique of bookmarking in Notepad++. I started benefiting from this feature (long time present but only more recently made somewhat more visible in the UI) not very long ago.
Simply bring up the find dialogue, type regex for lines not starting with digit ^\D.*$ and select Mark All. This will place blue circles, like marbles, in the left gutter - these are line bookmarks. Then just select from main menu Search -> Bookmark -> Remove bookmarked lines.
Bookmarks are cool, you could extract these lines by simply selecting to copy bookmarked lines, opening new document and pasting lines there. I sometimes use this technique when reviewing log files.
I'm not sure what you are asking. but the reg exp for finding the lines with a digit at the beginning would be
^\d.*
you can remove all the lines that match the above or alternatly keep all the lines that match this expression:
^[^\d].*