Removing empty lines in Notepad++ - regex

How can I replace empty lines in Notepad++? I tried a find and replace with the empty lines in the find, and nothing in the replace, but it did not work; it probably needs regex.

There is now a built-in way to do this as of version 6.5.2
Edit -> Line Operations -> Remove Empty Lines or Remove Empty Lines (Containing Blank characters)

You need something like a regular expression.
You have to be in Extended mode
If you want all the lines to end up on a single line use \r\n. If you want to simply remove empty lines, use \n\r as #Link originally suggested.
Replace either expression with nothing.

There is a plugin that adds a menu entitled TextFX. This menu, which houses a dizzying array of quick text editing options, gives a person the ability to make quick coding changes. In this menu, you can find selections such as Drop Quotes, Delete Blank Lines as well as Unwrap and Rewrap Text
Do the following:
TextFX > TextFX Edit > Delete Blank Lines
TextFX > TextFX Edit > Delete Surplus Blank Lines

notepad++
Ctrl-H
Select Regular Expression
Enter ^[ \t]*$\r?\n into find what, leave replace empty. This will match all lines starting with white space and ending with carriage return (in this case a windows crlf)
Click the Find Next button to see for yourself how it matches only empty lines.

Press ctrl + h (Shortcut for replace).
In the Find what zone, type ^\R ( for exact empty lines) or ^\h*\R ( for empty lines with blanks, only).
Leave the Replace with zone empty.
Check the Wrap around option.
Select the Regular expression search mode.
Click on the Replace All button.

You can follow the technique as shown in the following screenshot:
Find what: ^\r\n
Replace with: keep this empty
Search Mode: Regular expression
Wrap around: selected
NOTE: for *nix files just find by \n

This worked for me:
Press ctrl + h (Shortcut for replace)
Write one of the following regex in find what box.
[\n\r]+$ or ^[\n\r]+
Leave Replace with box blank
In Search Mode, select Regex
Click on Replace All
Done!

In notepad++ press CTRL+H , in search mode click on the "Extended (\n, \r, \t ...)" radio button then type in the "Find what" box: \r\n (short for CR LF) and leave the "Replace with" box empty..
Finally hit replace all

Well I'm not sure about the regex or your situation..
How about CTRL+A, Select the TextFX menu -> TextFX Edit -> Delete Blank Lines and viola all blank line gone.
A side note - if the line is blank i.e. does not contain spaces, this will work

1) Ctrl + H ( Or Search 🠆 Replace..) to open Replace window.
2) Select 'Search Mode' 'Regular expression'
3) In 'Find What' type ^(\s*)(.*)(\s*)$ & in 'Replace With' type \2
^ - Matches start of line character
(\s*) - Matches empty space characters
(.*) - Matches any characters
(\s*) - Matches empty spaces characters
$ - Matches end of line character
\2 - Denotes the matching contend of the 2nd bracket
Refer https://www.rexegg.com/regex-quickstart.html for more on regex.

You can search for the following regex: ^(?:[\t ]*(?:\r?\n|\r))+ and replace it with empty field

Ctrl+H.
find - \r\r
replace with - \r.

This obviously does not work if the blank lines contain tabs or blanks. Many web pages (e.g. http://www.guardian.co.uk/) contain these white lines, as a result of a faulty HTML editor.
Remove white space using regular expression as follows:
change pattern: [\t ]+$
into nothing.
where [\t ] matches either tab or space. '+' matches one or more occurrences, and '$' marks the end of line.
Then use notepad++/textFX to remove single or extra empty lines.
Be sure that these blank lines are not significant in the given context.

Edit >> Blank Operations >> Trim Leading and Trailing Spaces (to remove black tabs and spaces in empty lines)
Ctrl + H to get replace window and replace pattern: ^\r\n with nothing (select regular expression)
Note: step 1 will remove your code intendation done via tabs and blank spaces

Sometimes \n\r etc not work, here to figure it out, what your actually regular expression should be.
Advantage of this trick: If you want to replace in multiple file at once, you must need this method. Above will not work...

CTRL+A, Select the TextFX menu -> TextFX Edit -> Delete Blank Lines as suggested above works.
But if lines contains some space, then move the cursor to that line and do a CTRL + H. The "Find what:" sec will show the blank space and in the "Replace with" section, leave it blank.
Now all the spaces are removed and now try CTRL+A, Select the TextFX menu -> TextFX Edit -> Delete Blank Lines

/n/r assumes a specific type of line break. To target any blank line you could also use:
^$
This says - any line that begins and then ends with nothing between. This is more of a catch-all. Replace with the same empty string.

I did not see the combined one as answer, so search for ^\s+$ and replace by {nothing}
^\s+$ means
^ start of line
\s+ Matches minimum one whitespace character (spaces, tabs, line breaks)
$ until end of line

This pattern is tested in Notepad++ v8.1.1
It replaces all spaces/tabs/blank lines before and after each row of text.
It shouldn't mess with anything in the middle of the text.
Find: ^(\s|\t)+|(\s|\t)+$
Replace: leave this blank
Before:
_____________________________________
\tWORD\r\n
\r\n
\tWORD\s\tWORD\s\t\r\n
\r\n
\r\n
WORD\s\s\tWORD\t\sWORD\s\r\n
\t\r\n
\s\s\s\r\n
WORD\s\sWORD\s\s\t\r\n
____________________________________
After:
_____________________________________
WORD\r\n
WORD\s\tWORD\r\n
WORD\s\s\tWORD\t\sWORD\r\n
WORD\s\sWORD
_____________________________________

A few of the above expressions and extended expressions did not work for me, but the regular expression "$\n$" did.

An easy alternative for removing white space from empty lines:
TextFX>TextFX Edit> Trim Trailing Spaces
This will remove all trailing spaces, including trailing spaces in blank lines.
Make sure, no trailing spaces are significant.

this work for me:
SEARCH:^\r
REPLACE: (empty)

Related

Notepad++ and regex (multiline)

I have been facing a challenge. I have a text file with the following pattern:
SOME RANDOM TITLE IN CAPS (nnnn)
text text text
more text
...
SOME OTHER RANDOM TITLE IN CAPS (nnnn)
What is for sure is that what I want to extract are lines with a bracket and a date ex: (2015) ; (20008)
After the (nnnn) there is no text, sometimes space and CR LF, sometimes just CR LF
I would like to delete everything else and keep just the TITLE LINE with the brackets
The time I spent I could have done it by hand (there are 100lines) but I like the challenge :)
I thought I could find the issue but I am stuck.
I have tried something along this line:
^.*\(\d\d\d\d\)(?s)(.*)(^.*\(\d\d\d\d\))
But I don't get what I want. I can't seem to stop the (?s)(.*) going all the way to the end of the text instead of stopping at the next occurrence.
I suggest using the Search > Mark feature. Use a pattern like \(\d{4}\) and check the "Bookmark Line" option then click "Mark All". Then use Search > Bookmark > Remove Unmarked Lines. This will remove all lines except the ones that have matched your pattern.
Note: If it's possible to have parentheses with 4 digits within your other lines you could add $ to the end of the expression to ensure that the pattern only matches the end of the line. E.g. more text (1234) and other stuff would be matched by the pattern I gave above but if you use pattern \(\d{4}\)$ it will no longer match.
If you want to be even more specific with your pattern by looking for those lines with only uppercase letters and spaces followed by parentheses with 4 digits inside where the parentheses are at the end of the line, then you could use a pattern like this: [A-Z ]+\(\d{4}\)$
Sample input:
SOME RANDOM TITLE IN CAPS (2008)
text text text
more text
...
SOME OTHER RANDOM TITLE IN CAPS (2010)
Here is how to mark the lines:
After clicking "Mark All" here is what you see:
Now use Search > Bookmark > Remove Unmarked Lines and you get this:
The following RegEx maches the 2 lines with brackets containing 4 numbers:
.*?\(\d{4}\)\s*
It starts matching anything at start zero or more times (non greedy), then it matches a start bracket followed by 4 numbers. Finally ending White Space and new line.
If you want to remove all lines but the ones that end with (4numbers) you may try with this:
^(?!.*\(\d{4}\)\h*$).*(?:\r?\n|\z)
Replace by: (nothing)
See demo

How do I replace a newline in Atom?

In Atom, If I activate regex mode on the search-and-replace tool, it can find newlines as \n, but when I try to replace them, they're still there.
Is there no way to replace a newline-spanning string in Atom?
Looks like Atom matches newlines as \r\n but behaves inconsistently when replacing just the \n with nothing.
So newlines seem to match \s+ and \r\n, and only "half" of the line-ending matches \n.
If you replace \n with a string, nothing happens to the line-ending, but the string is appended to the next line
If you replace \r with a string, nothing happens at all, but the cursor advances.
It's alittle bit late to answer but i use following term to search and it works with Atom v1.19.7 x64
\r?\n|\r
BR
None of these answers helped me.
What worked for me:
I just added a new line at the end of the file.
Shift + <- (arrow to left)
Ctrl + C
Ctrl + V in the "Replace in current buffer" line
Just copied the new line and pasted it in :D
DELETE INVISIBLE LINE BREAKS IN CODE WITH ATOM
(using the "Find in buffer" function)
(- open your code-file with the Atom-Editor)
Hit cmd(mac)/ctrl(win) + f on your keyboard for activating the Find in buffer function (a little window appears at the bottom atom-screen edge).
Mark your Code in which you want to delete the invisible Line breaks.
Click on the Markup-Mode Button and after that on the Regex-Mode (.*) Button and type into the first field: \n
After that click replace all.
[And Atom will delete all the invisible line breaks indicated by \n (if you use LF-Mode right bottom corner, for CRLF-Mode (very common on windows machines as default) use \r\n) by replacing them with nothing.]
Hope that helps.
Synaikido
You can use backreferencing:
eg. Replace triple blank lines with a single blank line
Find regex: (\r\n){3}
Replace: $1
You can indicate double blank lines with (\r\n){2} ... or any number n of blank lines with (\r\n){n}. And you can omit the $1 and leave replace blank to remove the blank lines altogether.
If you wanted to replace 3 blank lines with two, your replace string can be $1$1 or $1$2 (or even $1$3 ... $3$3 ... $3$2 ... ): $1 just refers to the first round bracketed expression \r\n; $2 with the second (which is the same as the first, so $1$1 replaces the same way as $1$2 because $1 == $2). This generalizes to n blank lines.
The purists will probably not like my solution, but you can also transform the find and replace inputs into a multiline text box by copying content with several line breaks and pasting it into the find/replace inputs. It will work with or without using regex.
For example, you can copy this 3 lines and paste them into both find and replace inputs:
line 1
line 2
line 3
Now that your inputs have the number of lines that you need, you can modify them as you want (and add regex if necessary).
Heh, very weird, Ctrl+Shift+F does not work too!
Workaround: open Atom Settings, then Core Packages->line-ending-selector, scroll to bottom to see tips about command to convert line endings: 'convert-to-LF'.
To convert: Cmd+Shift+P type 'line' and choose 'convert-to-LF' - done!
You could change default option 'Default line ending' from 'OS' to 'LF'.
Also after settings changed your new files will use 'LF'.
prerequisite: activate 'Use Regexp'
in my version of atom (linux, 1.51.0) i used the following code to add 'export ' after a new line
search '\n'
replace '\nexport '
worked like a charm
\r\n didn't match anything

How do I remove all non-ASCII characters with regex and Notepad++?

I searched a lot, but nowhere is it written how to remove non-ASCII characters from Notepad++.
I need to know what command to write in find and replace (with picture it would be great).
If I want to make a white-list and bookmark all the ASCII words/lines so non-ASCII lines would be unmarked
If the file is quite large and can't select all the ASCII lines and just want to select the lines containing non-ASCII characters...
This expression will search for non-ASCII values:
[^\x00-\x7F]+
Tick off 'Search Mode = Regular expression', and click Find Next.
Source: Regex any ASCII character
In Notepad++, if you go to menu Search → Find characters in range → Non-ASCII Characters (128-255) you can then step through the document to each non-ASCII character.
Be sure to tick off "Wrap around" if you want to loop in the document for all non-ASCII characters.
In addition to the answer by ProGM, in case you see characters in boxes like NUL or ACK and want to get rid of them, those are ASCII control characters (0 to 31), you can find them with the following expression and remove them:
[\x00-\x1F]+
In order to remove all non-ASCII AND ASCII control characters, you should remove all characters matching this regex:
[^\x1F-\x7F]+
To remove all non-ASCII characters, you can use following replacement: [^\x00-\x7F]+
To highlight characters, I recommend using the Mark function in the search window: this highlights non-ASCII characters and put a bookmark in the lines containing one of them
If you want to highlight and put a bookmark on the ASCII characters instead, you can use the regex [\x00-\x7F] to do so.
Cheers
To keep new lines:
First select a character for new line... I used #.
Select replace option, extended.
input \n replace with #
Hit Replace All
Next:
Select Replace option Regular Expression.
Input this : [^\x20-\x7E]+
Keep Replace With Empty
Hit Replace All
Now, Select Replace option Extended and Replace # with \n
:) now, you have a clean ASCII file ;)
Another good trick is to go into UTF8 mode in your editor so that you can actually see these funny characters and delete them yourself.
Another way...
Install the Text FX plugin if you don't have it already
Go to the TextFX menu option -> zap all non printable characters to #. It will replace all invalid chars with 3 # symbols
Go to Find/Replace and look for ###. Replace it with a space.
This is nice if you can't remember the regex or don't care to look it up. But the regex mentioned by others is a nice solution as well.
Click on View/Show Symbol/Show All Character - to show the [SOH] characters in the file
Click on the [SOH] symbol in the file
CTRL=H to bring up the replace
Leave the 'Find What:' as is
Change the 'Replace with:' to the character of your choosing (comma,semicolon, other...)
Click 'Replace All'
Done and done!
In addition to Steffen Winkler:
[\x00-\x08\x0B-\x0C\x0E-\x1F]+
Ignores \r \n AND \t (carriage return, linefeed, tab)

Unwrap text in Sublime Text 2

I'd like to unwrap lines so that I can turn them from lines with hard line-breaks to no line breaks.
Specifically, this means that contiguous runs of lines with non-whitespace should be joined together Essentially, any \n with no whitespace on either side should be replaced with a single space. Other linebreaks shouldn't get touched.
I feel like it ought to be a search-and-replace with a search string something like (?!\n)\n(?!\n) -> , but that doesn't work, as it doesn't match anything.
Is there an ST2 built-in command for this?
any \n with no whitespace on either side
(?<!\s)\n(?!\s)
other linebreaks shouldn't get touched.
(?<!(?:\s|\n))\n(?!\s)
Replace with ''
As #flow mentioned, there are built-ins for that task. Just select the lines you want to join and press Ctrl + J.
And your way should works too. Only you missed a bit. It should be (?<!\n)\n(?!\n)
The following solution works best for text copied from a console log with 80 columns. It only removes \n if the line touches the last column.
Find:
(.{80})\n
Replace:
$1

Remove double spacing

Sometimes, copy pasting code from my email makes everything have an extra blank line.
For example
1: hi
2:
3: hello
4:
Is there a way to target these empty lines with regex and delete them?
I'm using notepad++ with the search(with regex) and replace capability.
Because Notepad++ regex operates only line by line, without a multi-line mode, you can't remove entire lines with regex alone. This is no longer true as of Notepad++ 6.0, which now uses PCRE as its regex engine and allows for multi-line replacements. See this answer for more info.
The TextFX plugin that Notepad++ ships with allows you to remove blank lines without using regex. Just highlight your entire document (Ctrl+A) and do TextFX > TextFX Edit > Delete Blank Lines. If your selection or document begins and/or ends with a blank line though, those lines won't be removed automatically — but removing those is just a matter of:
Ctrl+Home
Del
Ctrl+End
Backspace
To remove double spacing in Notepad++ (I'm using v7.8.4) go to: Edit, Line Operations, Remove Empty Lines.
I don't have notepad++, but the regular expression "^$" (without the quotes) matches only blank lines. Perhaps notepad++ will allow you to replace matches of that regular expression with the empty string, thus removing the blank lines.
Search > Replace...
Search Mode = Extended
Find what : \r\n\r\n
Replace with : \r\n