Hello, @toti-chalo and All,

As your file is a colon delimited file, here is a possible solution :

Open the Replace dialoag ( Ctrl + H )

SEARCH (?-s)^.+?:(.+?:)(.+?:){2}(.+?)(:.*)?(?=\R|\z)

REPLACE \1\3

Tick the Wrap around option, if necessary

Select the Regular expression search mode

Click once on the Replace All button or several times on the Replace button

Notes :

The first part (?-s) ensures that the regex char . will match a single standard character, only ( not EOL ones )

Then the next part ^.+?: searches the shortest range of standard chars, from beginning of line till a colon character ( the 1st column )

Now, the part (.+?:) represents again the shortest range of standard chars till the next colon character ( the 2nd column), which is stored as group 1, due to the parentheses

Next, comes the part (.+?:){2}, which matches the next two columns 3rd and 4th with their ending colon chars

Finally, the part (.+?)(:.*)? represents the shortest range of chars, stored as group 2, optionally followed with a colon char and other columns :.* , till a line-break or the very end of the file, due to the look-ahead condition (?=\R|\z), which is not part of the overall match

In replacement, we simply rewrite the 1st and 3rd groups, standing for the 2nd and 5th columns of your table

Best Regards,

guy038

thanks very much

Hello, @kikenetxy-giga, and All,

Elementary !

Open The Replace dialoag ( Ctrl + H )

SEARCH :\R

REPLACE :

Tick the Wrap around option, if necessary

Select the Regular expression search mode

Click once on the Replace All button or several times on the Replace button

Notes :

The \R regex syntax search any kind of Line-Break ( \r\n in Windows files, \n in Unix files and \r in Mac files )

So the search regex looks for a colon :, ending a line

Best Regards,

guy038

Hello, @chalo-net, and All,

Easy with regular expressions !

Open The Replace dialoag ( Ctrl + H )

SEARCH (?-s)(^.+:[[:xdigit:]]{32}).+

REPLACE \1

Tick the Wrap around option, if necessary

Select the Regular expression search mode

Click once on the Replace All button or several times on the Replace button

Notes :

The first part (?-s) ensures that the regex char . will match a single standard character, only

Then the part ^.+: searches for the longest zone ending with a : character

Now, the part [[:xdigit:]]{32} simply selects 32 hexadecimal characters

As the part ^.+:[[:xdigit:]]{32} is embedded in parentheses , its present value is stored as group 1, which will be rewritten, during replacement

The final part .+, searching for the remainder of each line, is deleted, during replacement, as not stored in a group

Best Regards,

guy038

@Alan-Kilborn
Submitted as bug: https://github.com/notepad-plus-plus/notepad-plus-plus/issues/7780

@Martin-Zanolli :

Thanks for showing what you tried. That helps.

The regex you chose selected nothing (rather than everything) for me. That’s because the data as posted does not have a newline sequence before the </text>, which your \R</text> requires.

You don’t actually need any of the stuff to the right of the </text>, because you appear to be leaving that alone.

There are many ways to do what you want: you could use fancy lookahead sequences, or you could capture the </text> into a numbered or named group. But the easiest to explain is:

FIND = (?s-i)^Source: .+?</text> => match case, dot matches newline, match beginning of line, Source: , then at least one character up to the first </text> encountered REPLACE = </text> MODE = regular expression Source: Example Book's Louie p. 165</text><weight>45.0 Source: Example Magazine(s Martin p. 120</text><weight>30.0 Source: Example Droid's Paul p. 165</text><weight>20.0

becomes

</text><weight>45.0 </text><weight>30.0 </text><weight>20.0

The same regex will work if there is a newline, like:

Source: Example Book's Louie p. 165 </text><weight>45.0 Source: Example Magazine(s Martin p. 120 </text><weight>30.0 Source: Example Droid's Paul p. 165 </text><weight>20.0

… because the .+? includes newlines thanks to (?s-i)

If that’s not the results you wanted, or not the data you had, please read the advice below, and reply appropriately

-----

Please Read And Understand This

FYI: I often add this to my response in regex threads, unless I am sure the original poster has seen it before. Here is some helpful information for finding out more about regular expressions, and for formatting posts in this forum (especially quoting data) so that we can fully understand what you’re trying to ask:

This forum is formatted using Markdown. Fortunately, it has a formatting toolbar above the edit window, and a preview window to the right; make use of those. The </> button formats text as “code”, so that the text you format with that button will come through literally ; use that formatting for example text that you want to make sure comes through literally, no matter what characters you use in the text (otherwise, the forum might interpret your example text as Markdown, with unexpected-for-you results, giving us a bad indication of what your data really is).

Images can be pasted directly into your post, or you can hit the image button. (For more about how to manually use Markdown in this forum, please see @Scott-Sumner’s post in the “how to markdown code on this forum” topic, and my updates near the end.) Please use the preview window on the right to confirm that your text looks right before hitting SUBMIT. If you want to clearly communicate your text data to us, you need to properly format it.

If you have further search-and-replace (“matching”, “marking”, “bookmarking”, regular expression, “regex”) needs, study the official Notepad++ searching using regular-expressions docs, as well as this forum’s FAQ and the documentation it points to. Before asking a new regex question, understand that for future requests, many of us will expect you to show what data you have (exactly), what data you want (exactly), what regex you already tried (to show that you’re showing effort), why you thought that regex would work (to prove it wasn’t just something randomly typed), and what data you’re getting with an explanation of why that result is wrong. When you show that effort, you’ll see us bend over backward to get things working for you. If you need help formatting, see the paragraph above.

Please note that for all regex and related queries, it is best if you are explicit about what needs to match, and what shouldn’t match, and have multiple examples of both in your example dataset. Often, what shouldn’t match helps define the regular expression as much or more than what should match.

Here is the way I usually break down trying to figure out a regex (whether it’s for myself or for helping someone in the forum):

Compare what portions of each line I want to match is identical to every other one (“constants”), and what parts do I want to allow to be different in each line (“variables”) but still be part of the match.

Look at both the variables and constants, and see what portions of each I’ll want to keep or move around, vs which parts get thrown away completely. Each sub-component that I want to keep will be put in a regex group. Anything that gets completely thrown away doesn’t need to be in a group, though sometimes I put it in a numbered (___) or unnumbered (?:___) group anyway, if I have a good reason for it. Anything that needs to be split apart, I break into multiple groups, instead of having it as one group.

For each group, I do a mental “how would I describe to my son how to correctly match these characters?” – which should hopefully give me a simple, foolproof algorithm of characters that must match or must not match; then I ask, “how would I translate those instructions into regex sequences?” If I don’t know the answer to the second, I read documentation, or ask a specific question.

try it, debug, iterate.

@guy038 Thank you so much. I ended up using your second suggestion. I ran into an issue because my validator did not like the new row between PlanDetail and CustomProperties, but I was able to take what you provided and put the row after CustomProperties instead. I was helping a coworker with a temporary work around and she thanks you too! Happy Holidays, I’m sure Santa will give you something good in your stocking - or at least some good Karma!

@PeterJones
Thanks! I didn’t realise Python was not using the default values

@PeterJones
Thank you for your help. Your solution works. Best regards and have a nice day / evening;)

@John. Fr

Hello, @hans-dampf, @Alan-kilborn @andrecool-68 and All,

@hans-dampf, I strongly advice you to study the regexes’s world , beginning with the excellent tutorial of the Regular-Expressions.info site, below :

https://www.regular-expressions.info/tutorialcnt.html

It will certainly take you a few weeks to get an overview of the syntax of regular expressions, but it’s really worth it. ;-))

If you are in a hurry, see this part :

https://www.regular-expressions.info/shorthand.html

Moreover, regarding your second regex construction (?<=text":")*(","), this syntax seems incorrect as the quantifier *, meaning repeated 0 or more times should be, either, preceded with a character, like s*, an expression embedded with parentheses like (123)*, a character class, like [abc]* or a shorthand class, like \h*. But, it should not follow a look-behind construction !

However, I was really surprised that our Boost regex engine does not consider it as invalid !?

To explain this behavior, let us, first, consider the simple regex (?<=abc)def which searches for the string def only if  preceded with the string abc. If you add the same look-behind, giving the regex (?<=abc)(?<=abc)def it will do the same search, because look-arounds are just zero-length assertions and because they both refer about the same condition !

You could add as many identical look-behind to get the same result ( For instance (?<=abc)(?<=abc)(?<=abc)(?<=abc)(?<=abc)def would match any string def, if preceded with the string abc ! )

Indeed, the *, right after the look-behind, is taken as a real quantifier. As consecutive values are useless, the unique interesting case seems to be (?<=abc)?def which would search for the string def OR for the string def only if  preceded with the string abc. Of course, due to Boole algebra, this regex could just be simplified as the search of def ;-))

To be convinced you of that fact, consider the text, below :

1 "," 2 text":""," 3 ABCD":"","

The regexes "," or (?<=text":")*"," or (?<=text":")?"," would find the string ",", in the three lines

The regexes (?<=text":")"," or (?<=text":")+"," or (?<=text":"){1}"," or (?<=text":"){10}"," would find the string "," in line 2 only

Best Regards,

guy038

@guy038 Thank you so much for the detail and the confirmation :)

Will get some more of it tomorrow. If it helps you helping me, what more could I ask for? ;)

@Moon-Watcher said in Easier Rollback for edits:

Where do I send the check beer?

Your welcome.

Hello, @ozzy-neil, @Ekopalypse, @alan-kilborn and All,

From that link, below, giving the general structure of the JSON language :

https://www.json.org/json-en.html

Here is a work-around, using a regex S/R :

First, at the very end of your JSON file, add this new JSON object, below : { "Steven Kourepenos": "Mark Skaife", "Jeff Rubin": "Russell Ingall", "Jaime Baker": "Craig Lowndes", }

Note that the different couples Old names: New names, added, are not necessarily, listed in the same order than in the file itself. Luckily, it does not matter ;-))

Now, open the Replace dialog ( Ctrl + H )

SEARCH (?-s)("driverName":\x20)(".+?")(?=(?s:.+)^\2\h*:\h*(".+"))|(?s)\{[^{}]+\}\Z

REPLACE \1\3

Tick the Match case option, if necessary

Tick the Wrap around option

Select the Regular expression search mode

Click once on the Replace All button ( or several times on the Replace button )

So, assuming the original JSON test, with the new object containing all the couples of names, at the very end :

{ "drivers": [ { "driverName": "Jaime Baker", "carDesign": "21,fa7fed,000000,ffffff,fa7fed", "carNumber": "1", "suitDesign": "1,fa7fed,000000,ffffff", "helmetDesign": "1,fa7fed,000000,ffffff", "carPath": "mx5\mx52016", }, { "driverName": "Steven Kourepenos", "carDesign": "0,111111,cccccc,ed1c24", "carNumber": "2", "suitDesign": "13,111111,cccccc,ed1c24", "helmetDesign": "63,111111,cccccc,ed1c24", "carPath": "mx5\mx52016", }, { "driverName": "Jeff Rubin", "carDesign": "9,ffffff,1a4b9b,dff000", "carNumber": "3", "suitDesign": "23,ffffff,1a4b9b,dff000", "helmetDesign": "35,ffffff,1a4b9b,dff000", "carPath": "mx5\mx52016", }, ... ... ... ... ... { "Steven Kourepenos": "Mark Skaife", "Jeff Rubin": "Russell Ingall", "Jaime Baker": "Craig Lowndes", }

After clicking on the Replace All button, you should get the expected file :

{ "drivers": [ { "driverName": "Craig Lowndes", "carDesign": "21,fa7fed,000000,ffffff,fa7fed", "carNumber": "1", "suitDesign": "1,fa7fed,000000,ffffff", "helmetDesign": "1,fa7fed,000000,ffffff", "carPath": "mx5\mx52016", }, { "driverName": "Mark Skaife", "carDesign": "0,111111,cccccc,ed1c24", "carNumber": "2", "suitDesign": "13,111111,cccccc,ed1c24", "helmetDesign": "63,111111,cccccc,ed1c24", "carPath": "mx5\mx52016", }, { "driverName": "Russell Ingall", "carDesign": "9,ffffff,1a4b9b,dff000", "carNumber": "3", "suitDesign": "23,ffffff,1a4b9b,dff000", "helmetDesign": "35,ffffff,1a4b9b,dff000", "carPath": "mx5\mx52016", }, ... ... ... ... ...

If this S/R does the job, I’ll tell you, next time, how this regular expression works… !

Best Regards,

guy038

@PeterJones said in File "doesn't exist. Create it?" wrong extension when opening file:

the old-style dialog is just evil

LOL

In my posting with the screenshots above, I also had the new-style-dialog setting unticked.

@MarkB-Dansko said in Find Across Files - Need Better support for Results Pane:

Ok, how do I remove ALL PLUGINS from an NP++ install?

Three easiest ways:

use the -noPlugin command line argument, or close Notepad++, rename c:\program files\Notepad++\plugins folder to something else, then restart Notepad++ download a fresh .zip version of Notepad++ and unzip into separate directory, and run that copy as a “portable” Notepad++, which will have only default plugins installed

If you find it works right without plugins, then you can do a search by renaming individual subfolders of c:\program files\Notepad++\plugins – if the folder name doesn’t match the name of the DLL inside, it won’t load that plugin. (So, for example, c:\program files\Notepad++\plugins\pythonscript could be renamed to c:\program files\Notepad++\plugins\x-pythonscript temporarily to disable the PythonScript plugin.

@DeeFeeCee said in How do you revert command symbols (e.g. NUL) to actual characters?:

If you want I can send you a video

Many users have problems with the HexEditor plugin (though some others use it successfully). I don’t know that we need a video to prove that.

It also seems like the characters from x80–x9F are also rendered as their “replacement” characters

x00-x1F and x7F-x9F are defined in the Unicode standard as control characters, which is why they are rendered as their “replacement” characters.

Ÿ is the hex representation for 9F, but the character Ÿ itself is… looking it up U+0178

In some of the ANSI-style 8-bit encodings, Ÿ was at codepoint 159 (x9F). In Unicode, Ÿ is U+0178.

Your code looks like it might work, I just don’t have time today to try it out.

Hope it works for you. If it does, and you are able to do animated screenshot, that would be great to share

I really liked the animation, too!

I use screentogif.exe, which is free and really easy to use.

Wow, so I just tried deleting all the comments that were left and when I deleted

### Keep

and saved, it repositioned the methods correctly. So I’m not sure if that’s a bug or intentional. Can anyone explain? Thank you!