Would turning off screen updates as the macro executes help in this regard?

Very likely. Not sure if that is possible with the PythonScript plugin. Since the script runs as a separate thread then the screen has a chance to update.

Another thought I had was would it be faster to run the script in a Python environment and just pass the filename in as a parameter.

Most definitely would be faster. By how much? Not sure. But it would likely require you to rewrite the script from scratch since you wouldn’t have any type of access to Notepad++ editing commands (e.g. home, cut, copy, etc).

An alternative option would be to try out the LuaScript plugin (which is a plugin I wrote). It has a very similar interface like PythonScript and Lua is known for being a very fast scripting language. The script doesn’t run in a background thread so the screen wouldn’t update (although that means the entire Notepad++ application would appear to lock up until the script is complete).

Depending if the macro isn’t too huge I’d be willing to help you port it to LuaScript. I’d be very interesting to see performance results between the two ;)

automatically update the visible content to the current state every lets say 30 seconds?

I think there use to be a plugin to monitor a document for changes. NppMonitor or something, not sure. But AFAIK this isn’t built into Notepad++ already.

How can I tell NP++ to update the visible content once on-demand by pressing a hotkey (e.g. F5)?

In the shortcut mapper you can assign a shortcut key to the “Reload from File” menu command.

Find in files and replace seems to work on text files but not word documents. I don’t know how it worked before. I will check the other posts to see if maybe there is a solution for the find and replace.

I figured out how to find the release dates of previous versions.

Thanks.

This is what I suspected. Time to find another solution.
Thanks again
mario

Hello, Peter, Gerdb42 and Scott,

Very clever solution, Scott ! Indeed :-)) I slightly modified your main idea, to obtain the regex, below :

(?-s)(?:.*\R){50}\K

Notes :

The Regular expression search mode must be checked

The Wrap around option will be, also, checked ( IMPORTANT )

The (?-s) modifier ensure the DOT will NOT match any End of Line characters

The group (?:^.*\R) is considered as a NON-capturing group, because of the syntax, before the group, itself (?:. It, also, prevents from a non-wanted behaviour, while reaching the end of file !

Finally, the \K syntax forgets the previous match and matches an zero length string, only, as there’s nothing, following the \K form

So, each time you click on the Find Next button or you hit the F3 key, you go at line 51, 101, 151, 201, and so on. The nice thing is that, when it remains less than 50 lines, near the end of file, it loops and get, again, the line 51 :-))

Unfortunately, the backwards search, with the shortcut SHIFT + F3, does NOT work :-((

So, I thought about a second solution, which seems interesting, if you navigate throughout a huge file or if you frequently move forwards and backwards, as when building a source code ! This time, the right regex is :

(?-s)(?:.*\R){50}\K\X

Follow the few steps, below :

Open the Find dialog ( CTRL + F )

Select the Mark tab

Again, the Regular expression search mode must be checked

The Wrap around option will be, also, checked ( IMPORTANT )

Check the Bookmark line option ( IMPORTANT )

Click on the Mark All button

Close the Find dialog or use the ESC key

Now, you just have to hit :

The F2 key to go forwards, every 50 lines

The shortcut Shift + F2, to go backwards, 50 lines upwards

As above, you reach the line 51, 101, 151, 201 and, towards the end of the file, loops back to line 51

Notes :

Compared with the previous regex, the \X syntax has been added. Strictly speaking, the \X form stands for a unique non-diacritic Unicode character, followed by zero or more diacritic associated marks ( as simultaneous accents, on that character )

However, these details can be generally ignored and we may consider that, most of the time, \X represents, any single character, including the End of Line characters ! So this form avoids to write the longer regex (.|\R) :-))

So this regex marks the first character of a line, ( Normal character or End of Line character ), every 50 lines !

Best Regards,

guy038

Hello, bill clinton and Gerdb42,

If I refer to the original text, posted by bill clinton, below :

https://notepad-plus-plus.org/community/topic/11716/help-with-formula-please/1

it seems, that there are two spaces between the words Log and Quantity, as well as between the Qty number and the LastAccess string.

So, rather that typing two spaces, we may use a SPACE, followed by the + quantifier ( identical to the syntax {1,}) )

That comes to the regex :

(?-i)Log +Quantity +\K\d+(?! +LastAccess)

Notes :

You’ll notice that I did NOT use the following look-behind (?<=Log +Quantity +). Indeed it’s an invalid regular expression, because this regex may represent strings of different length ( due to the + quantifier )

It is important to notice that this restriction does NOT apply to look-aheads, as ( (?! +LastAccess) )

So, I replaced the look-behind with the \K construction. Thus, once, the regex has matched the regex Log +Quantity +,
this string is forgotten and the regex engine match is reset to a zero length string !

Finally, the (?-i) modifier, at the beginning, forces the regex engine to perform a NON insensitive case search

Best Regards,

guy038

Which plug-ins have you tried?