@SRAK said:

Notepad++ can provide some limited help here.

I want the paragraphs to remain as is

Select each “paragraph” individually before issuing the Ctrl+j.
In case this is not clear: select, Ctrl+j, select, Ctrl+j, etc.

the lines in individual paragraphs joined to form 80 char long lines.

Simplest way: Size your Notepad++ window so that it is approximately 80 characters wide when you look at your data. Select the paragraph or paragraphs to affect and then issue the split lines command (or Ctrl+i).

@Mark-Olson

Thank you for testing. How do you test?

Why not posting it here? The Only problem is see, is that the link doesn’t work. :)

@PeterJones said in To start a Note Pad:

@Almighty1 said in To start a Note Pad:

not sure if using the full path\notepad++.exe will also run it or not.

Yes, that’s the way Windows works with any command-line-launched program: it can run anything that you give it the full path to, and whatever you run will start with the current working directory as the app’s working directory.

Thanks for confirming as I didn’t have the portable version around to confirm if it works or not.

I only mentioned that as with a few tasks in Task Scheduler, it will not run until I put in a Start in matching the same folder as the full path of the executable it is running in, otherwise the task won’t successfully run. A example of this is HWInfo and System Informer (formerly Process Hacker) but ofofcourse it might be a task scheduler requirement.

@Jacob-Stephenson
You have given up too early.

I’ll give you this on a platter:

Example (taken from earlier posts with your strings embedded on some lines)

abLckEXPR_cX2 cab X2c LckEXPR_ cc z aX2 cLckEXPR_ dd ab c c abcccc

Find What:(?-s)^(?=.*LckEXPR_).*\KX2
Replace With:X3
Copy the red text above exactly and insert in the appropriate field in the “Replace” function.
search mode as “regular expression”
Cursor in first position of file, click on “Replace All”

Replace All is required due to the use of the \K command.

Resulting file will be:

abLckEXPR_cX3 cab X3c LckEXPR_ cc z aX3 cLckEXPR_ dd ab c c abcccc

Terry

PS go to regex101 website where this regex and example are shown. Description on right might help you start to understand the code.

@Alan-Kilborn ,
Thanks, I did try that already, but the result is the same. It still puts that space in at the start of the line. :-(

Edit: But thanks for the input and I did find the problem after looking at it again…It’s my fault. I added a space in the Replace line. DOH!! I also added the \n, as well so thanks.

Told you my head wasn’t working right today. :)

@mkupper I appreciate your reply. The path to the executable is correct. After conferring with a co-worker, I was able to resolve this by adding code to get the logged in user account and creating a scheduled task to run as that user to launch notepad++.

@Black-Fox said in Search and replace Question - From LEICA.xml format to TOPCON.txt format for surveying.:

<RawObservation setupID=“TPSSetupID_S1_7” purpose=“normal” targetHeight=“0.000000” horizAngle=“94.912866” zenithAngle=“81.131542” horizDistance=“17.044892” slopeDistance=“17.821968” directFace=“true” timeStamp=“2024-10-17T12:17:29”>

To be replaced with this :

94.912866,81.131542,17.821968

First off, it would help greatly if you use the quote.png button that’s in the toolbar for foryum messages when posting the text of your data or proposed regular expressions. The forum software tends to mangle text to make it “prettier” for humans meaning what others can copy/paste from the forum for testing is not exactly what’s in your data. Just select some text and click the quote.png button. It will wrap the text in triple single back tick things. These are a clue to the forum software that it must not “prettify” or otherwise mangle the text.

As you did not use the magic button I’ll need to guess that you intended to post that

<RawObservation setupID="TPSSetupID_S1_7" purpose="normal" targetHeight="0.000000" horizAngle="94.912866" zenithAngle="81.131542" horizDistance="17.044892" slopeDistance="17.821968" directFace="true" timeStamp="2024-10-17T12:17:29">

should be transformed into

94.912866,81.131542,17.821968

I would do this one of two ways:
Search: (?-i)<RawObservation setupID="[^"]*" purpose="normal" targetHeight="[0-9]+\.[0-9]+" horizAngle="([0-9]+\.[0-9]+)" zenithAngle="([0-9]+\.[0-9]+)" horizDistance="[0-9]+\.[0-9]+" slopeDistance="([0-9]+\.[0-9]+)" directFace="true" timeStamp="20[0-9][0-9]-[0-9][0-9]-[0-9][0-9]T[0-9][0-9]:[0-9][0-9]:[0-9][0-9]">
Replace: $1,$2,$3

or
Search: (?-i)<RawObservation setupID="[^"]*" purpose="normal" targetHeight="[0-9]+\.[0-9]+" horizAngle="(?'horizAngle'[0-9]+\.[0-9]+)" zenithAngle="(?'zenithAngle'[0-9]+\.[0-9]+)" horizDistance="[0-9]+\.[0-9]+" slopeDistance="(?'slopeDistance'[0-9]+\.[0-9]+)" directFace="true" timeStamp="20[0-9][0-9]-[0-9][0-9]-[0-9][0-9]T[0-9][0-9]:[0-9][0-9]:[0-9][0-9]">
Replace: $+{horizAngle},$+{zenithAngle},$+{slopeDistance}

They are exactly the same expression but for the second version I used group names rather than group numbers. It makes the expressions easier for humans to read and follow.

As there is so much clutter in the previous messages I did not look to see if there are possible exceptions that I should account for in the search/replace I just posted. If the search part does not match 100% of the RawObservation things you have then post the exceptions, using the magic button, and we can help with dealing with those expression.

I usually to a first test where I search for just <RawObservation and hit the count button. I make note of the count. I then write the long regular expression and check that it also matches exactly the same count as the original <RawObservation. If not, I know there are exceptions I need to figure out and deal with.

Perfect solution, thanks a lot, you’re the man.

@LhxVinCent said in Notepad++ is cleared after exiting abnormally.:

No backup files were found in the local backup directory.

Can you paste a screenshot of your Settings > Preferences > Backup page?

Because I am not sure exactly what you mean by “local backup directory”. The possibilities that I can think of:

If you mean the one in %AppData%\Notepad++\backup\ , that only holds the session-snapshot-and-periodic-backup saves (which are the temporary copies that happen every 7 seconds [by default] when you are between Ctrl+S/File>Save; but as soon as you do a real save, that snapshot is deleted until you have more unsaved changes) If you have the Backup On Save preference set to Simple or Verbose: and have defined the Custom Backup Directory, then every time you use Ctrl+S/File>Save, it should save a backup to that custom directory. If that’s not happening, that’s a problem (which is why I want to see your Backup preferences screenshot) or instead have not enabled Custom Backup Directory, then the simple backup-on-save will be in the same directory as your file, or the verbose backup-on-save will be in the .\nppBackup\ subdirectory relative to your active file’s directory. And again, it should update or save a new copy every time you hit Ctrl+S or File>Save if this is your option setup.

For better understanding Notepad++'s various backup features in the future, you will want to read the User Manual section on the Backup Preferences (https://npp-user-manual.org/docs/preferences/#backup) as well as this Forum’s Backup FAQ

the tragedy was that the document that usually kept important records was emptied.I’ve been saving with Ctrl + S all the time during the editing process.

I was originally thinking you were just relying on “session snapshot and periodic backup”, but if you’ve been actively saving using Ctrl+S, that is reasonable behavior on your part.

As @Terry-R mentioned, v8.1.4 is pretty old at this point. Really old versions of Notepad++ used to have a bug where under certain unique Windows OS shutdown/crash conditions, a file being edited by Notepad++ would be saved as all NULL characters – you didn’t mention NULL, but maybe that’s what you are seeing. Over the last few years, Notepad++ has been drastically improved in that regard, but having a copy that’s 3.5 years old, that might be what has happened to you.

Using the techniques that @Almighty1 mentioned, or other file recovery software (the FAQ mentions a potential, though we cannot guarantee or warranty it), might help you recover your original files.

For the sake of your data going forward, I would highly recommend updating to v8.7.5 to get the last few years of bug fixes and improvements; and highly recommend reading and understanding the User Manual section and FAQ entry that I linked to earlier in this reply.

@VertyyBird It would be simpler to select the Regular expression mode, put the 2 lines you want to find in the, “Find” field and hit Replace after typing $0\r\n(new line1)\r\n(new line2)\r\n(new line3)\r\n(new line4)\r\n(new line5)\r\n(new line6)\r\n(new line7)\r\n(new lin8)\r\n(new line9)\r\n(new lline10)\r\n(new line11)\r\n(new line12)\r\n(new line13)\r\n(new line14)\r\n(new line15)\r\n(new line16)\r\n(new line17)\r\n(new lin18)\r\n(new line19)\r\n(new lline20)\r\n(new line21)\r\n(new line22)\r\n(new line23)\r\n(new line24)\r\n(new line25)\r\n(new line26)\r\n(new line27)\r\n(new lin28)\r\n(new line29)\r\n(new lline30) in the “Replace” field - the \r\n(new line) puts the new line on the next line. I am presuming that you have to add some 30 new lines

@xomx
Thanks for the advice, I’ll try it.

@PeterJones - Thanks for the assistance!

You are right, some of the parts are obvious but I didn’t want to mess up the template by deleting things that don’t apply in case it is needed to produce the correct output in the post itself. Same reason, I didn’t delete the “To accomplish this,” section because while I knew from searching that \r\n meant carriage return, in the before data, I wasn’t sure what to use because as you can see, I knew one had to look for "<setting " but then I looked at it and noticed that there are two versions of "<setting ", one being "<setting " with the second one being “<setting name=”, and obviously, nothing needed to be done for “<setting name=” so my thought was I thought, I needed to make it ignore the “<setting name=” lines as part of the find which was really what made it more difficult in the search part.

@Propono-Web-Hosting

At first I thought I could replicate your issue but in then when trying to carefully to repeat my steps so I could document the reproduction steps I discovered that a pinned portable worked fine…

What I would do is to first unpin Notepad++, make sure no instances of Notepad++ are running, and then start a portable copy using however you normally start portable copies.

Once the portable copy is running then save a copy of Notepad++'s debug info in Microsoft Notepad. Then right on the Notepad++ on the task bar, pin it, and close/exit Notepad++ to have just the pin showing.

Do not start Notepad++ using the pin just yet. Instead, right click on the pin for Notepad++ in the task bar and right click the “Notepad++” at the top of the menu that shows up, and then left click on Properties. It defaults to the Shortcut tab of the properties and is in the Target field. I don’t see an obvious way to add the command line and so appended the command line parameters I wanted to the end of the Target field.

Save that to the shortcut and start Notepad++ using the pin. Get the debug info again and verify that the path and command line exactly match what you saved when you had first started the portable copy.

I had two strange things happen when I was trying to replicate. One of that was when copy/pasting the command line parameters I needed that the “quotes” around became unbalanced. It caused Notepad++ to try to create a file named “-multiInst” which I declined. I don’t know if I made a mistake or Windows did did something to unbalance the quotes. The result was when started Notepad++ that I got some odd behavior that seems much like what you saw. That’s why I’m suggesting to first get the debug info, then to fix up the Target, and them to re-verify the debug info once I have started Notepad++ using the pin.

The other strange thing is that I normally use an installed copy of Notepad++. In the process of testing pins all of the session/tabs from my portable copy ended up getting appended to the tabs/files for the installed copy. My installed copy is single instance and the portable copies are normally run with -multiInst. As pinning does not transfer the command line I had first accidentally started a portable copy using my new pin without command line parameters. That started the portable copy in single instance mode and I suspect Notepad++ has some instance sharing stuff that resulted in my portable tabs/files getting appended to the tabs used by the installed copy.

@Terry-R Using {Delay 0.05}\2\1\2\3 in the Replace field will be more accurate

@Terry-R said in Find line containing word and the next line below it:

I’d go for a “Mark” with bookmark lines selected.

Use:(?-s)^(?=.*tweak:)(.+\R.+\R) and click Mark All. All the tweak lines and corresponding following lines are bookmarked. Then you’d just copy the bookmarked lines to another tab.

Thanks, Terry, perfect!!

@Wicke2d said in Is it possible to enable autoscroll? (Scrollclick):

Just because?

@xomx gave you the reason in the reply to your issue: the Scintilla library (used as the underlying editor component of Notepad++) doesn’t expose access to the middle-mouse-button click (ie, scrollwheel click on modern mouse architecture). Until they do, Notepad++ cannot know that the MMB was clicked in the text-editing components of Notepad++.

@PeterJones Thanks. Also, I forgot to turn on Regular expression. Can you believe it?! What a noob! :D

It works now! Thanks!