@guy038 ,

I agree with your interpretation. I just didn’t see enough in my first reading to get that far.

Because the original post didn’t show a “before” and “after” state, I missed the “every line that starts with @” portion. Since I didn’t see enough information, I gave a brief reply that introduced the concepts required, and linked to the appropriate reading for those concepts.

But yes, doing it my way with the “every line that starts with @”, I would change my FIND to (?-s)^@(.*)$ and the full replacement would be <$1>.

For @Elnaz-Kia ,

The substitution escape sequences section of the same usermanual page briefly describes @guy038’s $0 notation and my $1 is described in the section on $ℕ in the document. Both are essentially equivalent, with @guy038 making use of the automatic “whole match” capture group and mine using an explicit capture group.

Many thanks! That helped. :D

@Dave-Clark ,

A text file knows nothing about chapters, headers, or the like. It is a series of bytes which are all interpreted as text (hence the name “text file”).

I don’t know about the Kindle formats in particular, but when I’ve looked into open-source EPUB format, it is basically a zipped collection of HTML and associated images.

So maybe if you wrote your text file as HTML, using HTML syntax for headings (<h1>, <h2>, …), that would give you what you need.

But none of this is really on-topic here, because the answer would be the same whether you use Notepad++ (which you should), or Windows notepad.exe (shudder), or copy con textfile.txt (↗) to edit your file.

@stmav
Sorry, but this is hardly possible with the built-in UDL since parts
are dynamic and UDL does not provide regex terms to identify different parts.
You have to write your own lexer for this case.
A scripting plugin like PythonScript can be used to make this possible.
If you are familiar with another programming language there may be ways to use it as well.

Hello, @robin-cruise and All,

In the search regex (?s)(https://xxx.com/en/)([^"]+)".+?\1(?!\2").+?" :

The regex part https://xxx.com/en/ looks for the literal string https://xxx.com/en/, stored as group 1

The regex part ([^"]+)" represents the remainder of the internet address ( for instance the string page-AAA.html ), followed with a double-quote, because [^"]+ is a non-null range of consecutive chars, all different from ", stored as group 2

Now, the part .+? stands for the shortest range of any char till…

The group 1 ( \1 ). So an other string https://xxx.com/en/

Which must be followed by .+?", which represents the shortest non-null range of any char before a double-quote…

But ONLY IF this range is different from \2 ( i.e. different, for instance, from the string page-AAA.html and a " char )

Note also that the [^"]+" syntax, without the parentheses, is more restrictive than .+?" and must be preferred because of the negative look-ahead (?!\2")

Besst Regards,

guy038

Hello, @patrick-rozon , @peterjones , @terry-r and All,

Here is my solution. Not ideal, of course, as it would be suitable for small file size, only, but quite flexible !. It also uses a dummy character, not present in current file. I presonally chose the ¤ char of my French keyboard but, of course, any other char may be used

Add a line ¤123456 at the very end of current file

SEARCH (?s)&(.*¤)(\d)(\d+)|¤\d+

REPLACE ?1\2\1\3\2

Tick the Wrap around option

Select the Regular expression seardh mode

Hit, repeatedly, on Alt + R ( Replace button ) OR on Alt + A ( Replace All button ) till one of the follwing messages occurs :

Replace: one occurrence was replaced. No more occurrences were found.

Replae All: 0 occurrences were replaced in entire file

One advantage of this method is that you may change, either, the modudlo and the values, without changing the regex S/R ! For instance, let’s suppose you want to replace any & char, by any even number ( so, modulo 5 ), in decreasing order, Then, simply add the line ¤86420 at the very end of the file and just use the regex S/R mentionned above !

So, from the INPUT text :

------------&--------------&----&&-----------------&----------------&----- ------------&--------------&----&&-----------------&----------------&----- ------------&--------------&----&&-----------------&----------------&----- ¤86420

After 19 replaceemnts, we would get the OUTPUT text :

------------8--------------6----42-----------------0----------------8----- ------------6--------------4----20-----------------8----------------6----- ------------4--------------2----08-----------------6----------------4-----

Best Regards,

guy038

…, I suggested to only save the changes that are different from the default file to the users file.

but that means it has to have its own name, otherwise it won’t
work with portable versions where EVERYTHING has to be under a root directory.

@Alan-Kilborn
Got it, thanks!

@Pedro-Contreras ,

Assuming your post converted ASCII quotes to smartquotes because you didn’t use the </> button in the forum, then an answer that works for the data you presented is to use regular expression mode with FIND = (?-s)^([^,\r\n]*?,){2}'([^,\r\n]*?)',(?1){4}'([^,\r\n]*?)',.*$ and REPLACE = $2 $3

(2X0997,'navx8n','nap345','','','Nava','A','firstname@yahoo.com','no 2Z,n street,saras ng,selaiyur','','chennai','TN ','IN','0000X3','0000-00-00')

becomes

nap345 firstname@yahoo.com

----

Do you want regex search/replace help? Then please be patient and polite, show some effort, and be willing to learn; answer questions and requests for clarification that are made of you. All example text should be marked as literal text using the </> toolbar button or manual Markdown syntax. To make regex in red (and so they keep their special characters like *), use backticks, like `^.*?blah.*?\z`. Screenshots can be pasted from the clipboard to your post using Ctrl+V to show graphical items, but any text should be included as literal text in your post so we can easily copy/paste your data. Show the data you have and the text you want to get from that data; include examples of things that should match and be transformed, and things that don’t match and should be left alone; show edge cases and make sure you examples are as varied as your real data. Show the regex you already tried, and why you thought it should work; tell us what’s wrong with what you do get. Read the official NPP Searching / Regex docs and the forum’s Regular Expression FAQ. If you follow these guidelines, you’re much more likely to get helpful replies that solve your problem in the shortest number of tries.

yes, nice answer. But very hard , because I need to change almost all words from every sentence:)

Hi, @scott-nielson and All,

A bit off-topic : Yeah, it’s a common mistake when doing translations ! In French, this kind of words are known as “faux amis” words ! Just because :

In English, the adjective sensible have the French sense of raisonnable / sensé or pratique

In French the adjective sensible have the English sense of sensitive or noticable

So, I should have used the expression sensitive to case !

Cheers,

guy038

I tried it now - the function works!
Now it doesn’t work again - there is nothing in the window again!
And the function did not find a match!
I did everything as you say here!2021-08-07_13-29-31.png

Hi Peter,

I figured out what you were trying to tell me and YES I was able to find the missing files.

Thank you for your assistance. Very much appreciated.

Greg Shaw

@Alan-Kilborn Thank you. That works prefectly!

@Чёрный-Хомячок

It looks like you have a binary file, and you should not edit that with Notepad++ (a text editor, not a binary editor).

You should edit such a file with a “hex editor”, but in your case since you don’t know already these things it is probably ill-advised for you to edit it at all.

@Luis-Piña-III ,

Do you have two views visible?

@Sheraz-Ahmed

So…what makes the example BISM different from the other occurrences of BISM? This would be critical to know in order to offer advice to you.

For those interested, there’s a PythonScript way of doing this sort of thing, HERE.

NP …Thanks again Terry … Cheers

@Caro-Chennouf ,

I figured out why my regex wasn’t working, so was able to get it to properly match an N-line paragraph that has a repeat later.

if you’re in v8.x, go to Settings > Preferences > Highlighting Go to the Mark All section and uncheck Match whole word only
c88196e3-89b5-4a06-8971-07bdbc24e946-image.png Go to the first line (Ctrl+Home) FIND the first instance of each paragraph Search > Find FIND WHAT = (?-s)((^.+?(\R|\Z))+)(?=(?s:.*)\1) Search Mode = ☑ Regular Expression FIND NEXT
=> this highlights the first paragraph that is repeated somewhere else
f7ea6590-2d52-42d7-866c-0c8d8456b4d1-image.png Use Search > Mark All > Using #th Style (or right click context menu > Style All Occurrences of Token)
=> all of the instances of that first paragraph should be marked with that style number
04df6ffc-e045-4443-a690-d0d2b60bc17e-image.png Use Search > Next or F3 from the editor window, or the FIND NEXT button in the FIND dialog, to select the next “first instance of a paragraph”, and style using a different #th style. Repeat as necessary.
b162546d-52a7-405c-b113-3faa0da8ffa4-image.png

So it’s not 100% automated, but it’s better than manually having to find each paragraph (chorus or bridge) And remember, this will not be saved in the file; the next time you open it, you’ll have to do it again.