your “general voice of the public” about an incompatible subject will probably not be understood, if you use an incompatible language to try to transport your incompatible wishes.

Hello @xavier-xenoph,

It’s not very clear what you want to achieve, but, to my mind, you would like to change all records of your database file :

as :

Am I right about it ?

If so :

Open your database file, in N++

Open the Replace dialog ( Ctrl + H )

SEARCH (?-s)^.+(?=\|.+\|$)

REPLACE Leave EMPTY

OPTIONS Wrap around and Regular expression ticked

ACTION Click on the Replace All button

Notes :

As usual, the (?-s) modifier means that the dot ( . ) matches a standard character, ONLY and NOT any *line-break character

Then the part ^.+ represents the longest range of characters of any line, but…

ONLY IF the condition, in the look-ahead, ( (?=\|.+\|$) ) is true. That is to say if it’s followed by two | symbols, with some characters between, ( \|.+\| ), which end each line ( $ )

Note that the | symbol have to be escaped as \|, to be interpreted as literal, as it’s a special regex character, too !

Due to the empty replacement zone, the selected range, of each line, is simply deleted

Best Regards,

guy038

@tomass1047

Sorry, dude, this is not the right place to discuss that.
This Community is for Notepad++ - related discussion.
Good luck in your quest for answers–somewhere else.

There’s no way to turn it off or on, just shows it by default.

@אודי-יהודה-אברג’ל

You are really asking that in the WRONG PLACE. Sorry.

Hello @liuruiqi1993 and All,

BTW, I advice you to downgrade to the v7.5.1 version of Notepad++, because there are some encoding issues with the last two N++ versions ! See below :

https://notepad-plus-plus.org/community/topic/14936/update-to-7-5-3-file-encode-wrong/2

Now, I understand why it did,'t work with your old 5.9.4 version. Just because, since the N++ v.6.0 version, a new search engine is implemented, with the Perl Common Regular Expressions feature, of the Boost C++ regex library ! This new search engine allows you to run complicated S/R, once you’re acquainted with Regular expressions language :-))

For newby people, about regular expressions concept and syntax, begin with that article, in N++ Wiki :

http://docs.notepad-plus-plus.org/index.php/Regular_Expressions

In addition, you’ll find good documentation, about the Boost C++ Regex library, v1.55.0 ( similar to the PERL Regular Common Expressions, v5.8 ), used by Notepad++, since its 6.0 version, at the TWO addresses below :

http://www.boost.org/doc/libs/1_55_0/libs/regex/doc/html/boost_regex/syntax/perl_syntax.html

http://www.boost.org/doc/libs/1_55_0/libs/regex/doc/html/boost_regex/format/boost_format_syntax.html

The FIRST link explains the syntax, of regular expressions, in the SEARCH part

The SECOND link explains the syntax, of regular expressions, in the REPLACEMENT part

You may, also, look for valuable informations, on the sites, below :

http://www.regular-expressions.info

http://www.rexegg.com

http://perldoc.perl.org/perlre.html

Be aware that, as any documentation, it may contain some errors ! Anyway, if you detected one, that’s good news : you’re improving ;-))

@Mark-Gould

Maybe you are just doing it wrong. But since you didn’t tell us what you are doing, no one can make a judgment. :-(

Maybe check this thread for generic troubleshooting tips?

@Pietro-Nobili

Pietro, I had something different in mind.
Copy the following into nppexec dialog and run it on a python script,
then you should see the full file path output, when running on txt file
only a statement is shown. No need for an addition batch file.

@BBP-B

I assume you will find your answer here.

Cheers
Claudia