This question comes up rather frequently, and it is always tackled with a regular-expression solution. This is okay… but sometimes people have trouble with that, so how about this time we throw down a Pythonscript solution? [Thanks, Alan, for the hint…]
A variant of this question is “How do I replace a list of words (and corresponding replacement values) in one document and have the replace act upon another document?”. The question in this thread is just a special case of that: Deleting is simply where a replacement value is zero length.
So I propose that the word list should have the following form, and be present in the clipboard when the script is run, with the data file to be operated on in the active Notepad++ editor tab:
DELIMITERsearhtextDELIMITERreplacementtext
where replacementtext can be empty in order to do a deletion
Here’s an example:
Text to be copied to clipboard prior to running the script:
:silver:golden
@silently@sqwalkingly
.sqwalkingly .
I purposefully used a different delimiter character on each line to show that that is possible…hmmm, maybe this just confuses things? Oh, well…
Text to be operated on, all by itself in a fresh editor tab:
Six silver swans swam silently seaward
After running the script with that editor tab active, its text should be changed to:
Six golden swans swam seaward
Note that in the second line of the list, silently is changed to sqwalkingly. But…in the third line, sqwalkingly followed by a space is deleted (no text follows the final delimiter, meaning change the search text to nothing, i.e., delete it).
Hopefully the reader can follow the progression of replacements in this case.
So…to perform the OP’s original deletion of data, one would create the word list as follows and copy it to the clipboard:
!user3;!
!user9;!
!user10;!
!user2;!
!user30;!
Remember, the format is: DELIMITERsearhtextDELIMITERreplacementtext where replacementtext can be empty in order to do a deletion (as we are doing here). This time I have arbitrarily used the ! character as the delimiter, and I was consistent about it in each line, as one usually would be.
Then, running the script in the file of the original data:
[role]
rid=2000
rdesc=Members
user=user100;user70;user4030;user10;user300;user33;user9;user2;user35;user290;user30;user158;user3;user893;user10;
One obtains, with the desired users eliminated:
[role]
rid=2000
rdesc=Members
user=user100;user70;user4030;user300;user33;user35;user290;user158;user893;
Here’s the script code for ReplaceUsingListInClipboard.py:
def RULIC__main():
if not editor.canPaste(): return
cp = editor.getCurrentPos()
editor.setSelection(cp, cp) # cancel any active selection(s)
doc_orig_len = editor.getTextLength()
editor.paste() # paste so we can get easy access to the clipboard text
cp = editor.getCurrentPos() # this has moved because of the paste
clipboard_lines_list = editor.getTextRange(cp - editor.getTextLength() + doc_orig_len, cp).splitlines()
editor.undo() # revert the paste action, but sadly, this puts it in the undo buffer...so it can be redone
editor.beginUndoAction()
for line in clipboard_lines_list:
try: (search_text, replace_text) = line.rstrip('\n\r')[1:].split(line[0])
except (ValueError, IndexError): continue
editor.replace(search_text, replace_text)
editor.endUndoAction()
RULIC__main()
