Hi, @patrick-tamm, @claudia-frank and @scott-sumner,

Claudia, regarding your last regex, it would better to use a lazy quantifier, just in case of lines, as below :

So a correct regex S/R should be :

SEARCH : \[.*?\]

REPLACE : []

OPTIONS : Regular expression and Wrap around and, maybe, . matches newline if brackets pair are split on two different lines !

ACTION : Click on the Replace All button

Cheers,

guy038

@bob-bob

You could do a plugin to get this behavior, or you could script it. Here’s an example (may not be fully rounded out) in Pythonscript, I call it SelectedTextCountIntoStatusBar.py; you would run it once per Notepad++ session:

Hello @rachad-antonius, @claudia-frank, @Scott-sumner, and All,

Claudia, don’t forget that the \s regular syntax matches any single character of the range [\t\n\x0B\f\r\x20\x85\xA0\x{2028}\x{2029}]

So let’s imagine this initial text, below :

Which begins with 3 empty lines

With 2 other empty lines, after line bbbbbbb

And the second to last line contains, ONLY the expression GIVEN_WORD

With your regex, ^\s*GIVEN_WORD.*, this text turns into :

Whereas the Scott’s regex, (?-s)^GIVEN_WORD.*\R gives :

This later syntax seems more correct as it matches a single line, at a time ;-)) doesn’t it ? Claudia, you may click several times on the couple Find Next | Replace, with the View > Show Symbol > Show All Characters option set !

BTW, @rachad-antonius, the \R syntax, at the end of the regex, matches the line-break characters of the current line, whatever the kind of file ( Unix, Windows, or Mac ) !

Additional Notes :

In case, @rachad-antonius, that you would like, in addition, to delete entire lines, having some blank characters ( spaces and/or tabulations ), before the GIVEN_WORD, you could use the regex ^\h*GIVEN_WORD(?-s).*\R

Secondly , depending if you prefer the GIVEN_WORD to be matched with that exact case, or not, you could choose :

The regex ^\h*(?-i)GIVEN_WORD(?-s).*\R for an exact case match

The regex ^\h*(?i)GIVEN_WORD(?-s).*\R for a match, independent of the case of GIVEN_WORD

Finally, if GIVEN_WORD represents an complete expression, containing special regex characters, I advice you to use the following one : ^\h*(?-i)\QGIVEN_WORD\E(?-s).*\R. Indeed, between the 2 syntaxes \Q and \E, you may insert any character or symbol, without no restriction !!

Refer to :

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

For instance, if you want to delete the entire lines, beginning with the string +++ | Test | +++, whatever the case of the word test, and possibly preceded, in the same line, by some blank characters, use the regex, below :

^\h*(?i)\Q+++ | Test | +++\E(?-s).*\R

Remark :

If you don’t use the quoted form \Q.......\E, the regex must be rewritten as below, which each special regex character escaped with an \ character !

^\h*(?i)\+\+\+ \| Test \| \+\+\+(?-s).*\R

Best Regards,

guy038

P. S. :

Claudia, many Thanks for your Xmas Greetings ! Sorry for not replying, in time :-< I just forgot to consult my e-mail box ;-))

@CodeSteady said:

do you have a solution?

Instead of pressing } just press right-arrow (or End) to move beyond the auto-inserted closing brace? :-)

@Claudia-Frank said:

@guy038

I was close, wasn’t I? :-D

thx for the detailed information and improvements - always a pleasure :-)

Cheers
Claudia

Yours was the one I used before guy038 made his post and it worked perfectly, so I would say you were more than close. :)

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?