Hello @chuck-ballinger,

An other possibility is to use regular expressions !

Let’s suppose that you want to insert a X character, in column n, on any line of your file :

Open the Replace dialog ( Ctrl + H )

OPTIONS Wrap around and Regular expression checked

SEARCH (?-s)^.{n-1}\K\x20+(?=(X))|^.{0,n-1}\K ( Replace the expression n-1 with the appropriate number ! )

REPLACE ?1:n spacesX

ACTION click TWICE on the Replace All button

So, assuming the initial text, below, with a first blank line :

1 12 123 1234 12345 123456 1234567 12345678 123456789 1234567890 12345678901 123456789012 1234567890123 12345678901234 123456789012345

After two click on Replace All, we get the text :

X 1 X 12 X 123 X 1234 X 12345 X 123456 X 1234567 X 12345678 X 123456789X 123456789X0 123456789X01 123456789X012 123456789X0123 123456789X01234 123456789X012345

If you like that solution, I’ll give you, next time, some details on that regex S/R !

Best Regards,

guy038

Hello, @vasile-Caraus and All,

The general syntax of your regex is :

SEARCH (?-s)(\G|BR)((?!ER).)*?\KSR

REPLACE RR

where :

BR ( Begining Regex ) is the regex which defines the start of the defined zone, for search/replacement

ER ( Ending Regex ) is the regex which defines the end of the defined zone, for search/replacement

SR ( Search Regex ) is the regex which defines the regex to search, in any defined zone

RR ( Replace Regex ) is the regex which defines the regex replacing the search regex, in any defined zone

For instance, before the S/R, if we have :

..SR.....SR...BR......SR............SR.....ER...SR......SR...BR.......SR........ER....BR..SR......SR.....SR...ER....SR......SR..

it will give the results :

..SR.....SR...BR......RR............RR.....ER...SR......SR...BR.......RR........ER....BR..RR......RR.....RR...ER....SR......SR..

Of course, in the Vasile’s example, we have :

BR = <p class="my_class">

ER = </p>

SR = &nbsp;

RR = \x20

But, let’s suppose that we take :

BR = [01234]+

ER = [56789]+

SR = (?i)[a-z]+

RR = |$0|

So, assuming the text :

..SR.......SR....BR....SR....SR.......ER...SR........SR.....BR....SR.....ER..BR....SR......SR.....SR......ER....SR......SR....... ..Here.....is....111...a.....Simple...6....Example...of.....44....some...9999000...TEXT....to.....Search..7.....and.....Modify...

and the transformed regex S/R :

SEARCH (?-s)(\G|[01234]+)((?![56789]+).)*?\K(?i)[a-z]+

REPLACE |$0|

it would produce, as expected, the text :

..SR.......SR....BR....RR......RR.........ER...SR........SR.....BR....RR.......ER..BR....RR........RR.......RR........ER....SR......SR....... ..Here.....is....111...|a|.....|Simple|...6....Example...of.....44....|some|...9999000...|TEXT|....|to|.....|Search|..7.....and.....Modify...

Cheers,

guy038

@saikat-sahoo Yes, a clean install… if you have custom configurations, just be sure to back up those files; or can we presume that goes without saying. ;-)
If you try to save to the Programs/Notepad++ directory, I think they’re read-only… but I don’t think that would be the default… so… try the above sounds right.

okay… Oh well. Feels like a pretty obvious feature. Hope it will be in there some day! thanks for your help.

Also, didn’t mean to come off as annoyed. It’s just that when I did find my own simple solution, I was surprised no one else gave even a brief recommendation related to it. I was afraid no one would reply at all…

Also, photobucket was definitely not my first choice to post my pic. I’ll have to find a better site for future posts. I just quickly picked one and hoped that no one would mind.

Thanks again though.

This comment may be off-topic for Np++ here; but, you shouldn’t have had to do that! I suppose, though rare, that some cosmic particle corrupted wintrust.dll but; that’s suspicious behavior… to me! I’d certainly not just settle for fixing that unless you ‘know’ why it was replaced, or corrupt… especially if not missing.

If it got corrupted then it’s possible some 3rd party app may have corrupted the registry, or ‘something else is going on’ ?!? If you do auto backups of your registry I’d try to do a restore if you have one from a date prior to the issue to see if that fixes the problem. Since it may also ‘fix’?!? (cough) other issues that were the cause. At your discretion of course, as going back a few days, depending on what apps and system changes you’ve done would ‘naturally’ be affected by a restore; however not doing a restore might cause future issues left unresolved, such as a corrupted registry as in registry keys?!?

At least do a Windows Defender, or other anti-virus scan, and a sfc (systems file check). IOW although the issue affected Np++, as you pointed out, other parts fo the system were also affected (infected?). I would want to rule out the latter!
(Sorry for the slightly off -topic guys.)

Big thx working great!

Inspired by the “excel” suggestion (or otherwise “favorite open-source spreadsheet”), but wanting to replicate that inside NPP itself: use the suggestions from another recent thread to get them into aligned colums in NPP, then use the column-mode editing to cut out whichever columns aren’t wanted (or to re-order columns, or similar). :-)

But since the OP is probably long gone by now… I probably shouldn’t spend anymore brain-time on this one. :-)

@racketteer

There is some good info here on how to insert pictures (disclaimer, I wrote it), but the short of it is:

Upload a pic to Imgur (my current favorite) Use Imgur controls to copy a “markdown” link to your pic Paste that into a posting here, but put a ! in front of it

So what you’d see as you’re composing a post would look like this:

…but in the preview-pane on the right you’d see your actual picture (if you’ve done it correctly)

Thanks, that fixed it.

Maybe related to this one https://github.com/notepad-plus-plus/notepad-plus-plus/issues/3188.