Hello, @coises, @thomas-knoefel and All, @Coises, you said : So I’m wondering, if you happen to remember, whether you tested in the order you listed, or whether you happened to test Search++ first? Well, since my previous tests were done in July 18, 2026, I don’t remenber exactly the way I used but I suppose that I first tested the native N++ search ! Thus, I decided to conduct a new series of tests. Of course, the results of the entire scan of my D: USB drive, are slightly different. Luckily, the number of matches and files containing the Fi string are identical between the Search++ search and the Notepad++ search IMPORTANT : I updated Search++ to the last 0.6.5 version, before all these tests So, this time, I first use the Search++ Find in Files dialog : I stop and re-start my W11 laptop I pluged my USB key I start N++ I ran an entire scan of my D: USB key for the Fi string, using the Search++ plugin => I got 27,081 matches in 841 files of 1,772, in 2m 10s I close N++ I unpluged my USB key I stop and re-start my W11 laptop I re-pluged my USB key I start N++ I ran an entire scan of my D: USB key for the Fi string, using the native Notepad++ search => I got 27,081 matches in 841 files of 1,772, in 1m 21s As you can see, no real difference between these tests and those of July 18 ! On the other hand, this time, the results obtained with the MultiReplace plugin are completely different. After a complete re-start of my machine I ran an entire scan of my D: USB key for the Fi string, using the MultiReplace plugin => I got 18,767 hits in 726 files in 1m 05s. Most of non text files are not scanned at all ?! I don’t understand these huge differences ? I first suspected that I allowed this option in MultiReplace settings : File Search : Skip files larger than but this option is not set ! Thus, right after this post, I’m going to post to @thomas-knoefel for possible information ! Remark that this present post is saved on a different USB drive to avoid future changes regarding the number of matches of the Fi string ! To end, @coises, you said : In any case, after weeks of running in circles, I think I will soon give up the fight to optimize performance and see what else needs work. I totally agree with this wise statement !! Best Regards, guy038

More news. After getting 24 32-bit Plug-ins working on Windows 7, I renamed the Program Files>Notepad++ folder on XP to “Notepad++ Org”, copied the whole Program Files>Notepad++ folder tree structure to XP from my Windows 7 box, and got 21 of the 24 Plug-ins to work on XP. The only problem is now, that I do not have a “Plug-in Manager” or “Plug-in Admin” that works on XP with Notepad++ V7.6.4. I can technically only install “Plug-in Manager” on XP, whereas I cannot even install “Plug-in Admin” on XP. However even if I install “Plug-in Manager”, “Plug-in Manager” cannot manager the Plug-ins running under Notepad++ V7.6.4, since V7.6.4 uses a different installation configuration. So my option now is to install the 32-bit Plug-ins on the Windows 7 box and then copy same to the XP box, and if they work then great, if not then bad luck hey? All you have to do, if the 32-bit Plug-ins do not work on XP, is to answer yes when asked if you wish to remove for compatibility reasons, or delete the incompatible Plug-in name folder under the Program Files/notepad++\plugins folder, e.g. C:\Program Files\Notepad++\plugins\csvquery to remove the 32-bit “csvquery” Plug-in. I hope that what I have learned is of some help to someone. Cheers from Aussie mate and happy Notepad++ing hey? :-)

@Alexander-Vorobyov It will be easier for others on the forum to help you if you share debug info (?->Debug Info from the Notepad++ main menu). I seem to recall that the specific problem of Notepad++ overwriting files with a lot of NUL characters was fixed a long time ago, but I’m not super familiar with this topic.

For those being directed here by other links from the forum, @Ekopalypse has a newer version available at his github, here.

I had sent a comment before this one which is not yet visible to me. Just wanted to let you know it seems solved. Other plugins struggled as well so I completely uninstalled npp and started from scratch. Now it works for me as a normal user.

@PeterJones sure.

@guy038 , Thank you. Now, I will have to look at your code, but while I was signed out, I had another one of those epiphany things. :-) Figured it out with the reduced complexity by allowing everything after the this and stopping before the \) with the lookahead, by using this regex: \Kthis\.\K(.+)(?=\)) By doing this I was able to remove the longer more complex one that only went 3 levels deep, and reducing my or construct by one or level. This is what I can get now: [image: 1641951576189-flobjectlistsuccess2.png] I think I have a problem with overthinking things. :-) I was looking for the one you showed up there, and I might still be able to use it, somewhere else, so thanks. Lee

@guy038 Hello @guy038, Thanks for this thorough test, and no, you didn’t do anything wrong. Your investigation uncovered two separate behaviors in the code: Binary Files: MultiReplace “Find in Files” currently skips binary files, while native N++ searches every file it lists. That accounts for most of the gap in your USB drive numbers. I’ll look at how to make this configurable and more transparent. UTF-16 Bug: There is indeed a bug in how “Find in Files” handles UTF-16 encodings compared to “Find in Docs” and “Replace in Files”. This most likely explains the missing files in your smaller Test folder too. Since the forum isn’t ideal for sharing files and tracking bug fixes, I have opened a GitHub issue for this here: https://github.com/daddel80/notepadpp-multireplace/issues/133 I would gladly take you up on your offer to share the E:\Test folder contents so I can verify the fix against them. Could you please attach that folder as a zip or provide a link in the GitHub issue? Thanks again for your time and for helping to polish the next release candidate!

I’ve been footling around with my plugin a bit to try and generate a PR automatically when a new version is released. So - is the layout of the json files significant. Most of the entries look like \t\t\t{ \t\t\t"folder-name": "Linter++", \t\t\t"display-name": "Linter++", \t\t\t"version": "1.0.3.0", \t\t\t"npp-compatible-versions": "[8.7.5,]", \t\t\t"id": "F56573351010B62BFC75039725496C8687D53E82A3F47074F1F1B629A37A92C1", \t\t\t"repository": "https://github.com/ThosRTanner/notepad-pp-linter/releases/download/1.0.3/plugin_dll_ARM64.zip", \t\t\t"description": "Allows realtime code check against any checkstyle-compatible linter: jshint, eslint, jscs, phpcs, csslint, and many others.", \t\t\t"author": "Tom Tanner", \t\t\t"homepage": "https://github.com/thosrtanner/notepad-pp-linter" \t\t\t}, So I thought i could do my updater in python, just load up the json file, modify my entry, and dump it back, then commit One entry (just one) uses spaces instead of tabs. So my question is is there an official layout for these files? Is any valid json permissible (all on one line for instance), or is it expected to be formatted as 1 line per key and indented with tabs? Would converting those spaces to tabs as part of my PR be frowned upon, or should I just read the file and modify the lines appropriately?

^([A-Z])([a-z]+)\R(?i:\1)\2$

@Bruno-Bonaspetti , Have a little patience. You already asked that question yesterday here. This is not paid support that is guaranteed to get a reply in 5 minutes or your money back; this is a Community of fellow users of Notepad++, and as such, any who read here regularly and answer questions do so solely on their free time, and they might not always have time to answer a specific question – especially one that might take more knowledge of a specific sub-tool of Notepad++. Furthermore, this topic, “Little Dialog-wrapper for PythonScript” is focused on the Dialog Wrapper library for the PythonScript plugin; it briefly mentioned a script that was using that wrapper to help with the user interface, but the translation is not the focus of this discussion. Your original question was in the right place. This question was not. I will try to give a brief answer in the other topic.

@Ekopalypse thanks for the answer. 🤔 Adding listeners for the BufferActivated event and manually setting the style each time the user switches to a different tab adds a lot of code and possibilities for bugs, for something that the user typically only does once… Honestly I think I’ll undo the new code and go back to just asking the user to restart Notepad++ after they change the default color set.

@Coises said in [New plugin] Columns++: @Pete-Run said in [New plugin] Columns++: So my request would be an option to “Elastically Ignore” lines with no tabs. Columns++ | Profile… | Do not allow text following the last tab on a line to span columns. should not be checked for the example given. AhHa, I am not sure that I understand “Do not allow text following the last tab on a line to span columns” but that works niceley, thanks. I still don’t quite understand your use case. What is it you are trying to do that would be easier if elastic tabstop positions were shown only for selected lines? I only occasionally use NPP for NPP shortcuts.xml, some Lua, AHK etc. I was brought up on IBM mainframe early Text editors and JCL etc, so I am at home with text editors so am happy to use it for text manipulation, especially when Ms Word macros are lacking. My main gripe with tabs in textual situations is that they can “mess up/misalign” when copied between applications, hence my desire to sometimes use monospace fonts with spaces rather than tabs and of course in tables a word processor, but many situations do not afford tables. So, thanks again for your Columns++ and Elastic Tabs which helps keep my text aligned in different scenarios.