@M-Andre-Z-Eckenrode said:
Am I supposed to be able to run the portable copy of NPP while the installed copy is also running? When I tried to open the portable, it just brought my installed copy window to the front, and didn’t open anything new.
The portable version has its own settings stored within the portable folder. By default, Notepad++ runs in single instance mode. I tried it and it appears that when the Notepad++ you are attempting to open is in single instance mode, if any Notepad++ executable is open, it will switch to it instead. If you open the portable alone, with no other Notepad++ running, and change Settings | Preferences… | Multi-Instance & Date to Always in multi-instance mode, then you’ll be able to open the portable when the installed version is already running.
Then I tried closing the installed copy, but immediately got an error dialog. I was hoping to do a screenshot of it but somehow failed to (it may have been something about my session file having been corrupted, as there was no session restoration when I eventually re-opened my installed copy).
I have no guess about that.
Rather than hitting OK or whatever option it gave me in the dialog, I tried opening a new installed NPP instance via my AutoHotkey keyboard sequence so I could take some notes that hopefully wouldn’t be affected by whatever problems the first instance was having at that point, but I then immediately got another error dialog, this one specifically for Search++:
A configuration file was found, but it does not contain valid JSON and will be ignored.
Installed copies all share a single set of configuration files (for Notepad++ and plugins). This was probably related to the previous error. A possibility is that, since (if I’m following correctly) the instance with the error was still open, the file might have been present but locked, or incomplete.
Search++ puts up that message when the system says there is a file in the right place with the right name, but when I pass the file name to the JSON parser, it says it doesn’t make sense. I haven’t tested, but I suspect that could happen if the file is inaccessible as well as if it contains invalid JSON.
The next message:
A configuration file found at startup was ignored because this plugin could not use it.
Do you want to save the current configuration settings? (If Yes, the old file will be overwritten.)
is then expected when you close Notepad++; if there was some reason you didn’t want to lose the current contents of the file (for example, to diagnose how the file came to contain invalid JSON), that would let you preserve them.
I’m sorry that was such a mess. :-(
I then finally got the portable copy to open, and tried my regex in it. It all worked.
Then that means the cause is almost certainly either a plugin or a Notepad++ setting. I don’t know of any Notepad++ settings that would cause what you saw. My guess is that it’s an interaction with one of the plugins.
If you want to try to figure it out, I think the easiest way would be to go to your installed copy of Notepad++ in Windows Explorer, copy the plugins folder, then go to the portable copy, delete the plugins folder, and paste what you copied. Run the portable again and verify that all your plugins are listed. Then see what happens.
If the problem still doesn’t occur in the portable, then there must be a setting that Search++ doesn’t accommodate properly. If the problem does occur in the portable, try removing plugins one by one to see if you can isolate which one makes it go away.
I understand if you don’t want to pursue all this, though. I’ll look at the plugins listed in your debug information and see if I can find any that might cause a conflict.
