@PeterJones Looking through the readme.md. Perhaps could make it easier for users to have a properties list for the lexer options, like possibly from https://github.com/mpheath/xconfig-for-notepad-plus-plus/blob/bed2f415648623b6ce0f49b6ed333fbedfdba8be/xconfig.properties#L122-L585 Possibly, a little bit of your regex tricks could rearrange to get the list of options into a file for users to view. SciTE Doc has a good lexer property listing: https://scintilla.org/SciTEDoc.html#property-xml.auto.close.tags which is where the source of information can be viewed in HTML. Getting all the information to insert into the json file is the challenge. I just thought of the Nim lexer. Notepad++ still uses the deprecated Nimrod lexer though I do not use Nim. You can see some of the hackery I had to do to recognize the Nim lexer from the Nimrod lexer here with PythonScript. Nim users who want an improved Nim lexer can access it with the HiddenLexers plugin. So benefits exist for those with the interest in the hidden lexers.

@Krzysztof-Blachnicki said: I deleted ExtSettings.ini (which was 0 byte) and… It works again. Maybe it’s n++ fault, but… For other plugins settings aren’t gone and when files are 0b they don’t cause glitchy behaviour. I’d bet it’s rather a problem with this particular plugin. If deleting the ExtSettings.ini caused the problem to go away, then I am confident it is the plugin, not Notepad++ itself, that is the culprit. The question is what now? Whom I can ask for reaction? Report the problem to @dinkumoil , the author of the plugin => https://sourceforge.net/projects/extsettings/support

@M-Andre-Z-Eckenrode said: This command requires a rectangular selection. Extend selection to the last line of the document? And, Columns++ Search neophyte that I am, I didn’t heed the suggestion. Had you heeded it, you would still have gotten a rectangular selection, as it says, extending downward from your selection — not necessarily enclosing the whole document, and in any case not the same as selecting the whole document (or selecting nothing at all) first. I should re-word that message, I’m just not sure what to say instead. It’s not actually true (since version 0.8) that a rectangular selection is required; as I mentioned before, the rules are complicated. They won’t easily fit into a message box. It makes sense when you’re using Columns++ for working with columns, but the search kind of took on a life of its own, apart from column work… hence, among other reasons, Search++. I’ve redone the experiment with all the my example text selected, and all instances of ' were successfully replaced with ’, without any anomalies. Thank you for that information. I do appreciate the help you’ve given me with this. While it doesn’t prove anything (almost nothing is ever proven when dealing with an intermittent bug), it suggests pretty strongly that something I changed in moving the Columns++ search process to Search++ has introduced a hidden instability. I’m still looking for it.

@PeterJones by reset itself i mean only the plugin and i mean it revert back to the state it was when i first installed it meaning no profiles, and everything else i changed also reset. simply a TOTAL reset of the plugin. and here is the debug info: Notepad++ v8.9.6.4 (64-bit) Build time: Jun 3 2026 - 23:47:49 Scintilla/Lexilla included: 5.6.2/5.4.9 Boost Regex included: 1_90 pugixml included: 1.15 nlohmann JSON included: 3.12.0 Path: C:\Program Files\Notepad++\notepad++.exe Command Line: Admin mode: ON Local Conf mode: OFF Cloud Config: C:\Users\אפיק גלבוע\Documents\NppSettings WinGUp: present disableNppAutoUpdate.xml: absent Periodic Backup: ON Placeholders: OFF Scintilla Rendering Mode: SC_TECHNOLOGY_DIRECTWRITE (1) Multi-instance Mode: monoInst asNotepad: OFF File Status Auto-Detection: cdEnabledNew (for current file/tab only) Dark Mode: ON Display Info: primary monitor: 1440x900, scaling 100% visible monitors count: 1 installed Display Class adapters: 0000: Description - Intel® UHD Graphics 0000: DriverVersion - 32.0.101.7088 OS Name: Windows 11 Pro (64-bit) OS Version: 25H2 OS Build: 26200.8973 Current ANSI codepage: 1252 Plugins: mimeTools (3.1) NppConverter (4.7) NppExport (0.4) NppFTP (0.29.15)

@PeterJones said: You also mentioned “uninstalling the plugins and reinstalling them” – that sounds like you have both plugins installed at the same time. I highly doubt that it’s a good idea to have both Compare and ComparePlus installed on the same instance. Sorry, I only have Compare Plus installed now - so I tried uninstalling and re-installing it to see if it was fixed. Both are not installed. As far as I can tell, neither Compare nor ComparePlus has a “cancel” action. They have a “Clear Active Compare” action. Are you saying that you hit that “Clear Active Compare” button while it’s still working on making the comparison, to stop it in the middle? Or do you just mean that you are clearing the comparison once it’s done? I am hitting this cancel button to stop it in the middle of working; [image: 1786224004669-97162e74-5601-4918-b18e-1dfa20830fa5-image.jpeg] But with normal usage (telling it to compare, looking at the results, clearing the active compare), I have never gotten to the point that the plugin just hangs indefinitely. If you have a pair of files (with no private information) that you can get to cause the hang reliably, and can explain, in detail, the procedure that you use to cause the freeze, then I would recommend that you create an issue at the plugin’s GitHub repo so that you can let @pnedev know about the problem. I will do this - although I suspect it will not reproduce since these same files worked at first for me too. Thank you…

@PeterJones Okay, yes, there are several subdir in that folder that are links (issue #18248). Actually, the first subdir is a plain one and is displayed whereas the second one is a link and is not displayed while preventing the display of the remaining data. I’ll give the RC a try. Thanks again.