Ctrl-J (join lines) replaces LF with space

DougK.AZ

I have a private key in pem format that is split into multiple lines by line feeds. I wanted to concatenate those lines into a single line.

Pasted the key text into a new tab, selected the lines and issued a Ctrl-J. This resulted in a single line, but each LF was replaced by a space.

This is in v8.9.6.4 (64-bit) on Win 11.

guy038

Hello, @dougk.az and All,

I suppose that using this simple regex replacement, below, should work !

Open your text in N++
Move back at the very beginning of your file
Open the Replace dialog ( Ctrl + H )
Uncheck all box options
FIND \r\n?
REPLACE Leave EMPTY
Check the Wrap around option
Select the Regular expression search mode
Click, once, on the Replace All button

Here you are !

To verify that all your lines are just concatenated, without any char in between, simply use the ¶ icon of the Toolbar. All the LF characters are preserved !

Best Regards,

guy038

DougK.AZ

Thanks guy for the hint. There are no CR’s in this file, only LF’s, so an “extended” search on \n replacing with nothing did the trick!

guy038

Hi; @dougk.az and All,

First of all, I need to apologize :

Firstly, my search regex was erroneous. My bad ! I should have written :

FIND \r?\n

REPLACE Leave EMPTY

Secondly, in the last sentence of my previous post, I did a typo because I wanted to mean :

To verify that all your lines are just concatenated, without any char in between, simply use the ¶ icon of the Toolbar. All the FF characters are preserved !

Note that the regex syntax \r?\n search, either, for :

The two consecutive chars \r and \n
The character \n only

So, this new formulation, in regex mode, should work either !

BR

guy038

DougK.AZ

No worries. I had no trouble using search/replace to join the lines. My purpose with this posting was just to let the developers know that Ctrl-J is not working as I expected.

Doing a bit more research it seems that Ctrl-J works similarly to Shift-J in gVim. What I was expecting is the 2nd option below, which is not the default.

In gVim:
J: Joins the current line and the next line, inserting a space.
gJ: Joins the lines without adding any spaces or removing existing whitespace.

So this more or less explains why the space was inserted.

Doug

PeterJones

@DougK.AZ said:

My purpose with this posting was just to let the developers know that Ctrl-J is not working as I expected.

FYI, this behavior is as it is documented in the User Manual at https://npp-user-manual.org/docs/editing/ :

…

And regarding @guy038’s regex: I am surprised he didn’t suggest the simpler FIND of \R – the capital version of the escape sequence will match \r\n or \r or \n, so it handles any of the normal line endings, without having to add in the ?, so that would have been a simpler regular-expression FIND WHAT value to use.

DougK.AZ

RTFM is always the last option. :) Thanks for pointing that out and thanks to everyone that replied to this posting.

Doug

guy038

Hi, @dougk.az, @peterjones and All,

Oh, yes, Peter, you’re perfectly right ! But I must be a little tired from this heat wave. Since June 22, in the room where my desk is, even with a fan, the temperature has usually been between 29 °C and 30.5 °C. It’s awful !

BR

guy038