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    • PeterJonesP
      PeterJones
      last edited by

      Personally, this looks like a question begging for a scripting environment solution, not a pure-NPP solution.

      I’m sure @Claudia-Frank could whip up the PythonScript solution in no time.

      Since I’m not a python guru, I’d choose my go-to language of Perl, and send it through a one-liner:

      perl -lpi.bak -e "$_ = sprintf qq(%-256s %s), split ' ', $_, 2" $(FULL_CURRENT_PATH)
      

      (It will run in NppExec or even through Run > Run)

      That oneliner assumes the first word is never more than 256 characters; you can use any width you want by replacing %-256s. (Nifty aside: if you don’t know the maximum length of the first-word strings, but didn’t care about characters beyond N [say, for example, 40 characters], you could use %-40.40s, which would then pad to 40characters when the first word is short, and truncate to 40 if it’s longer than 40.)

      That word-length assumption possibly violates your rejection of “precalculation”, but I am not a miracle worker, sorry; that’s why I picked 256 – I doubted there would be a “word” more than that, except in binary or genetic data. I could have made a two-pass script, but depending on file size, that might involve a lot of memory. I could have opened/parsed the file twice to avoid keeping it in memory and to auto-pre-compute the maximum width of the first word. But since it’s unlikely a random NPP user has perl installed, I won’t bother with a more-complicated perl solution, unless you ask for it.

      (Golf challenge: I’d like to see if Claudia, or other python guru, could make the Python Script or python.exe one-liner shorter…)

      Claudia FrankC 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 3
      • Claudia FrankC
        Claudia Frank @PeterJones
        last edited by

        @PeterJones

        I think I can’t make it shorter ;-)

        editor.setText('\n'.join(['{:<20} {}'.format(*x.split()) for x in editor.getText().splitlines()]))
        

        whereas 20 is assumed to be the length of the longest string in first column.

        Cheers
        Claudia

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 3
        • guy038G
          guy038
          last edited by guy038

          Hi, @alan-kilborn, @claudia-frank, @peterjones, and All,

          Nevertheless, it’s quite simple, indeed !! I propose to you 3 different regex S/R :

          SEARCH ^.{12}\K + , with a space before the plus sign

          REPLACE EMPTY

          or

          SEARCH (?<=^.{12}) + , with a space before the plus sign

          REPLACE EMPTY

          or

          SEARCH ^(.{12}) + , with a space before the plus sign

          REPLACE \1

          Notes :

          • For the first two S/R, you must use the Replace All button only ( The step by step replacement does NOT work, due to the \K syntax or the look-behind )

          • The last S/R accept hitting on the Replace button, too !

          • Note that these regexes need that the blank character, is, exclusively, the space character !


          Now, Alan, let’s try something more tricky : I simply copy all your list again, on the right, using the column mode !

          ----|----1----|----2----|----3----|----4----|----5----|----6----|----7----|----8----|----9----|----A----|----B
          
          trade                               Ground           trade                               Ground
          list                                Cry              list                                Cry
          free                       print                     free                       print
          Told                                Supply           Told                                Supply
          square              stood                            square              stood
          metal                 do                             metal                 do
          held                    shine                        held                    shine
          large                              boy               large                              boy
          map                 table                            map                 table
          book                                car              book                                car
          process               also                           process               also
          thank                        young                   thank                        young
          held                             if                  held                             if
          ship                       atom                      ship                       atom
          Have                         game                    Have                         game
          thousand                          strong             thousand                          strong
          case              most                               case              most
          head                      Tube                       head                      Tube
          those                          wait                  those                          wait
          sudden            triangle                           sudden            triangle
          while                                feed            while                                feed
          human                            order               human                            order
          paint                   sight                        paint                   sight
          mouth                            rope                mouth                            rope
          Hair                     suffix                      Hair                     suffix
          want                        this                     want                        this
          hot                           salt                   hot                           salt
          call                            house                call                            house
          similar                  experiment                  similar                  experiment
          count                      rub                       count                      rub
          quite            won't                               quite            won't
          opposite                      no                     opposite                      no
          note              low                                note              low
          process                       term                   process                       term
          to                              Fine                 to                              Fine
          Solution                       Season                Solution                       Season
          band                         block                   band                         block
          among                            direct              among                            direct
          who               These                              who               These
          between                  sugar                       between                  sugar
          ice                              leg                 ice                              leg
          took                                symbol           took                                symbol
          between                 Leg                          between                 Leg
          Design                Share                          Design                Share
          quotient               segment                       quotient               segment
          

          Then :

          • Place your cursor just, under the ruler and before the first item trade

          • Open the Replace dialog

          • Leave the Replace with: zone EMPTY

          • Type, in the Find what: zone, the regex (?-s)^.{12}\K + , with a space before the plus sign

          • Click on the Replace All button

          => The second column is aligned :-)) Of course, the third and fourth ones are not aligned

          • Now, change the number 12 by the number 27, in the Find what: zone

          • Click, again, on the Replace All button

          => The third column is now aligned :-))

          • Now, change the number 27 by 43, in the Find what: zone

          • Click, a last time, on the Replace All button

          => All the columns are well aligned…, as below. Et voilà ! Note that the columns begin at positions 12+1, 27+1 and 43+1

          ----|----1----|----2----|----3----|----4----|----5----|----6----|----7----|----8----|----9----|----A----|----B
          
          trade       Ground         trade           Ground
          list        Cry            list            Cry
          free        print          free            print
          Told        Supply         Told            Supply
          square      stood          square          stood
          metal       do             metal           do
          held        shine          held            shine
          large       boy            large           boy
          map         table          map             table
          book        car            book            car
          process     also           process         also
          thank       young          thank           young
          held        if             held            if
          ship        atom           ship            atom
          Have        game           Have            game
          thousand    strong         thousand        strong
          case        most           case            most
          head        Tube           head            Tube
          those       wait           those           wait
          sudden      triangle       sudden          triangle
          while       feed           while           feed
          human       order          human           order
          paint       sight          paint           sight
          mouth       rope           mouth           rope
          Hair        suffix         Hair            suffix
          want        this           want            this
          hot         salt           hot             salt
          call        house          call            house
          similar     experiment     similar         experiment
          count       rub            count           rub
          quite       won't          quite           won't
          opposite    no             opposite        no
          note        low            note            low
          process     term           process         term
          to          Fine           to              Fine
          Solution    Season         Solution        Season
          band        block          band            block
          among       direct         among           direct
          who         These          who             These
          between     sugar          between         sugar
          ice         leg            ice             leg
          took        symbol         took            symbol
          between     Leg            between         Leg
          Design      Share          Design          Share
          quotient    segment        quotient        segment
          

          Of course, I just evaluated, roughly, at each step, where the next column should begin, according to the longest string of the previous column. I don’t know, Alan, if you consider this way as a lot of pre-calculation steps !!

          Cheers,

          guy038

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 4
          • Scott SumnerS
            Scott Sumner
            last edited by

            I will play reverse-golf and make @Claudia-Frank 's version longer but IMO better…and still one line:

            editor.setText(['\r\n', '\r', '\n'][notepad.getFormatType()].join([('{:<' + str(editor.getColumn(editor.getCurrentPos())-1) + '} {}').format(*x.split()) for x in editor.getText().splitlines()]))
            

            Two changes:

            • do correct line-endings, not Linux–sorry Claudia!–line-endings
            • start the aligned data in the column the caret is in when the script is run (be sure to leave the caret in a column greater than the longest entry in the leftmost data “column”!)
            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 3
            • Alan KilbornA
              Alan Kilborn
              last edited by

              I deserve what I get because I didn’t quite ask in the right way. I was sort of looking for the solution to the general case. But in presenting example text I got specific answers to solve that specific thing (2 columns, whole file). Don’t get me wrong, the answers I got were awesome!–thanks to responders! Good ideas, all!

              Of the answers I think Scott’s (put caret in column…and then run script) starts getting at the interactivity I was hoping for. Another clarifying situation might be what if I want this to only affect certain lines, or only after a certain column point on specific lines…

              So I guess the main answer is something like this is best served by scripting, although in the end I did like Guy’s regexes (although i did try to head off his enthusiasm for them with my earlier post).

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • guy038G
                guy038
                last edited by

                Hi, @alan-kilborn,

                Another clarifying situation might be what if I want this to only affect certain lines, or only after a certain column point on specific lines…

                • Concerning the possibility to change text, after a specific column point c, simply use the regex ^.{c+ε}\K\x20+

                • Concerning reducing text changed to a specific block of lines, do a normal selection of your range of lines, first. So, when opening the Replace dialog, the In selection option is automatically ticked, and the Replace All operation is performed on the selection, only :-))

                Cheers,

                guy038

                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • Jim DaileyJ
                  Jim Dailey
                  last edited by

                  @PeterJones

                  The old man wasn’t invited to the tournament. Nevertheless, he ambled over to the tee box and took a swing with an ancient wooden driver that has been meticulously maintained for more than 40 years:

                  gawk "{printf \"%-256s%s\n\",$1,$2}" $(FULL_CURRENT_PATH)
                  

                  :-)

                  1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 5
                  • dailD
                    dail
                    last edited by

                    Somewhat tangential but possibly a solution is the Elastic Tabstops plugin. Its would only require a single tab between columns but has the disadvantage of only working within Notepad++ itself.

                    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 4
                    • cipher-1024C
                      cipher-1024
                      last edited by

                      Neither was the simpleton invited to the tournament but he stumbled up to the tee and out from his bag fell a TextFX plugin and hideous python script that would make a crow blush:

                      # coding: iso-8859-1
                      selected = editor.getSelText()
                      selStart = editor.getSelectionStart()
                      #replace any existing commas with a weird char
                      selected = selected.replace(",", chr(174))
                      #replace the double spaces
                      while ( selected.find("  ") > 0 ):
                      	selected = selected.replace("  ", " ")
                      #replace the spaces with commas since our 'line up' function uses commas
                      selected = selected.replace(" ", ",")
                      selEnd = len(selected)
                      editor.replaceSel(selected)
                      #re-select the selection
                      editor.setSelectionStart(selStart)
                      editor.setSelectionEnd(selStart + selEnd)
                      notepad.runMenuCommand("TextFX Edit", "Line up multiple lines by (,)")
                      notepad.runMenuCommand("TextFX Edit", "E:Line up multiple lines by (,)")
                      selected = editor.getSelText()
                      #take out the lineup commas
                      selected = selected.replace(",", " ")
                      #put back any original commas
                      selected = selected.replace(chr(174), ",")
                      editor.replaceSel(selected)
                      

                      This works for any number of columns, and only on lines in the current selection. It makes the columns as narrow as possible. I’m not really sure how you would line up things after a certain column point though.

                      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 4
                      • guy038G
                        guy038
                        last edited by guy038

                        Hello, @cipher-1024, and All,

                        I’m thinking about an other solution, which still use the TextFX plugin but which avoids this [ hideous :-D ] Python Script !

                        • First, use the following regex S/R :

                        SEARCH \x20+

                        REPLACE \x60

                        Note : I, specially, chose the Unicode Grave Accent character ( U+0060 ) , as a dummy character, because it is, both, rarely used in programming languages, ( AFAIK ! ) and part of all character encodings, as belonging to the international ASCII encoding ( from Unicode U+0000 to U+007F )

                        • Copy a single ` ( Grave Accent ) in the clipboard, hitting the Ctrl + C shortcut ( IMPORTANT )

                        • Now, do a normal selection of the text, which is to be aligned

                        • Click on the menu choice TextFX > TextFX Edit > Line up multiples lines by (Clipboard Character)

                        • Finally, use the regex, below, to delete the dummy Grave Accent character ` and add some space characters between columns, with a possible delimiter character !

                        SEARCH \x60

                        REPLACE \x20\x20\x20

                        OR, for instance :

                        SEARCH \x60

                        REPLACE \x20\x20|\x20\x20

                        Cheers,

                        guy038

                        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
                        • PeterJonesP
                          PeterJones
                          last edited by PeterJones

                          Other than “rarely used in programming languages,” I like that answer.

                          Perl uses a pair of Grave Accents (aka “backticks”) as an often-used alternate for the qx// quote-like syntax for running a shell command and placing the command’s output in a string.

                          SQL uses backticks for denoting identifiers, such as field names.

                          Markdown uses it for embedding inline fixed width text, like:

                          embedding `inline` fixed width text
                          

                          But if you know your text has no backticks, then it’s a great choice.

                          If your data might have backticks, I would use U+001C (\x1c), the Field Separator FS character, which is a control code found in ASCII. (I won’t make the claim that it’s “rarely used” in text files or programming language source code… but I’ve never seen it intentionally used in such. :-) )

                          I think this style of solution meets the original requirements of not requiring complicated S/R regex or precomputing, which is nice.

                          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
                          • guy038G
                            guy038
                            last edited by guy038

                            Hi, @PeterJones and All,

                            So, I strongly apologize ! My programming skills are weaker than most N++ users’s ones :-D.

                            BTW, Peter, just have a look to the link, below :

                            https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C0_and_C1_control_codes

                            it seems, that the C0 Control character ( \x1C ) rather refers to the File Separator control character ! Anyway, your idea, about using a Control character, is great ! And, if we follow the description notes, it would be logical to prefer the US Control character \x1F :-D

                            Cheers,

                            guy038

                            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                            • Alan KilbornA
                              Alan Kilborn
                              last edited by

                              IMO the ultimate solution to the question I originally posed is found HERE.

                              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
                              • artie-finkelsteinA
                                artie-finkelstein
                                last edited by

                                I didn’t check the date of the original posting but did immediately say "that’s a job for BetterMultiSelection. It was very satisfying to be able to figure out how to solve that problem. (It took me a few attempts, but that’s why Ctrl-Z exists)

                                Thank you to @Alan-Kilborn for a wonderful lesson. It really helped drive home @astrosofista’s examples.

                                Alan KilbornA 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                • Alan KilbornA
                                  Alan Kilborn @artie-finkelstein
                                  last edited by Alan Kilborn

                                  @artie-finkelstein

                                  …It really helped drive home @astrosofista’s examples

                                  This was not my intention; perhaps you misunderstood.
                                  I was linking directly to a posting, not the larger thread, for the awesome solution to the problem posed here in this thread.
                                  The linked posting discusses using Ctrl+Delete, not any plugin.

                                  Plugins (including Better Multiselection) are great, but even better is when something available natively is the solution to something. And the Ctrl+Delete technique is available natively.

                                  1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
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