How to eliminate lines that meet a specific condition with Notepad?

oscar remiccc

Hi, friends I need to eliminate the lines that meet the following conditions

1john1:9678sharp
Karly:
woman:7890test
logomen:dream
:hitman
lvely:

to

1john1:9678sharp

woman:7890test
logomen:dream

try it with: (\s:.)([^\s]+) just delete the right side of “:”

Any friends idea?

guy038

Hi, @oscar-remiccc and All,

Apparently, I understand that you would like to delete every line, ending with the colon : character

Easy, with regular expressions !

Open the Replace dialog
Select the Regular expression search mode
Tick, if necessary, the Wrap around option

SEARCH (?-s).*:\R

REPLACE Leave EMPTY

Click once, on the Replace All button or several times, on the Replace button

Notes :

The first part (?-s) means that dot, ., matches any single standard character, only ( not EOL ones )
The middle part .*: tries to match the longest range of characters, even null, before a colon character
The final part \R matches any kind of line-break ( \r\n in Windows files, \n in Unix files and \r in Mac files )
Note that the last line, of your file, must be followed with a line-break ( Just in case this last line would end with a colon character : !

Cheers,

guy038

Scott Sumner

@guy038 said:

I understand that you would like to delete every line, ending the colon : character

:hitman doesn’t end with a : (although it begins with one) and it appears to not be in the OP’s desired output…

Maybe best to wait for OP’s clarification rather than guess, though.

oscar remiccc

thanks friends, excuse me for letting me understand
I need to eliminate lines that are not complete like this:

Karly:
:hitman
lvely:

example file containing :

1john1:9678sharp
Karly:
woman:7890test
logomen:dream
:hitman
lvely:

Needed result:

1john1:9678sharp
woman:7890test
logomen:dream

my file contains more than 60000 lines

thanks you

Scott Sumner

@oscar-remiccc

Try this to do it all at once (…or use @guy038’s solution twice with a slight change for the second run):

Invoke Replace dialog (default key: ctrl+h)
Find what zone: ^((:.+)|(.+:))(\R|\z)
Replace with zone: make sure this box is EMPTY
Wrap around checkbox: ticked
Search mode selection: Regular expression
Action: Press Replace All button

Here’s how it works, the Find part anyway…the Replace part containing nothing simply removes the text matched by the Find part…note that I used capturing groups rather than non-capturing because the non-capturing symbology contains a : and that probably would make things look more confusing because of the literal : in the data:

^((:.+)|(.+:))(\R|\z)

[Assert position at the beginning of a line (at beginning of the string or after a line break character) (carriage return and line feed, form feed)][1 ] ^
[Match the regex below and capture its match into backreference number 1][2 ] ((:.+)|(.+:))
- [Match this alternative (attempting the next alternative only if this one fails)][3 ] (:.+)
  - [Match the regex below and capture its match into backreference number 2][2 ] (:.+)
    - [Match the colon character][4 ] :
    - [Match any single character that is NOT a line break character (line feed, carriage return, form feed)][5 ] .+
      - [Between one and unlimited times, as many times as possible, giving back as needed (greedy)][6 ] +
- [Or match this alternative (the entire group fails if this one fails to match)][3 ] (.+:)
  - [Match the regex below and capture its match into backreference number 3][2 ] (.+:)
    - [Match any single character that is NOT a line break character (line feed, carriage return, form feed)][5 ] .+
      - [Between one and unlimited times, as many times as possible, giving back as needed (greedy)][6 ] +
    - [Match the colon character][4 ] :
[Match the regex below and capture its match into backreference number 4][2 ] (\R|\z)
- [Match this alternative (attempting the next alternative only if this one fails)][3 ] \R
  - [Match a line break (carriage return and line feed pair, sole line feed, sole carriage return, vertical tab, form feed)][7 ] \R
- [Or match this alternative (the entire group fails if this one fails to match)][3 ] \z
  - [Assert position at the very end of the string][8 ] \z

Created with RegexBuddy

[1 ]: http://www.regular-expressions.info/anchors.html
[2 ]: http://www.regular-expressions.info/brackets.html
[3 ]: http://www.regular-expressions.info/alternation.html
[4 ]: http://www.regular-expressions.info/characters.html
[5 ]: http://www.regular-expressions.info/dot.html
[6 ]: http://www.regular-expressions.info/repeat.html
[7 ]: http://www.regular-expressions.info/nonprint.html
[8 ]: http://www.regular-expressions.info/anchors.html#az

RegexBuddy settings to emulate N++ regex engine: Application=boost::regex 1.54-1.57 / flavor=Default flavor / replacement flavor=All flavor / ^$ match at line breaks / Numbered capture / Allow zero-length matches

oscar remiccc

@Scott-Sumner said:

^((:.+)|(.+:))(\R|\z)

I appreciate your help friends