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