I need to delete two characters in two continuous lines

[Billy Martin]

Hi, I need your help to solve one, I suppose, single thing… I have some files with data in this format:
[
-90.67575919025678,
14.12140539076991,
0
],
[
-90.67691295444409,
14.11436171657998,
0
],
…

The thing is that I need to delete the last two characters in the square brackets the “,” and the “0”, so it must seem like:

[
-90.67575919025678,
14.12140539076991
],
[
-90.67691295444409,
14.11436171657998
],

Any suggestion on how can I do that?

Thanks,

Billy

[Alan Kilborn]

@Billy-Martin

Well, if all your data is really that simple, this seems to match it:

FInd ,\R0\R(?=\])
Search mode: Regular expression

You can replace it with “nothing”.

I’d be careful using it, though. There might be more to the story that you haven’t told us.

[Billy Martin]

Thanks Alan, I’ve tried that expression but it says that cannot find the text.

[Alan Kilborn]

@Billy-Martin

I copied the original text you gave out of the forum and into Notepad++. Then I used the Find expression I provided. It matched for me.

[Karsten75]

Just tried it the same as Alan, it worked for me and reported that two occurrences were found/deleted.

[Meta Chuh]

@Billy-Martin

your original text is:

[
              -90.67575919025678,
              14.12140539076991,
              0
            ],
            [
              -90.67691295444409,
              14.11436171657998,
              0
            ],
...

The thing is that I need to delete the last two characters in the square brackets the "," and the "0", so it must seem like:

[
              -90.67575919025678,
              14.12140539076991
            ],
            [
              -90.67691295444409,
              14.11436171657998
            ],

you have to embed it between two lines of ``` (tripple backticks) otherwise your code gets stripped.

best regards.

[Billy Martin]

Hi… Thanks… I’ve tried that in a new document and worked either. But in the original files the strings starts after three tab spaces… how can I add them into the search expression to match the string? is there any tab char I can add or how to add the 15 blank spaces between?

        [
          -90.89344601114183,
          14.26720713414475,
          0
        ],
        [
          -90.89410910416692,
          14.2672050050027,
          0
        ],
        [
          -90.89397902924168,
          14.26244600987243,
          0
        ]

[PeterJones]

@Billy-Martin ,

I believe you should be able to update your find to: ,\R\h*0\R(?=\h*\]). The \h* adds a match of 0 or more horizontal spaces (space or tab).

Actually, given your original spec, saying the closing ] should be on a separate line, I would actually say

• ,\R\h*0(?=\R\h*\])
  (which moves the newline after the 0 to not be deleted)

For me, this converts

        [
          -90.89344601114183,
          14.26720713414475,
          0
        ],
        [
          -90.89410910416692,
          14.2672050050027,
          0
        ],
        [
          -90.89397902924168,
          14.26244600987243,
          0
        ]

to

        [
          -90.89344601114183,
          14.26720713414475
        ],
        [
          -90.89410910416692,
          14.2672050050027
        ],
        [
          -90.89397902924168,
          14.26244600987243
        ]

[guy038]

Hello @billy-martin, @peterjones and All,

Ah ! Nice, Peter, I was about to post a solution, but you beat me to it ;-))

And, of course, our solutions are identical

SEARCH ,\R\h*0(?=\R\h*\],)

REPLACE Leave EMPTY

So, I just give some explanations to Billy, on this regex S/R :

• The \R syntax represents any form of line-break ( \r\n for Windows files, \n for Unix files and \r for Mac files )

• The \h* part matches any range, even null, of horizontal blank characters, i.e. space, tabulation and no-breaking space character, of respective Unicode values \x{0020}, \x{0009} and \x{00A0 )

• The character [, being a regex meta-character, must be escaped with the \ character, to be interpreted as a literal

• So, the search regex looks for a comma, followed with a line-break, then some possible blank chars and, finally, a zero

• But ONLY IF the look-ahead structure (?=\R\h*\],) is true i. e. if the zero digit is immediately followed with a line-break, then possible blank characters and, finally, the string ],

• As the replace zone is empty, the search match ,\R\h*0, described above, is simply deleted

Best Regards

guy038

[PeterJones]

This has nothing to do with the main topic. Sorry for the tangent, but I’m curious:

@Meta-Chuh said:

@Billy-Martin,
your original text is:

Meta, how do you see what the original text was? In some other forums, I am able to view the source of the post, and that shows the pre-edited version… but I when I view the source in the Notepad++ Community forum, I don’t see anything with the spaces. Where did you get the original from?

[Billy Martin]

Thank you guys… it worked as expected and as desired.

Thanks a lot… it really helps me a lot and makes my life easier.

Best regards,

Billy

[Alan Kilborn]

@PeterJones said:

Meta, how do you see what the original text was?

@Meta-Chuh YEA! How about it Meta??