Find and Replace Iteration...
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sorry, but looks like I’m not the one who can solve this puzzle.
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So as time and postings go on, the data is getting more of a pattern to it (which is a good thing for possible solutions). Is the data always as “patterned” as your most recent example shows? Meaning you want to replace
seq-followed by four digits with something else (don’t really care what the something-else part is, doesn’t have to follow a pattern)?I feel your pain.
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Hi @Alan
The pattern of the data maybe vary like as follows,
Sup-0010, or fig-0011, or even whatever with three digit of alphabets and hyphen and ended with four digits numbers.
They needs to be changed with the format as mentioned above (sup-XX0010 or fig-XX0011 etc… )
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The problem statement keeps changing. Sorry but like @Ekopalypse it appears I am not the one to solve this puzzle either. Good luck to you.
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Hello, @ganesan-govindarajan and All,
From your posts, I understand that your initial values, to be changed, begin with
3letters ( let’s say3word characters ), followed with an hythen-and end with4digitsI also understood that any of these values can exist several times, in different locations of your
XMLfile, and that you want to modify all the occurrences of any specific valueFinally, the new value, of any initial value, is taken from the second column of an Excel table and I assume that any initial value, in the first column of this table, is unique
Am I still right !? If so, here is a solution :
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Open a copy of your
XMlfile in Notepad++ -
At the very end of the file, add a separator line of, at least,
4equal signs (====) -
Append, after this line, the contents of your Excel, table containing the list of “OLd - New” couples
So, let’s suppose, that we get, for instance, the following
XMLtext, containing someseq-...values, followed with the====line and the two-columns table :.... .... first value seq-0005 .... bla seq-0031 .... .... Test seq-0001 Test Test seq-0028 Test .... .... .... Foo bar seq-0031 .... Foo bar seq-0002 .... seq-0005 Test seq-0001 Test ... seq-0028 Test .... seq-0008 .... seq-0008 .... .... ==== seq-0031 seq-XX0001 seq-0032 seq-XX0002 seq-0001 seq-XX0003 seq-0002 seq-XX0004 seq-0003 seq-XX0005 seq-0005 seq-XX0006 seq-0028 seq-XX0007 seq-0007 seq-XX0008 seq-0008 seq-XX0009 seq-0010 seq-XX0010Then :
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Open the Replace dialog (
CTRL + H) -
Tick the
Match caseandWrap aroundoptions -
Select the
Regular expressionsearch mode -
SEARCH
(?s)(\w{3}-\d{4})(?=.+^====.+\R\1\h+(?-s)(.+))|^====.+ -
REPLACE
\2 -
Click once on the
Replace allbutton or several times on theReplacebutton
=> Any value of the first column of the ending table, found in your
XMLfile, should be replaced with the appropriate value, of the second column of the table=> Then, when no more initial value can be found in the
XMLfile, the regex S/R will delete the appended Excel table, too !And you’ll obtain your expected text :
.... .... first value seq-XX0006 .... bla seq-XX0001 .... .... Test seq-XX0003 Test Test seq-XX0007 Test .... .... .... Foo bar seq-XX0001 .... Foo bar seq-XX0004 .... seq-XX0006 Test seq-XX0003 Test ... seq-XX0007 Test .... seq-XX0009 .... seq-XX0009 .... ....Let me know, if any problem !
Best regards,
guy038
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Hi @guy038
Can you please explain the regex actually do?
It will helpful for me for further regex actions.
Thanks!!
Ganesan. G -
Not free presently, but I could give you an explanation by about 10h from now !
Cheers,
guy038
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Hello, @ganesan-govindarajan,
Sorry for the delay ! I also slightly changed the search regex, because, with my previous version, the first line, after the line of equal signs, would never have been reached, in case your xml file, would have contained
\nor\rEOL chars, only ( case of Unix or Mac files )
So, what means this second version of my previous regex S/R
SEARCH
(?s)(\w{3}-\d{4})(?=.+^====.*^\1\h+(?-s)(.+))|^====.+REPLACE
\2Firstly, the search regex can be split up in the two alternatives :
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The regex
(?s)(\w{3}-\d{4})(?=.+^====.*^\1\h+(?-s)(.+)), which searches any expression, contained in the first column of the Excel file and replaces it with the corresponding value in the second column of the Excel file -
The regex
^====.+which searches and deletes any text from the line of equal signs till the very end of your XML file -
Now, the first alternative can be divided in
3parts :-
(?s)is an in-line modifier which means that a dot symbol.matches any single character, included an EOL one -
(\w{3}-\d{4})represents the string to search for, in your XML file :3word characters, followed with a hyphen, followed with4digit chars ( A word character is any Unicode single character considered as a letter, or as a digit, or the underscore symbol_) ) As it is embedded between parentheses, this occurrence is stored as group1 -
Then, the
(?=.+^====.*\R\1\h+(?-s)(.+))structure is called a positive look-ahead, i.e. a condition which must be true, at cursor location ( so, right after(\w{3}-\d{4})) in order that the first alternative has matched ! In other words, IF exists, after the searched expression(\w{3}-\d{4}):-
A range, possibly multi-lines, of any character, including EOL ones (
.+), till a line beginning with4equal symbols (^====) -
Followed with a range, possibly null, of any character, including EOL ones, till the group
1( the searched string ), beginning a line (.*^\1) -
Followed with a non-null range of horizontal blank characters, mostly, the space and tabulation chars (
\h+), which is the gap between columns1and2of an Excel row -
Then followed with any non-null range of standard characters, only, of current line, due to the
(?-s)modifier, and stored as group2, because of the pair of parentheses ((.+)), which represents the corresponding expression replacing the searched regex
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At the end, when no more string, matching the first alternative
\w{3}-\d{4}, can occur, the regex engine tries the second alternative^====.+, which matches any range of characters, including EOL ones (.+), after the string ====, beginning a line (^====), till the very end of the XML file -
During replacement :
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When a corresponding value ( group
2) is found, the searched expression is then replaced with this value\2( case of the first alternative ) -
When the second alternative is used, this means that all the multi-lines block of pairs ( OLD-NEW values ), at the end of the xml file, including the line of equal signs (
====), is selected and, as the second alternative does not contain any group, this multi-lines block is, thus, deleted
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Hope that this helps a bit ! Refer to the link, below, for further information about regexes :
https://notepad-plus-plus.org/community/topic/15765/faq-desk-where-to-find-regex-documentation/1
BR
guy038
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