Remove lines from file

Brian Bennett

I have lines in a text based file with the the following where the text changes slightly for each line that I need to remove from a file.

BAB744A7-4379-457C-A0A7-A6F0027FBF2F is different in each line. I’m trying to use the replace function, but not getting anywhere.

PeterJones

@Brian-Bennett said in Remove lines from file:

I’m trying to use the replace function, but not getting anywhere.

What have you tried? Even if it doesn’t work, showing what you tried let’s us know what doesn’t work, and also lets us see what syntax level you are at.

It’s going to be something akin to:

FIND = (?-s)^<ModSecurity configFile=".*?" lockAttributes="\*" />(\R|\Z)
REPLACE = empty
MODE = regular expression

It depends on how specific you need the deleted lines to be, compared to non-deleted lines. For example, if you have some lines like:

<ModSecurity configFile="E:\Parallels\Plesk\ModSecurity\vhosts\BAB744A7-4379-457C-A0A7-A6F0027FBF2F\modsecurity.conf" lockAttributes="*" />
<ModSecurity configFile="E:\SomeOtherFolder\modsecurity.conf" lockAttributes="*" />
<ModSecurity configFile="E:\Parallels\Plesk\ModSecurity\vhosts\BAB744A7-4379-457C-A0A7-A6F0027FBF2F\modsecurity.conf" lockAttributes="*" />

that you want to keep some of them with slightly different configFile values, so that it ended up looking like:

<ModSecurity configFile="E:\SomeOtherFolder\modsecurity.conf" lockAttributes="*" />

you will have to be more specific in your requirements, showing both what you want to keep and what you don’t want to keep.

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If you have further search-and-replace (“matching”, “marking”, “bookmarking”, regular expression, “regex”) needs, study the official Notepad++ searching using regular-expressions docs, as well as this forum’s FAQ and the documentation it points to. Before asking a new regex question, understand that for future requests, many of us will expect you to show what data you have (exactly), what data you want (exactly), what regex you already tried (to show that you’re showing effort), why you thought that regex would work (to prove it wasn’t just something randomly typed), and what data you’re getting with an explanation of why that result is wrong. When you show that effort, you’ll see us bend over backward to get things working for you. If you need help formatting, see the paragraph above.

Please note that for all regex and related queries, it is best if you are explicit about what needs to match, and what shouldn’t match, and have multiple examples of both in your example dataset. Often, what shouldn’t match helps define the regular expression as much or more than what should match.

Here is the way I usually break down trying to figure out a regex (whether it’s for myself or for helping someone in the forum):

Compare what portions of each line I want to match is identical to every other one (“constants”), and what parts do I want to allow to be different in each line (“variables”) but still be part of the match.

Look at both the variables and constants, and see what portions of each I’ll want to keep or move around, vs which parts get thrown away completely. Each sub-component that I want to keep will be put in a regex group. Anything that gets completely thrown away doesn’t need to be in a group, though sometimes I put it in a numbered (___) or unnumbered (?:___) group anyway, if I have a good reason for it. Anything that needs to be split apart, I break into multiple groups, instead of having it as one group.

For each group, I do a mental “how would I describe to my son how to correctly match these characters?” – which should hopefully give me a simple, foolproof algorithm of characters that must match or must not match; then I ask, “how would I translate those instructions into regex sequences?” If I don’t know the answer to the second, I read documentation, or ask a specific question.

try it, debug, iterate.

Terry R

@Brian-Bennett said in Remove lines from file:

where the text changes slightly for each line

There is a bookmark function that will allow you to identify lines with the text that does NOT change.

Under Search (top menu) look for Mark. Into this area type the first portion of your line “<ModSecurity…” up to the point where the text changes. Now as this inserted text does NOT change your search mode can be “Normal”. Then tick the button named “Bookmark Line” and then click on “Mark All”.

This will identify the lines with that text. At this point you may want to check some randomly. If you are happy with the selection use the Search/Bookmark/Remove Bookmarked Lines option to remove those.

Terry