How to move numbers at end of line to new position in same line farther to the right I normally tab them over to
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ginger manson
ginger manson 27 minutes agoCan someone please help me with batch processing a large document where I need to move all the numbers towards the end of a line to a new position? Normally I just hit tab to move them over, but as it’s a large document this would take a very long time, and I figure there has to be an easier way. They need to move out to the left to allow for artists with long names.
EXAMPLE
--------------------------------(Page #)LINE 1 Drawing Artist----------234
LINE 2 Drawing Artist-256DESIRED RESULT
LINE 2 Drawing Artist----------256
Imagine the dashes are just spaces, otherwise I lose the formatting which gives this post context.
If any one can help me with how to move the page numbers in multiple lines at once to the new position I want to send them to based on lines I have already shifted that would be great. Thanks for your time. :)
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What about using something like
find what:(?<=Drawing Artist) (?=\d+)
and replace with:as many spaces as you like to have
check regular expression checkbox. -
Unfortunately, I need something more like move numbers to set position in line so many spaces from the start because all the drawing artists names are different lengths, so no one number of spaces will correctly move over the numbers to the same set position as it varies from line to line. Thank you for the suggestion though.
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I would do this in two stages, to keep it relatively simple.
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First, move all the numbers far to the right
- FIND =
\h*(\d+)\h*$- zero or more spaces, followed by 1 or more digits, followed by zero or more spaces then the end of line; store the digits in group#1
- REPLACE =
\x20\x20\x20\x20\x20\x20\x20\x20\x20\x20\x20\x20\x20\x20\x20\x20\x20\x20\x20\x20${1}- the
\x20represents a space in regex; I used that to avoid ambiguity in the forum; you can just type 20 (or more) spaces rather than 20 of\x20. I throw away any spaces after the digits (just in case you had a space character you hadn’t seen).
- the
- SEARCH MODE = regular expression
- REPLACE ALL
- FIND =
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Then I would reduce the number of spaces so they all line up right-aligned.
- FIND =
^(.{36})\h*(\d)(\d)?(\d)?(\d)?$- I am using a trick of capturing each digit in a separate group number so that I can determine the number of digits, so I know how many spaces I need. I assume a maximum of 4 digits in the page number.
- I assumed 36 characters on the left, plus 4 digits for the right-aligned page number. If you want a different number of columns total, then adjust the number in the {} appropriately
- REPLACE =
${1}(?{5}:\x20)(?{4}:\x20)(?{3}:\x20)${2}${3}${4}${5}- looks more complicated than it is.
- the
${1}just puts the 36 left characters from group#1 back at the start of the line - each of the
(?{ℕ}:\x20)conditional tokens just says “if group #ℕ matched, do nothing, else include a space here in the replacement”. With three of those conditional tokens, that will allow prefixing with up to 3 spaces to right-justify the 4digit number - finally, the
${2}${3}${4}${5}will put in the 4-digit number (if it’s fewer digits, the last group(s) will be empty, so it will still replace correctly)
- SEARCH MODE = regular expression
- REPLACE ALL
- FIND =
Note that in step 1, how far to the right you move the numbers depends on how wide you want it in step 2. For example, if you want 40 characters total width after step 2, so you use 36 as the quantity in step2 search, then I would do at least 36 spaces (or
\x20) in the step1 replacement. I only showed 20 because it was getting excessively wide for the forum…If I start with
123456789x123456789x123456789x123456789x123456789x (Page #) LINE 1 Drawing Artist 234 LINE 2 Drawing Artist 256 LINE 1 Drawing Artist 1 LINE 2 Drawing Artist 12 LINE 2 Drawing Artist 123 LINE 2 Drawing Artist 1234 LINE 1 Drawing Someone 1 LINE 1 Drawing Someone 12 LINE 1 Drawing Someone 123 LINE 2 Drawing Someone 1234After the first search/replace REPLACE ALL, I get
123456789x123456789x123456789x123456789x123456789x (Page #) LINE 1 Drawing Artist 234 LINE 2 Drawing Artist 256 LINE 1 Drawing Artist 1 LINE 2 Drawing Artist 12 LINE 2 Drawing Artist 123 LINE 2 Drawing Artist 1234 LINE 1 Drawing Someone 1 LINE 1 Drawing Someone 12 LINE 1 Drawing Someone 123 LINE 2 Drawing Someone 1234After the second search/replace REPLACE ALL, I get
123456789x123456789x123456789x123456789x123456789x (Page #) LINE 1 Drawing Artist 234 LINE 2 Drawing Artist 256 LINE 1 Drawing Artist 1 LINE 2 Drawing Artist 12 LINE 2 Drawing Artist 123 LINE 2 Drawing Artist 1234 LINE 1 Drawing Someone 1 LINE 1 Drawing Someone 12 LINE 1 Drawing Someone 123 LINE 2 Drawing Someone 1234… which has the page numbers right justified, which appears to be what you asked for.
If that’s not what you want, try experimenting to make it match what you do want. If you cannot get it to work after experimentation, please follow the advice below to give more-detailed examples of what you have and what you want, explain the changes you made in my regex and why you thought it would make it work, and ask any specific questions.
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Do you want regex search/replace help? Then please be patient and polite, show some effort, and be willing to learn; answer questions and requests for clarification that are made of you. All example text should be marked as literal text using the
</>toolbar button or manual Markdown syntax. To makeregex in red(and so they keep their special characters like *), use backticks, like`^.*?blah.*?\z`. Screenshots can be pasted from the clipboard to your post usingCtrl+Vto show graphical items, but any text should be included as literal text in your post so we can easily copy/paste your data. Show the data you have and the text you want to get from that data; include examples of things that should match and be transformed, and things that don’t match and should be left alone; show edge cases and make sure you examples are as varied as your real data. Show the regex you already tried, and why you thought it should work; tell us what’s wrong with what you do get. Read the official NPP Searching / Regex docs and the forum’s Regular Expression FAQ. If you follow these guidelines, you’re much more likely to get helpful replies that solve your problem in the shortest number of tries. -
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I will suggest another approach, which requires regex and a plugin, as follows.
First convert the spaces before the page numbers to a tab with this regular expression:
Search:
\s+(\d+|\(Page #\))$
Replace:\t$1Put the caret at the very beginning of the document, select just the
Regular Expression modeand click onReplace All.Second, if not yet installed, install the
Elastic TabStops pluginviaPlugins Admin...In the plugin menu selectEnableto get tabs aligned and then, from the same menu, selectConvert TabStops to Spaces.That’s all. Unlike @PeterJones’s fine solution, all page numbers are aligned to the left.
Take care and have fun!
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Hello, @ginger-manson, @ekopalypse, @peterjones, @astrosofista and All,
Here is a general method, from within N++
We assume a consecutive list of lines, composed of :
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A text, of variable length, located before the number to justify
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An integer number to be justified , located next, after some non-words chars ( could be a simple space char )
And :
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Let the value
Mbe the length of the longest line of that list -
Let’s define the filling char
Fto insert between the text and the number, in each line. This is generally the space char but it could be the.character, either
In that case, we can right justify that list of numbers, at column
C, with the conditionC >= M, with the help of these3consecutive regex S/R :-
(I)S/R-
SEARCH
$ -
REPLACE
The FILLING characterF, repeatedCtimes
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(II)S/R-
SEARCH
(?-s)^(.{C}).+ -
REPLACE
\1
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(III)S/R-
SEARCH
(\d+)(F*) -
REPLACE
\2\1
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For instance, let’s suppose you want to right justify numbers on column
60, withdotcharacters, then :-
In S/R
(I), the Replace with zone will contain60dot characters -
In S/R
(II), the search regex used will be(?-s)^(.{60}).+ -
In S/R
(III), the search regex used will be(\d+)(\.*)
OK, let’s start with that text :
LINE 1 Drawing Artist 123456789 LINE 2 Drawing Artist 256 LINE 3 Drawing Artist 1 LINE 4 Drawing Artist 12 LINE 5 Drawing Artist 123 LINE 6 Drawing Artist 1234 LINE 1 A text 9876 LINE 2 A text 528 LINE 3 A text 7 LINE 4 A text 1234567 LINE 1 An other much longer text 0 LINE 2 An other much longer text 123456789 LINE 3 An other much longer text 123 LINE 4 An other much longer text 01234As you can see, the longest line of that list is the line
LINE 2 An other much longer text 123456789which is42chars longSo, let’s suppose that we want to right justify at this minimum column => the value
Cis42and we’ll use the space filling char soF=\x20First, use the
View > Show Symbol > Show White Space and TABto clearly see the space chars !With the first regex S/R, we add
42filling characters at end of each line-
SEARCH
$ -
REPLACE
Write 42 SPACE chars
We get that text :
LINE 1 Drawing Artist 123456789 LINE 2 Drawing Artist 256 LINE 3 Drawing Artist 1 LINE 4 Drawing Artist 12 LINE 5 Drawing Artist 123 LINE 6 Drawing Artist 1234 LINE 1 A text 9876 LINE 2 A text 528 LINE 3 A text 7 LINE 4 A text 1234567 LINE 1 An other much longer text 0 LINE 2 An other much longer text 123456789 LINE 3 An other much longer text 123 LINE 4 An other much longer text 01234With the second regex S/R, any line is limited to its
42first characters, only :-
SEARCH
(?-s)^(.{42}).+ -
REPLACE
\1
LINE 1 Drawing Artist 123456789 LINE 2 Drawing Artist 256 LINE 3 Drawing Artist 1 LINE 4 Drawing Artist 12 LINE 5 Drawing Artist 123 LINE 6 Drawing Artist 1234 LINE 1 A text 9876 LINE 2 A text 528 LINE 3 A text 7 LINE 4 A text 1234567 LINE 1 An other much longer text 0 LINE 2 An other much longer text 123456789 LINE 3 An other much longer text 123 LINE 4 An other much longer text 01234Finally, with this third regex S/R, numbers are right justified at column
42:SEARCH
(\d+)(\x20*)REPLACE
\2\1LINE 1Drawing Artist 123456789 LINE 2Drawing Artist 256 LINE 3Drawing Artist 1 LINE 4Drawing Artist 12 LINE 5Drawing Artist 123 LINE 6Drawing Artist 1234 LINE 1A text 9876 LINE 2A text 528 LINE 3A text 7 LINE 4A text 1234567 LINE 1An other much longer text 0 LINE 2An other much longer text 123456789 LINE 3An other much longer text 123 LINE 4An other much longer text 01234Nice, isn’t it ?
Let’s go back to our text, where we add four other space characters before each number, giving :
LINE 1 Drawing Artist 123456789 LINE 2 Drawing Artist 256 LINE 3 Drawing Artist 1 LINE 4 Drawing Artist 12 LINE 5 Drawing Artist 123 LINE 6 Drawing Artist 1234 LINE 1 A text 9876 LINE 2 A text 528 LINE 3 A text 7 LINE 4 A text 1234567 LINE 1 An other much longer text 0 LINE 2 An other much longer text 123456789 LINE 3 An other much longer text 123 LINE 4 An other much longer text 01234This time, we prefer to right justify at column
60, so the valueCis60and use thedotas filling character =>F=\.. Hence :With the first regex S/R, we add
60fillingdotcharacters at end of each line-
SEARCH
$ -
REPLACE
Write 60 DOT chars
We obtain :
LINE 1 Drawing Artist 123456789............................................................ LINE 2 Drawing Artist 256............................................................ LINE 3 Drawing Artist 1............................................................ LINE 4 Drawing Artist 12............................................................ LINE 5 Drawing Artist 123............................................................ LINE 6 Drawing Artist 1234............................................................ LINE 1 A text 9876............................................................ LINE 2 A text 528............................................................ LINE 3 A text 7............................................................ LINE 4 A text 1234567............................................................ LINE 1 An other much longer text 0............................................................ LINE 2 An other much longer text 123456789............................................................ LINE 3 An other much longer text 123............................................................ LINE 4 An other much longer text 01234............................................................With the second regex S/R, any line is limited to its
60first characters, only :-
SEARCH
(?-s)^(.{60}).+ -
REPLACE
\1
and we get :
LINE 1 Drawing Artist 123456789......................... LINE 2 Drawing Artist 256............................... LINE 3 Drawing Artist 1................................. LINE 4 Drawing Artist 12................................ LINE 5 Drawing Artist 123............................... LINE 6 Drawing Artist 1234.............................. LINE 1 A text 9876...................................... LINE 2 A text 528....................................... LINE 3 A text 7......................................... LINE 4 A text 1234567................................... LINE 1 An other much longer text 0...................... LINE 2 An other much longer text 123456789.............. LINE 3 An other much longer text 123.................... LINE 4 An other much longer text 01234..................Finally, with this third regex S/R, numbers are right justified at column
60:SEARCH
(\d+)(\.*)REPLACE
\2\1LINE 1 Drawing Artist .........................123456789 LINE 2 Drawing Artist ...............................256 LINE 3 Drawing Artist .................................1 LINE 4 Drawing Artist ................................12 LINE 5 Drawing Artist ...............................123 LINE 6 Drawing Artist ..............................1234 LINE 1 A text ......................................9876 LINE 2 A text .......................................528 LINE 3 A text .........................................7 LINE 4 A text ...................................1234567 LINE 1 An other much longer text ......................0 LINE 2 An other much longer text ..............123456789 LINE 3 An other much longer text ....................123 LINE 4 An other much longer text ..................01234Best Regards,
guy038
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@guy038,@ekopalypse, @ peterjones, @astrosofista
Thank you all so much for your replies! After fiddling around and trying the first 3 methods I think I have come up with a solution which put me close enough to what I want to where I can easily finish it up without much work at all. I modified Peters code a bit
\h*(\d+)\h*$
\x20\x20\x20\x20\x20\x20\x20\x20\x20\x20\x20\x20\x20\x20\x20\x20\x20\x20\x20\x20\x20\x20\x20\x20\x20\x20\x20\x20\x20\x20\x20\x20\x20\x20\x20\x20\x20\x20\x20\x20${1}
^(.{59})\h*(\d)(\d)?(\d)?(\d)?$
${1}(?{5}:\x20)(?{4}:\x20)(?{3}:\x20)${2}${3}${4}${5}A low number of numbers didn’t line up exactly where I wanted them but the overall workload of around 11,065 lines worth of tabbing say 5-6 times per line has been reduced by say 93 percent or so. And I consider that to be a major victory. @guy038 I really liked the look of what you accomplished with your method, but honestly I got lost trying to implement it. I do however thank you very much for responding. I’m sure if I was a bit more skilled at interpreting and implementing your solution it would have worked out great.
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@ginger-manson said in How to move numbers at end of line to new position in same line farther to the right I normally tab them over to:
@guy038 I really liked the look of what you accomplished with your method, but honestly I got lost trying to implement it.
This can be a problem sometimes with the solutions Guy offers, but hmm, in this case I just followed the steps and it worked exactly right, so I encourage the OP to try it again.
