Is there any alternative to Merge files in one plugin?

Doğancan

Plugin is very slow when there are too many rows and it also only uses 20% of my CPU, can’t it use more?

Coises

There does not appear to be another merge plugin. There used to be a “Combine” plugin, but it appears to have disappeared.

If speed with large files is a concern, my guess is that it would be best to install GnuWin CoreUtils for Windows (unless you have Linux available) and use the Paste command. Command-line processing is often a better choice than GUI applications for operations on very large files that don’t require user involvement once they’re started.

An alternative using Notepad++ would be to make a rectangular selection enclosing all of one file and paste that into the other file; however, I suspect that will be both clumsy and slow with very large files. Another alternative would be to insert line numbers at the beginning of each line in each file, paste one after the other, sort, and then use a regular expression replacement to combine pairs of lines.

The choice depends on what you find comfortable and how large the large files are. A couple thousand lines you can probably manage by pasting columns. Several thousand: number, paste and regex is more work, but less prone to confusing results when you can’t see what is happening because there are just too many lines to review them all. More than that — or if you’re going to have to do this repeatedly — and you’ll save time and stress in the long run by working out a command line solution.

You could raise an issue on the GitHub repository for Merge-files-in-one. There has been no activity there since 2019, but the owner of the repository has been active elsewhere recently.

Doğancan

@Coises https://web.archive.org/web/20200726080013/http://www.scout-soft.com/combine/combine.dll
Thanks, but it didn’t work the way I wanted.

Alan Kilborn

@Doğancan said in Is there any alternative to Merge files in one plugin?:

but it didn’t work the way I wanted.

Maybe if you described what you want, someone will be able to suggest something that meets your need.

Mark Olson

A simple Python script can paste together several thousand files with a combined size of 80MB in about 18 seconds; not sure how it scales with number of files vs. combined size. I’m not pasting the script because it’s not really a Notepad++ problem.

Is 4-5MB/s fast enough throughput for your needs?

Alan Kilborn

Yea, if OP is talking about a huge amount of data, Notepad++ isn’t the right tool. Not to say it couldn’t do it (via some scripting via a plugin), but why would you do it that way?

Doğancan

Txt (1)

Txt (2)

Result : Txt (1,2)

Mark Olson

@Doğancan

OK, so essentially your problem is something along the lines of:

Document A has text in lines ABEFJ
Document B has text in lines CD
Document C has text in lines GHI

We want a document that contains lines ABCDEFGHIJ from Documents A, B, and C.

This is very different from the problem we thought we were helping you with, and it would have been nice to know earlier.

That said, here is a PythonScript solution (see that link for info on how to use) that can solve this problem:

# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-
# reference: https://community.notepad-plus-plus.org/topic/24872/is-there-any-alternative-to-merge-files-in-one-plugin/7?_=1693515221904
from __future__ import print_function
import re
from Npp import *

__version__ = '0.1.0'

EOLS = ('\r\n', '\r', '\n')

def getCurrentEol():
    return EOLS[editor.getEOLMode()]

def main():
    fnames = [x[0] for x in notepad.getFiles()]
    setfnames = set(fnames)
    fnames_str = '\r\n'.join(fnames)
    while True:
        fnames_chosen_str = notepad.prompt("remove the names of any files in this list that you don't want to merge", 'merge files together', fnames_str)
        if fnames_chosen_str is None:
            return
        fnames_chosen = [f for f in fnames_chosen_str.split('\r\n') if f]
        bad = False
        for fname in fnames_chosen:
            if fname not in setfnames:
                bad = True
                notepad.messageBox('Filename %s was not a currently open file' % fname)
                break
        if not bad:
            break
    lines_fname_map = {}
    for fname in fnames_chosen:
        notepad.open(fname)
        text = editor.getText()
        eol = getCurrentEol()
        lines = text.split(eol)
        lines_fname_map[fname] = lines
    maxlen = max(len(x) for x in lines_fname_map.values())
    merged = []
    collisions = {}
    for ii in range(maxlen):
        line_filled_by = None
        for fname, lines in lines_fname_map.items():
            len_ = len(lines)
            if ii >= len_:
                continue
            line = lines[ii]
            if line:
                if line_filled_by:
                    if ii not in collisions:
                        collisions[ii] = {line_filled_by: merged[ii]}
                    collisions[ii][fname] = line
                else:
                    line_filled_by = fname
                    merged.append(line)
    for ii, collision in collisions.items():
        collisions_text_list = []
        collision_lines = list(collision.values())
        for fname, line in collision.items():
            existing_choice = merged[ii]
            collisions_text_list.append('[ %s ] %s : %s' % (
                'X' if line == existing_choice else '',
                fname,
                line
            ))
        collisions_text = '\r\n'.join(collisions_text_list)
        result = notepad.prompt('Collision at line %d. Put an X in the box of the file whose line you want to keep, then hit OK or Cancel to skip this line' % ii, 'merge collisions', collisions_text)
        if not result:
            continue
        for jj, result_line in enumerate(result.split('\r\n')):
            if re.search(r'^\s*\\[\s*\S\s*\\]', result_line):
                line_to_use = collision_lines[jj]
                merged[ii] = line_to_use
                break
    notepad.new()
    editor.setText('\r\n'.join(merged))
    notepad.messageBox('This file contains the merger of the selected files', 'merger complete')
    
if __name__ == '__main__':
    main()

Example usage:
File new 1:

a
b
bar

e
f



j

File new 2:

c
d

File new 3:






foo
g
h
i

Mark Olson

@Mark-Olson

That said, here is a PythonScript solution (see that link for info on how to use) that can solve this problem:

Improvement to the above script, with an “escape valve” added to stop processing collisions in case there are so many that going through all of them would take forever.

# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-
# reference: https://community.notepad-plus-plus.org/topic/24872/is-there-any-alternative-to-merge-files-in-one-plugin/7?_=1693515221904
from __future__ import print_function
import os
import re
from Npp import *

__version__ = '0.2.0'

EOLS = ('\r\n', '\r', '\n')

def getCurrentEol():
    return EOLS[editor.getEOLMode()]

def main():
    fnames = [x[0] for x in notepad.getFiles()]
    setfnames = set(fnames)
    fnames_str = '\r\n'.join(fnames)
    while True:
        fnames_chosen_str = notepad.prompt("remove the names of any files in this list that you don't want to merge", 'merge files together', fnames_str)
        if fnames_chosen_str is None:
            return
        fnames_chosen = [f for f in fnames_chosen_str.split('\r\n') if f]
        bad = False
        for fname in fnames_chosen:
            if fname not in setfnames:
                bad = True
                notepad.messageBox(
                    'Filename %s was not a currently open file' % fname,
                    'nonexistent filename',
                    MESSAGEBOXFLAGS.ICONEXCLAMATION
                )
                break
        if not bad:
            break
    lines_fname_map = {}
    for fname in fnames_chosen:
        notepad.open(fname)
        text = editor.getText()
        eol = getCurrentEol()
        lines = text.split(eol)
        lines_fname_map[fname] = lines
    maxlen = max(len(x) for x in lines_fname_map.values())
    merged = []
    collisions = {}
    for ii in range(maxlen):
        line_filled_by = None
        for fname, lines in lines_fname_map.items():
            len_ = len(lines)
            if ii >= len_:
                continue
            line = lines[ii]
            if line:
                if line_filled_by:
                    if ii not in collisions:
                        collisions[ii] = {line_filled_by: merged[ii]}
                    collisions[ii][fname] = line
                else:
                    line_filled_by = fname
                    merged.append(line)
    n_collisions = len(collisions)
    many_collisions = n_collisions > 10
    short_fnames = {}
    short_fname_values = set()
    for fname in fnames_chosen:
        fname_parts = fname.split(os.sep)
        first_part_idx = len(fname_parts) - 1
        short_fname = '\\'.join(fname_parts[first_part_idx:])
        while first_part_idx >= 0 and short_fname in short_fname_values:
            first_part_idx -= 1
            short_fname = '\\'.join(fname_parts[first_part_idx:])        
        short_fname_values.add(short_fname)
        short_fnames[fname] = short_fname
    for coll_ix, (ii, collision) in enumerate(collisions.items()):
        collisions_text_list = []
        collision_lines = list(collision.values())
        for fname, line in collision.items():
            existing_choice = merged[ii]
            collisions_text_list.append('[ %s ] %r : %r' % (
                'X' if line == existing_choice else '',
                short_fnames[fname],
                line
            ))
        collisions_text = '\r\n'.join(collisions_text_list)
        result = notepad.prompt('Collision at line %d. Put an X in the box of the file whose line you want to keep, then hit OK or Cancel to skip this line' % ii, 'merge collisions', collisions_text)
        stop_processing = False
        if result:        
            for jj, result_line in enumerate(result.split('\r\n')):
                if re.search(r'^\s*\\[\s*\S\s*\\]', result_line):
                    line_to_use = collision_lines[jj]
                    merged[ii] = line_to_use
                    break
        else:
            stop_processing = True
        remaining_colisions = n_collisions - coll_ix - 1
        if coll_ix % 5 == 0 and remaining_colisions >= 5:
            mb_result = notepad.messageBox(
                'There are %d unresolved collisions left. Stop processing them now?' % remaining_colisions,
                'Many collisions left',
                MESSAGEBOXFLAGS.ICONQUESTION | MESSAGEBOXFLAGS.YESNO
            )
            if mb_result == MESSAGEBOXFLAGS.RESULTYES:
                break
    notepad.new()
    editor.setText('\r\n'.join(merged))
    notepad.messageBox('This file contains the merger of the selected files', 'merger complete')
    
if __name__ == '__main__':
    main()

Doğancan

@Mark-Olson It really worked. Endless thanks .Can you publish this as a plugin so that everyone can use it ?

Mark Olson

@Doğancan said in Is there any alternative to Merge files in one plugin?:

Can you publish this as a plugin so that everyone can use it ?

Glad it worked! A plugin? No. PythonScript scripts have to be installed according to this link.

The closest thing I can provide is a Github gist.

Doğancan

@Mark-Olson I thought that plugins work with python.What programming language are notepad++ plugins written in ?

Coises

@Doğancan said in Is there any alternative to Merge files in one plugin?:

What programming language are notepad++ plugins written in ?

Notepad++ plugins are DLLs using a C interface, so any language that can be compiled to that could be used to write a plugin. In addition to “native” C or C++, the documentation links to API files for Ada, C#, D and Delphi.

Mark Olson

@Coises
…and Pascal, V, as well as PythonScript-like plugins in Lua and JavaScript.

Ekopalypse

@Doğancan said in Is there any alternative to Merge files in one plugin?:

@Mark-Olson I thought that plugins work with python.What programming language are notepad++ plugins written in ?

So far, besides what has already been mentioned, I have written plugins in Nim, Odin, Zig, Rust and Python (using cython and cffi). So basically it boils down to the language having to be able to create a native DLL that Npp can load.

César

@Doğancan This solution worked for me (I tried it on merging HTML files succesfully):

@Diego-Raguindin said in Combine Plugin Gone!?:

This worked perfectly for me:

Put all of the files you want to combine in the same folder. Easiest would be at root-level.
Run a command prompt
CD to the folder in Step 1
Enter command copy *.csv filename.csv where “filename” is the desired output filename
Hit enter
File ‘filename.csv’ is created in the same folder

https://community.notepad-plus-plus.org/post/77090