Massive list and massive search and replace?

PeterJones

Most of the complication is just setting up Python Script plugin and installing the script once.

After that, you just have to run the script when you have a file

blue->orange
replace this->with this
the delimiter is->a minus followed by a greater than

It’s really not hard to create that substitution file.

And having the replacement data in Excel would make it harder for Alan to write a script for you (and this forum is not a code-writing service), but because the script would still be written in PythonScript, you would still have to install PythonScript and install that script once. Running it would be just as easy for you whether you run it with a text file as the source of the search->replace pairs or whether you run a script that has to parse some external Excel spreadsheet (easier, actually, for the text file, because then you don’t have to also run Excel just to prepare for a search-and-replace in Notepad++). He would still have to have all those confirmation dialogs whether the map is in Excel or in Notepad++… and he’d also have to have another dialog which asks you where the Excel spreadsheet was.

He wrote this not just for you, but also for all the other people who ask for nearly the same functionality (we’ve seen similar requests a lot over the years, and he finally decided that we needed one generic script to handle them all, so that we’d stop having to write customized scripts for each user). If using this generic script is too complicated for you, you will not like any implementation that anyone here is able to give you.

Good luck.

Terry R

@Calvin-Foo said in Massive list and massive search and replace?:

Is it possible to simplify it just to read an Excel page, find A2 replace it with B2 for every text files are opened in NPP?

If you are referring to an Excel file with extension XLSX then no, Notepad++ does NOT read files which are binary in nature very well. It is after all a TEXT editor, not a Binary editor.

However since you refer to an “Excel page” and refer to words in 2 columns, that could also be a CSV (comma separated value) file. And whilst @Alan-Kilborn has used a TSV (tab separated value) file, the 2 are very similar. He possibly could alter his code to use the comma instead of a tab, but possibly used the tab to prevent possible confusion within words.

But doing that minor change to his code isn’t going to simplify the process anyways. Just be thankful he has gone to such lengths to help you. Sometimes doing processes such as you outlined can be made easier, but will still require time to setup.

Terry

PS I see @PeterJones has stated the same.

Alan Kilborn

@Terry-R said in Massive list and massive search and replace?:

And whilst @Alan-Kilborn has used a TSV (tab separated value) file

Actually it isn’t a “tab”, although I can see why you’d think that. I chose - followed by > as the delimiter. The delimiter is specifically variable-ized in the script, so one could easily change it to whatever is desired.

Alan Kilborn

@Calvin-Foo said in Massive list and massive search and replace?:

Is it possible to simplify it just to read an Excel page, find A2 replace it with B2 for every text files are opened in NPP?

I suppose it IS possible, but not by me.
The intent of the script was to solve kind of a general case problem, in a general way.
Of course anyone can treat it as a demo, and feel free to modify it at will.

Calvin Foo

I guess I need to learn from ground up. I only have experience in writing ASP 3.0. and SQL Server.

I guess I just start from there

Maybe anyone can give me a simple guide on How to write a simple replace text script? I’ll further study from there and include a list of text (maybe import from CSV)

Neil Schipper

@Calvin-Foo

There’s very, very, very little to learn. First, follow the instructions in Alan’s second post to you (“REFERENCE” link) LIKE A MONKEY.

Here’s a first script you can run:

#! python
import sys
print "Old style print syntax"
sys.stdout.write("Calvin-Foo's first script -- hello from Python %s\n" % (sys.version,))

You don’t need to know what any of the lines mean or what they do. (Once you get it running, you can hack at it for fun).

There’s a lot complexity in airplanes and elevators and keyboards and phones that you don’t see and don’t need to deal with. It’s really quite similar.

Alan Kilborn

@Calvin-Foo said in Massive list and massive search and replace?:

I guess I need to learn from ground up.
I guess I just start from thereI’ll further study from there and include a list of text (maybe import from CSV)

In case it isn’t obvious, you could take YOUR data, in whatever (textual) format, and use Notepad++ to change it with a replacement operation into MY demo format, and then just run with the demo solution.

This avoids programming and could (probably) be made into a N++ macro for easy repetitive running.

As an example, take your original problem statement data (I know it isn’t your real data, but we have none of that here, so…):

1. james - James
2. calvin - Calvin
3. new york - New York

You could change that into the needed input format for the script by this operation:

Find: (?-s)^\d+\. (.+?) - (.+)
Replace: ${1}->${2}
Search mode: Regular expression
Wrap around: Checked
Action: Replace All button

After the replace-all, your data would then look like this:

james->James
calvin->Calvin
new york->New York

which would be a direct feed-in to the demo script.

this seems a bit too complicated for me

Of course, this data transform may involve learning some regular expressions (don’t know your expertise), but I don’t think it is too much to ask people that request a moderately-complex solution to a problem to do some sort of learning of their own along the way.

How to write a simple replace text script?

Well about the simplest one I can think of would be a one-liner:

editor.replace('apple', 'Apple')

nerdyone255

this script is FANTASTIC.

i do have a question though- in the final output it prints how many replacements were made, but is there any way to see what the actual replacements were?

looking into the code i see

“”" if self.num_repl_made_in_this_file > 0:

                self.print('replacing "{fw}" with "{rw}" {n} times'.format(
                    fw=find_what, rw=replace_with, n=self.num_repl_made_in_this_file)) """

but i dont see where that would get printed- it doesnt show up in the python console either

again huge thanks for this one

Alan Kilborn

@nerdyone255 said :

this script is FANTASTIC.

Well…glad you like it.

but i dont see where that would get printed- it doesnt show up in the python console either

The self.print() function calls are really meant as debug helpers while testing the script. Thus, in the version of the script above, they don’t do anything because the debug variable is set to False. If you change the 0 to a 1 in this line:

self.debug = True if 0 else False

or simply change it to:

self.debug = True

then the output of the self.print() calls will go to the PythonScript console window. You’ll see the output you indicated you were interested, plus output from other things that happen while the script is running.

nerdyone255

@Alan-Kilborn perfect!

Yurble Vương

@Alan-Kilborn

Thanks Alan, it work perfectly, Except one specially for me. Appreciate your help if possible:

I want to find only within word boundary.

For example:
Sentence: You are eating apple. The tree have a lot of apples. all the apples is green.
apple->cherry
apples->cherries

Hence, how can I add in a code to made it change only words start or end a transition from space to non-space character (space, common, dot, quote marks, questions mark…).

thanks in advance
Yurble

Alan Kilborn

@Yurble-Vương said in Massive list and massive search and replace?:

how can I add in a code to made it change only words start or end a transition from space to non-space character

You can use \b in the regular expression to insist upon a word boundary; example: \bapple will match have an apple today but will not match have a crabapple today.

Yurble Vương

This post is deleted!

Yurble Vương

@Alan-Kilborn

Sorry to ask and bother you. I tried to edit your py code as below, but it seems to be a wrong code. Could you advise how to correct:

Not work:

     # FINALLY, the actual replacement!
                editor.rereplace('\b'+find_what+'\b', replace_with)

Not work 2:

     # FINALLY, the actual replacement!
                editor.rereplace(r'\b'+find_what+'\b', replace_with)

Alan Kilborn

@Yurble-Vương said :

Not work 2

This should work: editor.rereplace(r'\b'+find_what+r'\b', replace_with)

I like how you showed initiative in trying to solve the problem yourself…and you had the right idea, you just didn’t take it far enough.

Yurble Vương

@Alan-Kilborn

Many thanks for help