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    • PeterJonesP
      PeterJones @Alan Kilborn
      last edited by

      @alan-kilborn said in Find and replace line not starting with pattern and copy text from previous line:

      there is an LRM in it, which seems to cause your erroneous match!

      Indeed. I was originally going to ask Guy why my regex wasn’t working with the supplied data (the same question Guy asked us), when I happened to left arrow from the [ and stayed on that same line! That told me there was a hidden character, which is why I ran the reveal-hidden-characters script from the old conversation, and I saw the infamous LRM – which is why I added the paragraph to tell @nitin-jain to do the zero-width search/replace before doing the main search/replace.

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • guy038G
        guy038
        last edited by guy038

        Hi, @nitin-jain, @peterjones, @alan-kilborn and All,

        Ah ah ! Alan, I, first, didn’t understand why you had the LRM sigle in the second line of my text. My second thought was that you created a Python script to make all these fancy Unicode format characters clearly visible ! But, luckily, marking any \x{200e} character did the trick and showed me a thin red mark when this special char is present !


        So, @nitin-jain, as @peterjones said, use this simple regex S/R, below, to get rid of these format characters !

        SEARCH [\x{200B}-\x{200F}\x{202A}-\x{202F}]

        REPLACE Leave EMPTY

        However, verify that this operation does not break down your text in any way ! I personally saw this case, while pasting Unicode characters from a long list, produced by this excellent and valuable site, regarding Unicode :

        https://r12a.github.io/uniview/


        Now, I’m pleased to note that there is no bug of our Boost regex engine, in this matter, as that special LRM char is quite a character different from a [ symbol !

        BR

        guy038

        Alan KilbornA 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
        • Alan KilbornA
          Alan Kilborn @guy038
          last edited by

          @guy038 said in Find and replace line not starting with pattern and copy text from previous line:

          Alan, … you created a Python script to make all these fancy Unicode format characters clearly visible

          Well, yes, I did. :-)

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • Ahamed Nawas AliA
            Ahamed Nawas Ali @PeterJones
            last edited by

            @PeterJones I have a similar scenario where i have 10K lines i need to fix, is there any shorter way? Also, is there any way we can unmark the line number for those identified lines which does not start with a pattern.

            Example: My line number starts with datetime (2021-09-14T21:10:55+00:00)

            And can i make all these lines which does not start with “2021-” without line numbers provided by notepad++?

            PeterJonesP 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • PeterJonesP
              PeterJones @Ahamed Nawas Ali
              last edited by

              @Ahamed-Nawas-Ali said in Find and replace line not starting with pattern and copy text from previous line:

              is there any shorter way?

              The way described above is reasonably short. I am not sure what “improvement” you think is necessary (or even possible).

              is there any way we can unmark the line number for those identified lines which does not start with a pattern.

              Sorry, I don’t understand how that’s different than the original question.

              You’ll have to give a better example – use the </> button on the toolbar when you are writing the post to create pairs of ```, between which you can paste your actual data:, something like

              **data I have**:
              ```
              [1234] abcxyz
              next line
              [5678] pdq
              aonther
              ```
              
              **desired data after transformation**
              ```
              [1234] abcxyz
              [1234] next line
              [5678] pdq
              [5678] aonther
              ```
              

              …
              This would be rendered as the following, so we know exactly what your “before” and “after” data needs to be.
              —
              data I have:

              [1234] abcxyz
              next line
              [5678] pdq
              aonther
              

              desired data after transformation

              [1234] abcxyz
              [1234] next line
              [5678] pdq
              [5678] aonther
              

              ----

              Useful References

              • Please Read Before Posting
              • Template for Search/Replace Questions
              • Formatting Forum Posts
              • Notepad++ Online User Manual: Searching/Regex
              • FAQ: Where to find other regular expressions (regex) documentation
              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • Ahamed Nawas AliA
                Ahamed Nawas Ali
                last edited by

                @PeterJones, Thanks for your reply. I am sorry, I am new to this platform.

                Example scenario i am dealing with is with Date_Time Sender Recepients Message delimited with ‘Tab’

                2021-09-14T21:10:55+00:00	Nawas	Ram Kumar,Ahamed Ali	Learning
                Selection
                B. Home
                Webinar 
                IDB
                20214980
                202216
                2021-09-15T11:19:14+00:00	Ahamed Ali	Nawas	Thanks!
                

                And i should make it like below

                2021-09-14T21:10:55+00:00	Nawas	Ram Kumar,Ahamed Ali	Learning
                2021-09-14T21:10:55+00:00	Nawas	Ram Kumar,Ahamed Ali	Selection
                2021-09-14T21:10:55+00:00	Nawas	Ram Kumar,Ahamed Ali	B. Home
                2021-09-14T21:10:55+00:00	Nawas	Ram Kumar,Ahamed Ali	Webinar 
                2021-09-14T21:10:55+00:00	Nawas	Ram Kumar,Ahamed Ali	IDB
                2021-09-14T21:10:55+00:00	Nawas	Ram Kumar,Ahamed Ali	20214980
                2021-09-14T21:10:55+00:00	Nawas	Ram Kumar,Ahamed Ali	202216
                2021-09-15T11:19:14+00:00	Ahamed Ali	Nawas	Thanks!
                
                Alan KilbornA 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • Alan KilbornA
                  Alan Kilborn @Ahamed Nawas Ali
                  last edited by

                  @Ahamed-Nawas-Ali said :

                  Example scenario i am dealing with is with Date_Time Sender Recepients Message delimited with ‘Tab’

                  For this one, I considered the following to be enough to distinguish a timestamp line leader: 2021-09-15T

                  Thus I tried (based upon @guy038’s solution earlier in this thread):

                  Find: (?-s)^(\d{4}-\d\d-\d\dT.+\t).+\R\K(?!\d{4}-\d\d-\d\dT)
                  Replace: ${1}
                  Options: Wrap around, Regular expression
                  Action: Replace All (multiple times, until no more changes occur)

                  And after several Replace All presses, I obtained the following:

                  2021-09-14T21:10:55+00:00	Nawas	Ram Kumar,Ahamed Ali	Learning
                  2021-09-14T21:10:55+00:00	Nawas	Ram Kumar,Ahamed Ali	Selection
                  2021-09-14T21:10:55+00:00	Nawas	Ram Kumar,Ahamed Ali	B. Home
                  2021-09-14T21:10:55+00:00	Nawas	Ram Kumar,Ahamed Ali	Webinar 
                  2021-09-14T21:10:55+00:00	Nawas	Ram Kumar,Ahamed Ali	IDB
                  2021-09-14T21:10:55+00:00	Nawas	Ram Kumar,Ahamed Ali	20214980
                  2021-09-14T21:10:55+00:00	Nawas	Ram Kumar,Ahamed Ali	202216
                  2021-09-15T11:19:14+00:00	Ahamed Ali	Nawas	Thanks!
                  2021-09-15T11:19:14+00:00	Ahamed Ali	Nawas	
                  

                  Note that the last line of this output is “extra” and should be manually removed.

                  Ahamed Nawas AliA 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                  • Ahamed Nawas AliA
                    Ahamed Nawas Ali @Alan Kilborn
                    last edited by

                    @Alan-Kilborn I tried with below in order to keep clicking on the buttons to replace everything and it worked in removing the line numbers however the strings are concatenated.

                    Find box: \n([^2021-])
                    Replace box: $1

                    Result:

                    2021-09-14T21:10:55+00:00	Nawas	Ram Kumar,Ahamed Ali	LearningSelectionB. HomeWebinar IDB20214980202216
                    2021-09-15T11:19:14+00:00	Ahamed Ali	Nawas	Thanks!
                    

                    And the results are messed up a bit. Anyway, thank you so much for the time stamp line leader and for now, i will have to use it anyway to avoid further delay in my project! Thanks @guy038 & @PeterJones for your guidance! Greatly appreciate your guidance to this community! God bless you all!

                    Alan KilbornA 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                    • Alan KilbornA
                      Alan Kilborn @Ahamed Nawas Ali
                      last edited by

                      @Ahamed-Nawas-Ali said:

                      \n([^2021-])

                      That’s totally wrong for what you’re wanting… in several ways…
                      But since you seem to be in a hurry…and you can’t reasonably do anything with regex in a hurry…I won’t explain and I’ll just wish you good luck.

                      Ahamed Nawas AliA 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                      • Ahamed Nawas AliA
                        Ahamed Nawas Ali @Alan Kilborn
                        last edited by

                        @Alan-Kilborn Sorry Alan! I know i am wrong with that “\n([^2021-])” as it will spoil my delimiter as well and there could be some other issues as well. Its true that one can’t learn Regex in a hurry! I am using yours snippet and thank you for that!

                        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                        • guy038G
                          guy038
                          last edited by guy038

                          Hello, @ahamed-nawas-ali, @peterjones, @alan-kilborn and All,

                          @ahamed-nawas-ali, I’ll use a similar search regex to the @alan-kilborn’s one !


                          For example , given this INPUT text , below :

                          2021-09-14T21:10:55+00:00	ATX	Field3	Guy	Field5	Learning
                          Selection
                          B. Home
                          Webinar 
                          IDB
                          20214980
                          2021420214202216
                          2021-09-15T11:19:14+00:00	BYQ	Field3	Alan	Field5	Test
                          B. Home
                          Webinar 
                          IDB
                          20214980
                          2021-09-16T15:07:46+00:00	ATX	Field3	Peter	Field5	Try
                          Selection
                          B. Home
                          Webinar 
                          IDB
                          20214980
                          2021420214202216
                          Blablah
                          OK
                          END of story
                          
                          • Open the Replace dialog ( Ctrl+H )

                          • Uncheck all box options

                          • Search (?-s)^(\d{4}-.+\t).+\R\K(?!\d{4}-|\R|\z)

                          • Replace $1

                          • If necessary, check the Wrap around option

                          • Select the Regular expression search mode

                          • Click, exclusively, on the Replace All button, several times, till the message Replace All: 0 occurrences were replaced... is displayed !

                          At the end, you should get this expected OUTPUT text :

                          2021-09-14T21:10:55+00:00	ATX	Field3	Guy	Field5	Learning
                          2021-09-14T21:10:55+00:00	ATX	Field3	Guy	Field5	Selection
                          2021-09-14T21:10:55+00:00	ATX	Field3	Guy	Field5	B. Home
                          2021-09-14T21:10:55+00:00	ATX	Field3	Guy	Field5	Webinar 
                          2021-09-14T21:10:55+00:00	ATX	Field3	Guy	Field5	IDB
                          2021-09-14T21:10:55+00:00	ATX	Field3	Guy	Field5	20214980
                          2021-09-14T21:10:55+00:00	ATX	Field3	Guy	Field5	2021420214202216
                          2021-09-15T11:19:14+00:00	BYQ	Field3	Alan	Field5	Test
                          2021-09-15T11:19:14+00:00	BYQ	Field3	Alan	Field5	B. Home
                          2021-09-15T11:19:14+00:00	BYQ	Field3	Alan	Field5	Webinar 
                          2021-09-15T11:19:14+00:00	BYQ	Field3	Alan	Field5	IDB
                          2021-09-15T11:19:14+00:00	BYQ	Field3	Alan	Field5	20214980
                          2021-09-16T15:07:46+00:00	ATX	Field3	Peter	Field5	Try
                          2021-09-16T15:07:46+00:00	ATX	Field3	Peter	Field5	Selection
                          2021-09-16T15:07:46+00:00	ATX	Field3	Peter	Field5	B. Home
                          2021-09-16T15:07:46+00:00	ATX	Field3	Peter	Field5	Webinar 
                          2021-09-16T15:07:46+00:00	ATX	Field3	Peter	Field5	IDB
                          2021-09-16T15:07:46+00:00	ATX	Field3	Peter	Field5	20214980
                          2021-09-16T15:07:46+00:00	ATX	Field3	Peter	Field5	2021420214202216
                          2021-09-16T15:07:46+00:00	ATX	Field3	Peter	Field5	Blablah
                          2021-09-16T15:07:46+00:00	ATX	Field3	Peter	Field5	OK
                          2021-09-16T15:07:46+00:00	ATX	Field3	Peter	Field5	END of story
                          

                          Voila :-))


                          Notes :

                          • As you can see, the number of columns, before the last one, is not a problem !

                          • From beginning of line ( ^ ), the regex looks for a line beginning with 4 digits, followed with a dash character (\d{4}- ) and anything else till the last tabulation ( .+\t ) of current line

                          • This search, so far, is memorized and stored as group 1

                          • After the last field of the line and the line-break ( .+\R ), all the matched string is discarded ( \K )

                          • Thus, the regex engine is now searching for a zero-length string, at beginning of the next line, but ONLY IF this next line does not begin with :

                            • 4 digits and a dash char

                            • An other line-break

                            • The very end of current file

                          • When this assertion is true, it just inserts the group 1 contents at the very beginning of current line

                          Best Regards

                          guy038

                          P.S. :

                          If the condition to detect the header lines seems not restrictive enough, you may use this alternate search regex :

                          • Search (?-is)^(20\d\d-\d\d-\d\dT.+\t).+\R\K(?!20\d\d-\d\d-\d\dT|\R|\z)
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