replace in selected area

[Gonen Shoham]

Hi

I have a file like this:

*JSP - 060 N N
1309,com.sapiens.mig.ri.v050m00.RI17483,70
1309,com.sapiens.mig.ri.v050m00.RI17483,70
*SQL - 812 N N #SQL01
*DDC - 045 N N
*JRN - 055 N N

I am looking for the easiest way (macro?) to parse only this lines:

1309,com.sapiens.mig.ri.v050m00.RI17483,70
1309,com.sapiens.mig.ri.v050m00.RI17484,40

and replace them with :

1309 RI17483 70
1309 RI17484 40

In other words:

• I want to select these lines

• replace dots & commas in these lines to space

• replace each selected line with the 1st word then space then 6th word then space then 7th word

so that line :
1309,com.sapiens.mig.ri.v050m00.RI17483,70
will be replaced with
1309 RI17483 70

and all the other non-selected lines in the file will be left unchanged.

Can this be done ???

Many thanks

[guy038]

Hello , Gonen Shoham,

Of course, it can -:))

I noticed that, finally, you would like to change, ONLY, the lines which begin with a digit, wouldn’t you ?

If so, you can achieve all your changes, in one go, with a regex Search-Replacement !

• Move back to the very beginning of your file ( Ctrl + Origin )

• Open the Replace dialog ( Ctrl + H )

• In the Find what: zone, type (?-s)^(?=\d)(\w+).+\W+(\w+)\W+(\w+)$

• In the Replace with: zone, type \1 \2 \3 , with a space character after digits 1 and 2

• Click on the Replace All button

Et voilà !!

NOTES :

• As usual, the in-line modifier (?-s) ensures you the any meta-character dot ( . ) will match standard characters, ONLY, and not EOL characters

• Then, the part ^(?=\d) is called a positive look-ahead, that is to say a condition which verifies that, at beginning ( ^ ) of each line, a digit ( \d ) does occur ( Note that this condition must be true, in order to valid the overall search regex. However, these look-arounds do not consume any character and the regex engine position is, still, at the very beginning of each line )

• So, the part (\w+) represents the first non-null range of word characters, of each line, which is stored as group 1, due to the parentheses

• Then, the part .+ stands for any non-null range of standard characters, till the regex engine reaches :

  • A non-null list of NON-word characters ( \W+ ), followed by :

  • A non-null range of word characters ( (\w+) ), stored as group 2, followed by :

  • An other non-null list of NON-word characters \W+, followed by :

  • An other non-null range of word characters ( (\w+) ), stored as group 3, finally followed by the end of the line ( $ )

• In replacement, we just re-write the contents of the three groups 1 ( first word ), 2 ( penultimate word ) and 3 ( last word ), separated by one space character.

REMARKS* :

• The class \w represents, in the world-common ASCII range of characters, the class [A-Za-z0-9_], ( upper-case letters, lower-case letters, digits and the low line character ) But, if your present file has an Unicode encoding ( UTF-8 or UCS-2 ), the range of word characters ( \w ), in N++, is extended to any character, considered as letter or digit, in either, Latin, Greek, Cyrillic, Hebrew and Arab languages, correcty displayed with the Courrier New default N++ font !

• And the inverse class, \W, stands for any NON-word character, that is to say, any chracter, which does NOT belong to the word characters range

So, from your example :

*JSP - 060 N N
1309,com.sapiens.mig.ri.v050m00.RI17483,70
1309,com.sapiens.mig.ri.v050m00.RI17483,70
*SQL - 812 N N #SQL01
*DDC - 045 N N
*JRN - 055 N N

we would obtain the modified text, below :

*JSP - 060 N N
1309 RI17483 70
1309 RI17483 70
*SQL - 812 N N #SQL01
*DDC - 045 N N
*JRN - 055 N N

---

Even if the non-selected lines begin with an othersymbol than the star, except for digits, AND/OR the different words are separated by several non-word characters, our S/R, always, behave as expected :-) For instance, if you consider the text, below, where I inserted numerous non-word characters, whose some space and tabulation characters, in the two lines, that have to be changed and where I changed the first character of the lines, which have to stay unchanged :

+JSP - 060 N N
1309;com---sapiens~mig&ri>>>>>v050m00    RI17483,@@@@@@@70
1309:com"""sapiens===mig/ri!v050m00			RI17483%%%70
*SQL - 812 N N #SQL01
DDC - 045 N N
JRN - 055 N N

We, still, get the result, below !

+JSP - 060 N N
1309 RI17483 70
1309 RI17483 70
*SQL - 812 N N #SQL01
DDC - 045 N N
JRN - 055 N N

Best Regards,

guy038