Search and replace not working properly ...

Hakim Oerton

I have for months been successfully transferring text from PDF documents to N++ and stripping the CR&LF that appears after each word by searching for \r\n and replacing with \s with the extended option ticked.
Yesterday this stopped working. I deleted my install and downloaded the latest version to find the same problem which is that the CR&LF are replaced by a literal \s inserted before each word.
Any idea of what is happening here?

Hakim Oerton

Debug info is here if it is useful:
Notepad++ v7.3.1 (32-bit)
Build time : Jan 17 2017 - 00:21:10
Path : C:\Program Files (x86)\Notepad++\notepad++.exe
Admin mode : ON
Local Conf mode : OFF
OS : Windows 7
Plugins : mimeTools.dll NppConverter.dll NppExport.dll NppFTP.dll PluginManager.dll

Scott Sumner

@Hakim-Oerton

I don’t know about the “Extended” Search Mode as I have no experience with it. I see little use for it since Regular Expression mode was added in version 6.0 – my guess is that extended mode is still retained for people that are accustomed to using it.

Why don’t you try doing your Search-and-Replace this way?:

Find what: \r\n
Replace with: \x20
Mode: Regular expression

You could enter simply a single space into the “Replace with” box, but as that would be hard to show in red above, I opted for the hex version of a single space (the \x20). Either way will work.

Sanjay Jha

Normal text search not working for me too… Find next button doesn’t show anything, while “Find all in current document” shows the occurrences correctly.

AdrianHHH

Occasionally I leave the “In selection” tick box on the replace window ticked, then I get very confused about why a replace does not do what I want. Unticking the “In selection” box and shouting at my mouse for clicking the wrong things lets the replacement work OK.

Vasile Caraus

@Scott-Sumner said:

\x20

by the way, please tell me. x20 is the same thing as one space between words?

Scott Sumner

@Vasile-Caraus

@Scott-Sumner said:

You could enter simply a single space into the “Replace with” box, but as that would be hard to show in red above, I opted for the hex version of a single space (the \x20). Either way will work.

Was that unclear? or just not read?

Vasile Caraus

@Scott-Sumner said:

a single space into the “Re

hello. I read, only that I made a regex and \x20 was not working as a space.

Scott Sumner

@Vasile-Caraus

Create a UTF-8 document with some “word” data in it. For example, copy-n-paste the content of this posting.

Get to the Find dialog’s Replace tab:

Find what: \w
Replace with: \x20
Search mode: Regular expression
Wrap around: checked
Uncheck all other checkboxes on Replace tab.

Press the Replace button one or more times. Each press replaces a word character with a single space character.