Subtract document B from A

Scott Sumner

It may be time to consider the “screaming monkey”…

I tried @Claudia-Frank 's Pythonscript code on your documents and, I don’t know, I either didn’t wait long enough, or something else went wrong, but I ended up having to kill Notepad++ to put a stop to whatever it (or the PS plugin) was doing.

I thought about trying @guy038’s regular expression on the data, but then I thought, “this is too much work; no one will really be willing to do this, let alone remember it”.

So…it may be time to bite the monkey and give this task to an external scripting language. Starting with @Claudia-Frank 's Pythonscript code, I came up with the following Python3 code that runs on your data files so quickly that I didn’t even think to time it:

with open('DocA.txt', 'r', encoding='utf-8') as filea: linesa = filea.readlines()
with open('DocB.txt', 'r', encoding='utf-8') as fileb: setb = set(fileb.readlines())

linesa = sorted(linesa)
seta = set(linesa)

linesc = sorted(list(seta - setb))

with open('DocA_sorted.txt', 'w', encoding='utf-8') as filea: filea.write(''.join(linesa))
with open('DocC.txt', 'w', encoding='utf-8') as filec: filec.write(''.join(linesc))

I sorted the lines because that makes comparing DocA_sorted and DocC (where C = B - A) easy when attempting to validate the results.

Sometimes it’s just best to leave the confines of Notepad++ for a task, and I’m sure Perl or AWK or “insert your favorite programming language here” works just as well as Python3 for this problem.

Claudia Frank

@Scott-Sumner

tried it ten times in a row without a problem. Takes < 1sec to do the job.

Cheers
Claudia

Scott Sumner

@Claudia-Frank

Interesting…still don’t know what was going wrong with it for me…but I’m not inclined to spend any more time to find out. :-)

Some tasks just sort of feel right outside Notepad++, and for me this is one of them. I guess if there was a no-brainer menu function that did it I’d feel differently, but I dunno, do you think we’ll ever see that? :-)

And BTW, I should have said C = A - B above.

guy038

Hi, @timmy-M, @claudia-frank, @scott-sumner and All,

As Scott said, I do think that an external scripting language is the best way to solve your goal ! And I’m convinced that both Claudia’s and Scott’s scripts work just fine !

But your stubborn servant just gave a try to a regex solution, which is, of course, longer and less elegant than a script :-((

Timmy, I could, correctly, download your two files DocA.txt and DocB.txt, without any problem !

The hosts file, DocA.txt, is an Unix UTF-8 encoded file, containing 255,386 lines
The Safe Facebook servers file, DocB.txt, is a Windows UTF-8 BOM encoded file, containing only 113 lines

Now, if we try to change all the lines of your DocB.txt, containing the safe sites, in an unique line, we get a line of 3,701 bytes. But, if we were going to add 3,701 bytes to each line of DocA.txt to simulate my 2nd method, in my previous post, the total size of DocA.txt would have been increased, up to 908 Mo about ( 6,788,298 + 255,386 * 3,701 = 951,971,884 bytes ! ) Obviously, this resulting file would be too big to handle while running even simple regexes :-((

So, …we need to find out a 3rd way !

To begin with, I copied DocA.txt as DocC.txt and DocB.txt as DocD.txt

Then, I did some verifications on these two files :

I normalized all letters of these files in lower-case ( with Ctrl-A and Ctrl + U )
I performed a classical sort ( Edit > Line Operations > Sort Lines Lexicographically Ascending )

Note : Sort comes after the Ctrl + U command, as the sort is a true Unicode sort !

Then I ran the regex ^(.+\R)\1+ to search possible duplicate consecutive lines
- DocD.txt did not contain any duplicate line
- DocC.txt contained 118 duplicates, with appeared, due to the previous normalization to lower-case. So, in order to delete them, I used the regex S/R :

SEARCH ^(.+\R)\1+

REPLACE \1

So, DocC.txt, now, contained 255,268 lines

I noticed that, in DocD.txt, many occurrences of addresses ended with “facebook.com” or “fbcdn.net”, for instance. So, after copying DocD.txt contents, in a new tab, I decided to have an idea of the different sites, regarded as safe, with the regex S/R, below :

SEARCH ^.{8}.+[.-]([^.\r\n]+\.[^.\r\n]+)$

REPLACE \1\t\t\t\t\t$0

After a classical sort, I obtained the following list :

amazonaws.com					0.0.0.0 ec2-34-193-80-93.compute-1.amazonaws.com
facebook.com					0.0.0.0 0-act.channel.facebook.com
facebook.com					0.0.0.0 0-edge-chat.facebook.com
facebook.com					0.0.0.0 1-act.channel.facebook.com
facebook.com					0.0.0.0 1-edge-chat.facebook.com
facebook.com					0.0.0.0 2-act.channel.facebook.com
facebook.com					0.0.0.0 2-edge-chat.facebook.com
facebook.com					0.0.0.0 3-act.channel.facebook.com
facebook.com					0.0.0.0 3-edge-chat.facebook.com
facebook.com					0.0.0.0 4-act.channel.facebook.com
facebook.com					0.0.0.0 4-edge-chat.facebook.com
facebook.com					0.0.0.0 5-act.channel.facebook.com
facebook.com					0.0.0.0 5-edge-chat.facebook.com
facebook.com					0.0.0.0 6-act.channel.facebook.com
facebook.com					0.0.0.0 6-edge-chat.facebook.com
facebook.com					0.0.0.0 act.channel.facebook.com
facebook.com					0.0.0.0 api-read.facebook.com
facebook.com					0.0.0.0 api.ak.facebook.com
facebook.com					0.0.0.0 api.connect.facebook.com
facebook.com					0.0.0.0 app.logs-facebook.com
facebook.com					0.0.0.0 ar-ar.facebook.com
facebook.com					0.0.0.0 attachments.facebook.com
facebook.com					0.0.0.0 b-api.facebook.com
facebook.com					0.0.0.0 b-graph.facebook.com
facebook.com					0.0.0.0 b.static.ak.facebook.com
facebook.com					0.0.0.0 badge.facebook.com
facebook.com					0.0.0.0 beta-chat-01-05-ash3.facebook.com
facebook.com					0.0.0.0 bigzipfiles.facebook.com
facebook.com					0.0.0.0 channel-ecmp-05-ash3.facebook.com
facebook.com					0.0.0.0 channel-staging-ecmp-05-ash3.facebook.com
facebook.com					0.0.0.0 channel-testing-ecmp-05-ash3.facebook.com
facebook.com					0.0.0.0 check4.facebook.com
facebook.com					0.0.0.0 check6.facebook.com
facebook.com					0.0.0.0 creative.ak.facebook.com
facebook.com					0.0.0.0 d.facebook.com
facebook.com					0.0.0.0 de-de.facebook.com
facebook.com					0.0.0.0 developers.facebook.com
facebook.com					0.0.0.0 edge-chat.facebook.com
facebook.com					0.0.0.0 edge-mqtt-mini-shv-01-lax3.facebook.com
facebook.com					0.0.0.0 edge-mqtt-mini-shv-02-lax3.facebook.com
facebook.com					0.0.0.0 edge-star-shv-01-lax3.facebook.com
facebook.com					0.0.0.0 edge-star-shv-02-lax3.facebook.com
facebook.com					0.0.0.0 error.facebook.com
facebook.com					0.0.0.0 es-la.facebook.com
facebook.com					0.0.0.0 fr-fr.facebook.com
facebook.com					0.0.0.0 graph.facebook.com
facebook.com					0.0.0.0 hi-in.facebook.com
facebook.com					0.0.0.0 inyour-slb-01-05-ash3.facebook.com
facebook.com					0.0.0.0 it-it.facebook.com
facebook.com					0.0.0.0 ja-jp.facebook.com
facebook.com					0.0.0.0 messages-facebook.com
facebook.com					0.0.0.0 mqtt.facebook.com
facebook.com					0.0.0.0 orcart.facebook.com
facebook.com					0.0.0.0 origincache-starfacebook-ai-01-05-ash3.facebook.com
facebook.com					0.0.0.0 pixel.facebook.com
facebook.com					0.0.0.0 profile.ak.facebook.com
facebook.com					0.0.0.0 pt-br.facebook.com
facebook.com					0.0.0.0 s-static.ak.facebook.com
facebook.com					0.0.0.0 s-static.facebook.com
facebook.com					0.0.0.0 secure-profile.facebook.com
facebook.com					0.0.0.0 ssl.connect.facebook.com
facebook.com					0.0.0.0 star.c10r.facebook.com
facebook.com					0.0.0.0 star.facebook.com
facebook.com					0.0.0.0 static.ak.connect.facebook.com
facebook.com					0.0.0.0 static.ak.facebook.com
facebook.com					0.0.0.0 staticxx.facebook.com
facebook.com					0.0.0.0 touch.facebook.com
facebook.com					0.0.0.0 upload.facebook.com
facebook.com					0.0.0.0 vupload.facebook.com
facebook.com					0.0.0.0 vupload2.vvv.facebook.com
facebook.com					0.0.0.0 www.login.facebook.com
facebook.com					0.0.0.0 zh-cn.facebook.com
facebook.com					0.0.0.0 zh-tw.facebook.com
fbcdn.net					0.0.0.0 b.static.ak.fbcdn.net
fbcdn.net					0.0.0.0 creative.ak.fbcdn.net
fbcdn.net					0.0.0.0 ent-a.xx.fbcdn.net
fbcdn.net					0.0.0.0 ent-b.xx.fbcdn.net
fbcdn.net					0.0.0.0 ent-c.xx.fbcdn.net
fbcdn.net					0.0.0.0 ent-d.xx.fbcdn.net
fbcdn.net					0.0.0.0 ent-e.xx.fbcdn.net
fbcdn.net					0.0.0.0 external.ak.fbcdn.net
fbcdn.net					0.0.0.0 origincache-ai-01-05-ash3.fbcdn.net
fbcdn.net					0.0.0.0 photos-a.ak.fbcdn.net
fbcdn.net					0.0.0.0 photos-b.ak.fbcdn.net
fbcdn.net					0.0.0.0 photos-c.ak.fbcdn.net
fbcdn.net					0.0.0.0 photos-d.ak.fbcdn.net
fbcdn.net					0.0.0.0 photos-e.ak.fbcdn.net
fbcdn.net					0.0.0.0 photos-f.ak.fbcdn.net
fbcdn.net					0.0.0.0 photos-g.ak.fbcdn.net
fbcdn.net					0.0.0.0 photos-h.ak.fbcdn.net
fbcdn.net					0.0.0.0 profile.ak.fbcdn.net
fbcdn.net					0.0.0.0 s-external.ak.fbcdn.net
fbcdn.net					0.0.0.0 s-static.ak.fbcdn.net
fbcdn.net					0.0.0.0 scontent-a-lax.xx.fbcdn.net
fbcdn.net					0.0.0.0 scontent-a-sin.xx.fbcdn.net
fbcdn.net					0.0.0.0 scontent-a.xx.fbcdn.net
fbcdn.net					0.0.0.0 scontent-b-lax.xx.fbcdn.net
fbcdn.net					0.0.0.0 scontent-b-sin.xx.fbcdn.net
fbcdn.net					0.0.0.0 scontent-b.xx.fbcdn.net
fbcdn.net					0.0.0.0 scontent-c.xx.fbcdn.net
fbcdn.net					0.0.0.0 scontent-d.xx.fbcdn.net
fbcdn.net					0.0.0.0 scontent-e.xx.fbcdn.net
fbcdn.net					0.0.0.0 scontent-mxp.xx.fbcdn.net
fbcdn.net					0.0.0.0 scontent.xx.fbcdn.net
fbcdn.net					0.0.0.0 sphotos-a.xx.fbcdn.net
fbcdn.net					0.0.0.0 static.ak.fbcdn.net
fbcdn.net					0.0.0.0 video.xx.fbcdn.net
fbcdn.net					0.0.0.0 vthumb.ak.fbcdn.net
fbcdn.net					0.0.0.0 xx-fbcdn-shv-01-lax3.fbcdn.net
fbcdn.net					0.0.0.0 xx-fbcdn-shv-02-lax3.fbcdn.net
net23.net					0.0.0.0 scontent-vie-224-xx-fbcdn.net23.net
net23.net					0.0.0.0 scontent-vie-73-xx-fbcdn.net23.net
net23.net					0.0.0.0 scontent-vie-75-xx-fbcdn.net23.net

And a quick examination shows that all these 113 sites, considered as safe, have an address ending with one of the 4 values, below :

amazonaws.com
facebook.com
fbcdn.net
net23.net

Thus, from the remaining 255,268 lines, of DocC.txt, only those which address ends with amazonaws.com, facebook.com, fbcdn.net, or net23.net have to be compared with the list of the 113 safe servers !

So, in docC.txt, I bookmarked all lines, matching the regex (amazonaws|facebook)\.com$|(fbcdn|net23)\.net$. I obtained 301 bookmarked results that I copied to the clipboard with the option Search -> Bookmark -> Copy Bookmarked lines
Then, I pasted the 301 bookmarked lines, at the very beginning of Doc D.txt, followed with a line of, at least, 3 dashes, as a separator. Finally, DocD.txt contained 301 results to verify + 1 line of dashes + 113 safe sites, that is to say a total of 415 lines

Now, with the regex (?-s)^(.+)\R(?s)(?=.*\R\1\R?), I marked all the lines which have a duplicate, further on, in DocD.txt => 106 lines bookmarked !

And using the command Search > Bookmark > Remove Unmarked lines, I was left with a DocD.txt file, containing 106 lines, only, which are, both, in DocA.txt and DocB.txt. So, these lines / sites needed to be deleted from the DocC.txt file !

To that purpose :

I added these 106 lines at the end of Doc C.txt file, giving a file with 255 374 lines
I did a last sort operation ( Edit > Line Operations > Sort Lines Lexicographically Ascending )

=> After sort, these 106 sites should appear, each, as a block of two consecutive duplicate lines

And, finally, with the regex S/R :

SEARCH ^(.+\R)\1+

REPLACE Leave EMPTY

I got rid of these safe servers and obtained a Doc.txt file of 255,162 lines ( 255,374 - 106 * 2 ) which contains, only, unwanted servers !

Now, if you do not want to repeat all the above process, by yourself, just send me an e-mail to :

And I’ll send you, back, this DocC.txt ( = DocA.txt - DocB.txt ) of 255,162 lines

Cheers,

guy038

P.S. :

Timmy, to be exhaustive, and regarding your initial files :

DocB.txt contains 113 lines / safe servers :

7 lines, not present in DocA.txt
106 lines, present in DocA.txt

And DocA.txt contains 255,386 lines :

118 duplicate lines , ( due to case normalization ), which have been deleted
106 lines which are, both, present in DocA.txt and DocB.txt and have been deleted, too !
254,967 lines, with an end of line, different from amazonaws.com, facebook.com, fbcdn.net, and net23.net, which have to remain in DocA.txt
195 lines, with an end of line, equal to amazonaws.com, facebook.com, fbcdn.net, or net23.net but not present in DocB.txt. So, they must remain in DocA.txt, too !

Hence, the final DocA.txt ( = my DocC.txt ) which contains 255162 unwanted servers ( 254,967 + 195 )

Timmy M

“Replace All: 106 occurrences were replaced.”

@guy038 You sir, are a regex LEGEND! :D

Of course I have taken every step you’ve explained, it’s the least I could do after you’ve put in such effort. I even found a minor mistake in your explanation (I think):

Now, with the regex (?-s)^(.+)\R(?s)(?=.*\R\1\R?), I marked all the lines which have a duplicate, further on, in DocD.txt

Should be bookmarked (with regular marking, the “Remove Unmarked Lines” removes all lines).

@Scott-Sumner @Claudia-Frank
I guess it’s time to face that monkey then… I installed the Python plugin script, navigated to Python Script > New Script and created ScreamingMonkey.py
Now, selecting Run Previous Script (ScreamingMonkey) doesn’t do anything. I’ve done some searching and found that I should install Python first from python.org/downloads/, should I? Version 3?
Before installing something I know nothing about, I’d like to verify with you guys whether that is the right course of action. I hope that’s okay :)

Claudia Frank

@Timmy-M

no, there is no need to install an additional python package,
as python script plugin delivers its own.

What you need to do is to open you two files like I’ve shown above as the
script will reference it by using editor1 and editor2 and click on ScreamingMonkey.
Once it has been run you can then call it again by using Run Previous Script.

What do you see if you try to open the python script console?
Plugin->PythonScript->Show Console.

If nothing happens, no new window opens, then how did
you install it, via plugin manager or via the msi package?

The msi installation is preferred as it was reported that the installation via plugin manager sometimes doesn’t copy all needed files.

Cheers
Claudia

guy038

Hello, @timmy-m and All,

Ah, yes ! You’re right, although what I wrote was correct, too ! Indeed, I used the Remove Unmarked lines, in order to change DocD.txt, first => So, it remained 106 lines that I, then, added to DocC.txt contents.

But you, certainly, used this easier solution, below :

…
…

Now, with the regex (?-s)^(.+)\R(?s)(?=.*\R\1\R?), I marked all the lines which have a duplicate, further on, in DocD.txt => 106 lines bookmarked !

And using the command Search > Bookmark > Copy Bookmarked lines, I put, in the clipboard, these 106 lines, only, which are, both, in DocA.txt and DocB.txt and have to be deleted from the DocC.txt file !

To that purpose :

I paste these 106 lines ( Ctrl + V ) at the end of Doc C.txt file, giving a file with 255 374 lines

…
…

Best Regards,

guy038

Scott Sumner

@Timmy-M

Regarding “marked versus bookmarked”:

Not @guy038 's fault… The Notepad++ user interface is confusing on this point; it uses the terminology “mark” often when it should (IMO) use “bookmark”. Alternatively, if it used “redmark” and “bookmark” exclusively there would be no confusion, but I suppose using “red” wouldn’t totally be correct as it is just the default color and can be changed by the user.

Timmy M

I used the msi install method. First updated N++ to latest, then installed Python plugin.

@Claudia-Frank said:

What do you see if you try to open the python script console?
Plugin->PythonScript->Show Console.

---------------------------.
Python 2.7.6-notepad++ r2 (default, Apr 21 2014, 19:26:54) [MSC v.1600 32 bit (Intel)]
Initialisation took 31ms
Ready.
Traceback (most recent call last):
File “%AppData%\Roaming\Notepad++\plugins\Config\PythonScript\scripts\ScreamingMonkey.py”, line 1, in <module>
with open(‘DocA.txt’, ‘r’, encoding=‘utf-8’) as filea: linesa = filea.readlines()
TypeError: ‘encoding’ is an invalid keyword argument for this function
Traceback (most recent call last):
File “%AppData%\Roaming\Notepad++\plugins\Config\PythonScript\scripts\ScreamingMonkey.py”, line 1, in <module>
with open(‘DocA.txt’, ‘r’, encoding=‘utf-8’) as filea: linesa = filea.readlines()
TypeError: ‘encoding’ is an invalid keyword argument for this function
---------------------------.

Eh… Lil’ help please? That monkey’s screaming really loud right now O_O

Claudia Frank

@Timmy-M

but that is not my script.
Scotts script assumes you run it under python3 as it uses the encoding argument
which is not available in python2, which is used by python script.

Did you try my 3 lines code posted above?

If you still want to use Scotts code and executed via python script plugin, then
get rid of the encoding=‘utf-8’ so something like

with open(‘DocA.txt’, ‘r’) as filea ...

but you have to ensure that DocA.txt can be found and python scripts
working directory is set to the directory where notepad++.exe is.

Cheers
Claudia

Scott Sumner

@Timmy-M

Yea, for sure go with @Claudia-Frank 's script, since you seem to want to stay more “within” Notepad++!

Timmy M

@Claudia-Frank said:

Did you try my 3 lines code posted above?

I have and eventually succeeded! On my first dozen attempts (turns out I really suck at taming monkeys) I just kept reorganizing the order of all entries in either DocA or DocB, depending on which one was selected, without any entry getting removed.
After trying a bunch of stuff, I found that I had to use View > Move/Clone Current Document > Move to Other View on Doc B. I just couldn’t get my head around “view0” and “view1” at first but didn’t want to bother you with such mundane question either ^_^
DocA’s order does get messed up eventually but that’s easily fixed with a regular sort. Perhaps that sort can be implemented in the script?

Anyway, it all worked out! Thank you very much @Scott-Sumner, @Claudia-Frank and @guy038 for this learning experience. You’re a dream team ;)

Claudia Frank

@Timmy-M

good to see that you got it sorted out :-)

and to keep sorting, change this

editor1.setText('\r\n'.join(s1-s2))

to this

editor1.setText('\r\n'.join(sorted(s1-s2)))

that should do the trick.

Cheers
Claudia