Ray Fellers

So, Raymond, you would like to delete everything except the company names which are located :

• After the string <font color='#595f75'><strong>

• Before the string </strong>

No problem at all with regular expressions ;-))

• Copy / Paste your html file in a new Notepad++ tab

• Open the Replace dialog ( Ctrl + H )

• SEARCH (?s).+?<font color='#595f75'><strong>((?-s).+?)</strong>|.+

• REPLACE \1\r\n ( or \1\n if you work with UNIX files )

• Tick the Wrap around option

• Select the Regular expression search mode

• Click on the Replace All button

Et voilà !

Notes :

• First, the global modifier (?s) means that, by default, the dot character will match any single char ( standard or EOL one )

• Then the part .+?<font color='#595f75'><strong> looks, from cursor position, for the smallest range, even on multi-lines, of any char till the literal string <font color='#595f75'><strong>

• Now, the part ((?-s).+?)</strong> tries to match the smallest range of standard characters, in a single line due to the (?-s) modifier, till the literal string </strong>. That range is stored as group 1, because of the parentheses

• If no more range <font color='#595f75'><strong>............</strong> cannot be found, the regex tries the second alternative, after the | symbol ( .+ ) which catches all the remaining chars till the very end of the file

• In replacement, any company name is rewritten, \1, followed with the EOL chars \r\n and remaining chars at end of the file are simply replaced with a single line-break as, in that second alternative, the group 1 is not defined !

Remark :

If you do not tick the Wrap around option, in order to run the regex S/R from current location till the end of file, only, be sure that cursor is at the very beginning of the current line, before replacement !

Best Regards,

guy038

Terry

Actually there is another way to delete the lines you don’t want. I’ll explain as it seems you may have some regex knowledge already.
Under the Search menu there is a “mark” option. Now you use the text you know that exists for the companies (this MUST NOT occur any any lines you want to delete, only the ones to remain) and insert into the Mark “find what” field. Click on the bookmark line option and then click on “mark all”. So this has now marked all the lines you want to keep. From here you can use the Search menu, Bookmark (near bottom) and select either “remove bookmarked lines” or “remove unmarked lines”. If the first option, then open another tab in NPP and paste them there.

I hope that helps.

Terry

Can I therefore suggest you read the FAQ, specifically the posting called
“Request for Help without sufficient information to help you”.
In there is how to represent the data (example) so that the markdown interpreter (which runs these posts) does NOT interfere with the formatting.

Terry