How to exclude empty lines containing tabs and spaces from the search?

[andrecool-68]

Need to find the beginning and end of the line.
Add quotation marks to the beginning and end of the string.

Find what : (^|$)

Replace with :"

How to exclude empty lines containing tabs and spaces from the search?

[PeterJones]

@andrecool-68 ,

You’ve been here long enough to know how to paste in example before and after data, and show what you tried. Please do so. This will be the last time I answer you when you haven’t showed any effort in your question.

Before:

Something Here
Something There

There was a blank line

After:

"Something Here"
"Something There"

"There was a blank line"

This is a pretty simple one: you just want to select beginning, anything, require at least one non-space, anything, end of line. Translate those into the regular expression syntax.

• Find: ^.*[\S]+.*$
• Replace: "$0"

(That works whether the blank line is blank or whether it contains one or more spaces or tabs)

[andrecool-68]

@PeterJones
I greet you!

I copied your example and it does not work for me. Added only two quotes, first and end of the file))

"Something Here
Something There

There was a blank line"

[PeterJones]

Turn off . matches newline, or change find to (?-s)^.*[\S]+.*$, where (?-s) overrides the . matches newline setting.

[guy038]

Hi, @andrecool-68, @peterjones, and All,

An other solution could be :

SEARCH : (?-s)^.+

REPLACE : "$0"

Notes :

• As usual, the in-line modifier (?-s) means that any further dot (.) character will refer to a single standard character, only ( Not an EOL one )

• So, the part ^.+ select the largest non-null range of standard characters, ( i.e. all contents of current line, without its line-break )

• In replacement, we just re-write the entire match area ( $0), surrounded with two double quotes

Best Regards,

guy038

[PeterJones]

@guy038 ,

My quibble with that solution is that the original question was “How to exclude empty lines containing tabs and spaces from the search?” It seems to me that @andrecool-68 didn’t want quotes around lines that had only whitespace, but your regex will:

[andrecool-68]

@PeterJones
Following your advice now both your examples work!
Many thanks to all for the help!

[guy038]

Hi, @andrecool-68, @peterjones, and All,

Oh, my bad, Peter, you’re right :-(( I should have read more carefully !

So, my previous regex must be changed, as below :

SEARCH : (?-s)^(?=.*\S).+

REPLACE "$0"

Notes :

• This new search regex looks, as before, for all contents of any non-empty line ^.+ but, this time, a match occurs ONLY IF the look-ahead (?=.*\S) is true, i.e. if, from beginning of line, a non-space char can be found, further on, in current line

• However, note that this regex S/R also preserves blank chars beginning or ending text of any line !

---

So to simply surround the text with double quotes, ignoring the white characters that start and/or end that text, here is a second regex S/R :

SEARCH ^\h*(\S+(\h+\S+)*)\h*

REPLACE "\1"

Notes :

• The part \S+(\h+\S+)* represents any text, made of one or several words, even containing non-word characters ( for instance #, @… ) , separated by, at least, one horizontal blank char

• This part is surrounded with parentheses, so stored as group 1 and surrounded itself with \h*, which stands for possible leading or ending horizontal blank characters

Remark : If you change the Replace regex, of this second S/R with "$0", it’s, again, equivalent to the first regex S/R of that post !

Best Regards

guy038

P.S. : You say what ? Writing “Best Regards”, at the end of this post, I first began to write : “Best Regex…” ! My god, I’m definitively addicted ;-))

[andrecool-68]

@guy038 Hi!
Your option works! Thank you very much for your help!