How to start 2. How do I delete blocks of text?
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Now to my second question: How do I delete blocks of text?
The text immediately before the block is unique, and also the text immediately after the block. The blocks themselves are from 2 to maybe 50 lines long and starts and ends with the same group of words.
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I assume a regex could do the job but for this to make it work there is a need to know your data exactly.
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So Notepad++ can do a few types of searches, one is a “normal” search where it searches for exactly what you type; a second type of search is called a “regular expression” search. In this 2nd type of search, certain characters that you type have special meaning, for example a
.means to match any character, a*means to match the previous thing zero or more times, a?following a*means to match the previous as few times as possible. Putting it all together,.*?could possibly come between your leading text and your following text.So as an example,
abc.*?xyzwould match any of the following (and many more):abcdefxyzabcdefghijxyz- the entire english alphabet, in order
So perhaps
.*?will appear in the middle of what you need, but @Ekopalypse is correct, we need more infos. -
****This is the longest block: ****
Subject: Phonogram Digest V15 #1
From: owner-phonogram-digest@phonogram.net (Phonogram Digest)
Date: Thu, 6 Jan 2011 02:41:43 -0500
To: phonogram-digest@phonogram.net
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Reply-to: phonogram@phonogram.net -
… and what do you want to delete?
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Everything from (and including) the first part of the first line Subject: Phonogram Digest
to (and including) the last line Reply-to: phonogram@phonogram.netThe text between those two lines are different in each block.
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for this given example a regualr expression like
find what:(?s-i)Subject.*?Reply-to.*?\R
replace with is empty
would do it BUT this assumes that each block starts with Subject and ends with Reply-to and
there is no Reply-to in between.
Note, this search is case sensitive, meaning Reply-To and Reply-to is different. -
Thank you. That worked with a little editing of the expression to
(?s-i)Subject: Phonogram Digest.?Reply-to: .?\R -
Another gotcha when posting here is that when you use
*it gets turned into an italics font. See that? So the regular expression you posted makes no sense. It should be, AFAICT,(?s-i)Subject: Phonogram Digest.*?Reply-to: .*?\RYou can get the special text I just showed by wrapping it in backticks, also known as grave accents.
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