Automatically selecting files with searched word in it

Lorenzo Carrisi

Hi guys, I’m fairly new with this program and I’ve got a question.
I searched for a word in a directory, and it found occurrences in 220 files. Is there a way to automatically select and copy/paste those files in another directory?
Thanks a lot!

Alan Kilborn

@Lorenzo-Carrisi

Automatically? No.

But with a “few” steps, not so hard:

right-click in the Find result panel whitespace (anywhere)
choose Select All from the popup menu
press ctrl+c to copy
create a new file called test.bat in your desired destination directory
open test.bat in Notepad++
press ctrl+v to paste into N++'s buffer for test.bat
choose Edit (menu) > Line Operations > …and pick the topmost sort option

Your file buffer should now have a group of lines at the top that start out with Line and a group of lines at the bottom that start with Search. You want the grouping of lines in the middle, the ones that start out with actual pathnames and end with (# hits)

manually remove the Line lines at the top of the file
manually remove the Search lines at the bottom of the file
run this regular-expression replace on the whole file: Find: (?-i)\s\(\d+\shits?\)(?=\R) Repl: " .
run this regular-expression replace on the whole file: Find: ^\s+ Repl: copy "
press ctrl+s to save test.bat
get a cmd prompt in the directory containing test.bat
type test at the prompt and press Enter
WATCH THE CMD OUTPUT AS ALL OF YOUR FILES ARE COPIED INTO THAT SINGLE DIRECTORY!
delete the test.bat file

Note that this won’t work so well if any files have the same name (just the name.ext part) which can happen. Be careful.

Wow. I usually don’t give explanations like that. I think I am channeling @guy038 while he is off fishing. :)

Lorenzo Carrisi

I didn’t quite manage to get the last part right, anyway just simply having the paths displayed like that helped me save quite a bit of time.
Thanks a lot!

Alan Kilborn

@Lorenzo-Carrisi

Good that you got something you could use from that!

Actually, this is probably a good opportunity to show off macros in Notepad++.

First, do some (one-time) setup:

Press the toolbar button for starting macro recording
In an editing tab view, press an arrow key to move the caret (this is just a dummy action)
Press the toolbar button for stopping macro recording
Press the toolbar button for saving a recorded macro; give it the name Bat file from Find results and save it
Exit Notepad++
Restart Notepad++
Locate your shortcuts.xml file and open it in Notepad++
Do a find on Bat file from Find results and you should be left looking at something like this:

<Macro name="Bat file from Find results" Ctrl="no" Alt="no" Shift="no" Key="0">
    <Action type="0" message="2306" wParam="0" lParam="0" sParam="" />
</Macro>

Replace the Action line with the following block, making the indent level of the block match that of the old Action line:

<Action type="3" message="1700" wParam="0" lParam="0" sParam="" />
<Action type="3" message="1601" wParam="0" lParam="0" sParam="(?-s)^Search.+\R" />
<Action type="3" message="1625" wParam="0" lParam="2" sParam="" />
<Action type="3" message="1602" wParam="0" lParam="0" sParam="" />
<Action type="3" message="1702" wParam="0" lParam="770" sParam="" />
<Action type="3" message="1701" wParam="0" lParam="1609" sParam="" />
<Action type="3" message="1700" wParam="0" lParam="0" sParam="" />
<Action type="3" message="1601" wParam="0" lParam="0" sParam="(?-s)^\tLine.+\R" />
<Action type="3" message="1625" wParam="0" lParam="2" sParam="" />
<Action type="3" message="1602" wParam="0" lParam="0" sParam="" />
<Action type="3" message="1702" wParam="0" lParam="770" sParam="" />
<Action type="3" message="1701" wParam="0" lParam="1609" sParam="" />
<Action type="3" message="1700" wParam="0" lParam="0" sParam="" />
<Action type="3" message="1601" wParam="0" lParam="0" sParam="\s\(\d+\shits?\)$" />
<Action type="3" message="1625" wParam="0" lParam="2" sParam="" />
<Action type="3" message="1602" wParam="0" lParam="0" sParam='&quot; .' />
<Action type="3" message="1702" wParam="0" lParam="770" sParam="" />
<Action type="3" message="1701" wParam="0" lParam="1609" sParam="" />
<Action type="3" message="1700" wParam="0" lParam="0" sParam="" />
<Action type="3" message="1601" wParam="0" lParam="0" sParam="^\s+" />
<Action type="3" message="1625" wParam="0" lParam="2" sParam="" />
<Action type="3" message="1602" wParam="0" lParam="0" sParam='copy &quot;' />
<Action type="3" message="1702" wParam="0" lParam="770" sParam="" />
<Action type="3" message="1701" wParam="0" lParam="1609" sParam="" />

Save the shortcuts.xml file
Exit Notepad++
Restart Notepad++

That’s the end of the one-time setup. That will remain until you delete the macro created.

To use it, each time you need to:

Run a Find-in-Files search that results in several hit files
Copy and paste the Find-result panel results (per the earlier instructions on how to do that) into an empty Notepad++ tab (an empty file called test.bat might be appropriate!)
Go to the Macro menu and choose Bat file from Find results from near the bottom; you should observe your file of search results has changed into a bunch of copy batch file commands (this step “runs” the macro consisting of several replacement operations!)
Save the file
Continue from the earlier instructions at step get a cmd prompt in the directory containing...