How to detect lines lacking "..." at end?

Silent Resident

I use Notepad++ as my primary program for editing movie subtitles.

But for years I have been struggling with an issue that plagues me for a long time. Often the subtitles lack the three dots (…) at the end of the dialog breaks. How can I tell notepad to detect the lines lacking dots, and fix them?

For example we have 2 dialogs, broken in 2 parts each, resulting in four subtitles lines:

1
00:00:10,000 --> 00:00:13,000
All the living organisms
can co-exist

2
00:00:15,000 --> 00:00:18,000
on earth’s surface.

3
00:00:20,000 --> 00:00:23,000
Earth is home to more than 7 billion humans

4
00:00:25,000 --> 00:00:28,000
who live together, forming communities.

Subtitle lines 2 and 4, are fine. So we ignore them. However, subtitle lines 1 and 3 are lacking three dots (…) at their end. How can I tell Notepad++ to add “…”, like that:

1
00:00:10,000 --> 00:00:13,000
All the living organisms
can co-exist…

3
00:00:20,000 --> 00:00:23,000
Earth is home to more than 7 billion humans…

PeterJones

You seem to be asking for adding “…” to any that doesn’t already end in a “.”. However, studying your data, I am guessing you’re really wanting “add an ellipsis to any subtitle that doesn’t end with a sentence-ender”. Unfortunately, detecting all possible sentence-enders might be more difficult than you think. I mean, there’s ., but there’s also ! and ?. But there’s also lines that end in quotes – and an endquote doesn’t necessarily mean end of sentence…

I also cannot tell in your example data whether there’s a blank line between subtitles, but there probably is, and I’m going to assume that all subtitles end with a blank line.

I think, after you clarify that, we’ll be able to come up with a better solution

-----

My naive guess for just “subtitles that don’t end with a period need an ellipsis” would have been

FIND = [^\.]\K(?=\R\R\d+$)
replace = ...
mode = regular expression

but that seems to add two sets of ... for each, and I cannot quickly figure out why. But that’s a starting point. And if you need real end-of-sentence rather than just .-end-of-sentence detection, we can probably improve things… but it won’t be perfect. (though @guy038 will come close to perfection, I am sure.)

(Like that! That last parenthetical sentence is the end of a sentence, and wouldn’t need an ellipsis, but ends with something that I hadn’t thought of as being an allowable sentence-ender.)

Alan Kilborn

@Silent-Resident

What’s the definitive pattern? A lack of a trailing period on the last one of a sequence?

dinkumoil

@Silent-Resident
My suggestion:

Find: [^[:punct:]]$\K(?=\R\R\d+$)
Replace: ...
Mode: Regular expression

@PeterJones
Due to the addition of $ it doesn’t add two sets of .... The [:punct:] character class should match all characters in question.

guy038

Hello @silent-resident, and All,

Quite easy ! For instance, assuming your example, below, where I added 4 subtitles lines ( from 5 to 8 )

1
00:00:10,000 --> 00:00:13,000
All the living organisms
can co-exist

2
00:00:15,000 --> 00:00:18,000
on earth’s surface.

3
00:00:20,000 --> 00:00:23,000
Earth is home to more than 7 billion humans

4
00:00:25,000 --> 00:00:28,000
who live together, forming communities.

5
00:00:30,000 --> 00:00:33,000
In the first volume of the 10th edition of "Systema Naturae",

6
00:00:36,000 --> 00:00:39,000
written by the Swedish naturalist Carolus Linnaeus, the Animal kingdom

7
00:00:42,000 --> 00:00:45,000
is broken down into six original classes of animals :

8
00:00:48,000 --> 00:00:51,000
Mammalia, Aves, Amphibia, Pisces, Insecta, & Vermes.

Note : The text, included in the last 4 subtitles, comes from :

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/10th_edition_of_Systema_Naturae#Animals

So, in current language, your request could be : Add a … sign at the end of any line, which does not end with a dot and which is followed by, at least 2 line-breaks. In that case, here is my solution :

Open the Replace dialog ( Ctrl + H )
SEARCH [^.\r\n]\K(?=\R{2,})
REPLACE … OR \x{2026}
Tick the Wrap around option
Select the Regular expression search mode
Click on the Replace All button, exclusively ( Do not use the Replace button ! )

And you’ll get :

1
00:00:10,000 --> 00:00:13,000
All the living organisms
can co-exist…

2
00:00:15,000 --> 00:00:18,000
on earth’s surface.

3
00:00:20,000 --> 00:00:23,000
Earth is home to more than 7 billion humans…

4
00:00:25,000 --> 00:00:28,000
who live together, forming communities.

5
00:00:30,000 --> 00:00:33,000
In the first volume of the 10th edition of "Systema Naturae",…

6
00:00:36,000 --> 00:00:39,000
written by the Swedish naturalist Carolus Linnaeus, the Animal kingdom…

7
00:00:42,000 --> 00:00:45,000
is broken down into six original classes of animals :…

8
00:00:48,000 --> 00:00:51,000
Mammalia, Aves, Amphibia, Pisces, Insecta, & Vermes.

Now, If you do not want to add an horizontal ellipsis ( … ) after a punctuation sign, prefer the following regex S/R :

SEARCH \w\K(?=\R{2,})

REPLACE … OR \x{2026}

This time, the text will be changed into :

1
00:00:10,000 --> 00:00:13,000
All the living organisms
can co-exist…

2
00:00:15,000 --> 00:00:18,000
on earth’s surface.

3
00:00:20,000 --> 00:00:23,000
Earth is home to more than 7 billion humans…

4
00:00:25,000 --> 00:00:28,000
who live together, forming communities.

5
00:00:30,000 --> 00:00:33,000
In the first volume of the 10th edition of "Systema Naturae",

6
00:00:36,000 --> 00:00:39,000
written by the Swedish naturalist Carolus Linnaeus, the Animal kingdom…

7
00:00:42,000 --> 00:00:45,000
is broken down into six original classes of animals :

8
00:00:48,000 --> 00:00:51,000
Mammalia, Aves, Amphibia, Pisces, Insecta, & Vermes.

Best Regards,

guy038

Silent Resident

Amazing! Thank you all very very much, I am grateful. This is what I was looking for.

guy038

Hi, @silent-resident, @peterjones, @alan-kilborn, @dinkumoil, and All,

@peterjones :

Peter, your search regex [^\.]\K(?=\R\R\d+$) ( which could be written [^.]\K(?=\R\R\d+$) ) does not work as expected ! Why ?

Well, considering the first sub-title, in a Windows file, your regex first matches the zero-length gap, between letter t and the \r EOL character and it correctly adds the … symbol. OK !
Now, the regex engine location is between the two characters … and \r. At this location, is there a single char, different from a dot, which can be followed with two line-breaks. The answer is YES : it’s just the \r EOL char, which is followed with \n ( so the first \R ) and the \r\n couple ( So, the second \R ). Thus, it adds a ... symbol between the \r and the \n of the first line-break
This situation cannot occur, again, right after as, if it had chosen the \r char ( as [^.] ), then the remaining EOL characters were, only, the \n character, which cannot match the \R\R part of your regex ! So, the next match happens, wrongly, between the \r and \n EOL characters, at the end of the line on earth’s surface. and so on ... -((

Luckily, 3 solutions are possible to get the right behaviour :

The [^.\r\n]\K(?=\R\R\d+$) syntax to forces the character, before the EOL characters, to be different from EOL chars !
The [^.]$\K(?=\R\R\d+$) syntax. Adding the $ anchor forces the [^.] character to be located right before an end of line ( so, obviously, not between the two EOL characters \r and \n). It’s the solution adopted by @dinkumoil !
Finally, use the exact Windows EOL definition, with the [^.]\K(?=\r\n\r\n\d+$) syntax

Cheers,

guy038