No, I’m not trying to “parallel” the text in the real editor and the hidden. If I set as the hidden editor’s entire text the match from the search, doing the replace on that guarantees the replace will succeed and the entire text left in the hidden editor’s buffer will be the replacement preview text. Long to explain but it seems to work.

and never do a “destroy”

:-D never ever - don’t even THINK about it unless your npp version is > 7.7.1 :-D

The hidden instance’s entire text can be set to the matched text from the editor.research(). Then the hidden.rereplace() can b

I guess, hidden.rereplace() is enough if you keep the text from editor and hidden in sync.
The replace function gets a match object which contains the position of the text to be replaced so from the replace function you could start the dialog, or?

I will do this near the top of the script, and never do a “destroy”:

and never do a “destroy”

There really is an “echo” in here, or just me repeating myself and not noticing.

what about using a hidden scintilla instance?

So, like this: hidden = notepad.createScintilla()

That is actually a nice solution. The hidden instance’s entire text can be set to the matched text from the editor.research(). Then the hidden.rereplace() can be called and the result of the replacement read out into a Python string variable. Thanks, Eko; clearly I would not have thought of this technique without your pointer.

just be careful about notepad.destroyScintilla()

This is not a problem as I will do this near the top of the script, and never do a “destroy”:

try:
    hidden
except NameError:
    hidden = notepad.createScintilla()

and never do a “destroy”

correct, that is the one.

This is the issue, I assume: https://github.com/notepad-plus-plus/notepad-plus-plus/issues/4487

just be careful about notepad.destroyScintilla(self.hidden_scintilla)
Currently npp crashes when using this and then request another buffer.
There is already a merged fix but only available on next release.

I used it here.

what about using a hidden scintilla instance?

That also sounds “messy” (or “involved”) but if you have some snippet to show me it is not so bad…?

what about using a hidden scintilla instance?

did I misunderstood your goal?

Maybe that part. :)

To be able to offer a preview of the yet-to-be-done replacement, I need to know what that replacement will be. I can’t do that without actually doing the replacement. Catch-22. I could do it and then undo it, I suppose, but that gets messy. Mostly it should be OK, but sometimes with regexes Boost can differ from Python’s re.

one idea might be to search for matches and replace only those which are
in the same range as the selected text. Something like

if start_pos_selected text <= match_start and end_pos_selected_text >= match_end:
    replaceSelText

Or did I misunderstood your goal? :-(

Would you also publish your code for the interactive replace?

I’m still working on a generic version; may never finish it

Follow-up:

There may not be a reasonable way to script this (the “generic version”); here’s why: There doesn’t seem to be a way to do a “boost-ish” replacement option on a Python string. It’s only possible to do it on in-place text.

What I want to do in the code is pull a copy of the matched text into a Python string and then do a Notepad++ -like replacement operation on that. Sure I can do a Python “re” replacement on it, but that isn’t always going to be equivalent.

Digging deeper, I see there is an open issue on this kind of thing in the Pythonscript code pages, here. But it hasn’t been acted on so it isn’t a reality.

If anyone has thoughts on this, I’m all ears. @Ekopalypse ?

Well, Pythonscript sizes the dialog box according to contents, so I was trying to keep it as narrow and short as possible to avoid covering too much of the Notepad++ main window. But…I’ve already added more info to make it taller, so why not wider as well? :)

Replace selected text with? :

Maybe Would you like to replace the selected text with the following text?

Would you also publish your code for the interactive replace?

I did…for your specific case. I’m still working on a generic version; may never finish it… :(

@Ekopalypse said:

Alan’s wasteful use of the question mark

Wasteful? It doesn’t seem right without it; I did consider it this way as well, maybe better?:

Replace selected text with? :

Short question: What does “???” mean?

This is Alan’s wasteful use of the question mark,
for which it is also used here, to ask a question. :-D

…still having fun with this…so much can be done to make interactive replace much better than what N++ can do; sample:

The one-line-solution works like a charm.

Would you also publish your code for the interactive replace? That would be great.

Short question: What does “???” mean?

def main():

    while True:
        match_list = []
        editor.research("-*\d+\.\d{4,}", lambda m: match_list.append(m.span(0)), 0, editor.getCurrentPos(), editor.getTextLength(), 1)
        if len(match_list) == 0: return
        editor.setSelection(match_list[0][1], match_list[0][0]); editor.scrollCaret()
        repl_text = '{:0.3f}'.format(round(float(editor.getSelText()), 3))
        result = notepad.messageBox('Replace selected text with\r\n\r\n{}\r\n\r\n???'.format(repl_text), '', MESSAGEBOXFLAGS.YESNOCANCEL)
        if result == MESSAGEBOXFLAGS.RESULTCANCEL: return
        if result == MESSAGEBOXFLAGS.RESULTYES: editor.replaceSel(repl_text)

main()

:-D I constantly keep forgetting this, yes, it should be editor, thx for the head up.

editor.rereplace("-*\d+\.\d{4,}", lambda m: '{:0.3f}'.format(round(float(m.group(0)), 3)))

Yes, to me it looks awkward too but as you said, it might be in the interested of the OP.

Ah. The .0 or .000 seems like extra noise to me, but maybe it is required for OP’s need (often wish people would explain their need better).

But, very nice one-liner Eko! It’s a clip-and-saver.

A switch from editor to editor1 ? Methinks you might be too focused on which view is active. I pretty much ignore editor1 and editor2 in my programming unless I really need them. :)