I was away from the N++ community, since more than a month ( see my post below )

https://community.notepad-plus-plus.org/post/47895

So, @darklinkpower, my reply is quite out of date. But if you still look for a regex solution I can take up the challenge of performing this S/R with regexes !

However you must give me a real example of your 2 ( short ) files A and B, as well as the expected real output file, from these 2 input files

Simply, as your files are XML ones, in your future post, write your code in blocks, like below :

~~~xml
…
…
~~~

Just to give you an idea, of the regexes’s powerful, let’s suppose the input text, below :

<text><![line a[line b, line c, line d, A1, A2, A3]]></text>
<text><![line a[line b, line c, line d, B1, B2, B3]]></text>

<text><![line a[line b, line c, line d, line e, line f, line g, line h, C1, C2, C3, C4]]></text>
<text><![line a[line b, line c, line d, line e, line f, line g, line h, D1, D2, D3, D4]]></text>

<text><![line a[Small test, E1, E2, E3, E4, E5, E6, E7, E8, E9]]></text>
<text><![line a[Small test, F1, F2, F3, F4, F5, F6, F7, F8, F9]]></text>

<text><![line a[word 1, G1, G2]]></text>
<text><![line a[word 1, H1, H2]]></text>

<text><![line a[I1]]></text>
<text><![line a[J1]]></text>

Then, the following regex S/R :

SEARCH (?-s)^(.+)(.+)\]\]></text>(\R)\1(.+)\R

REPLACE \1\2, \4\3

will change, when you click on the Replace All button, in one go, the text as below :

<text><![line a[line b, line c, line d, A1, A2, A3, B1, B2, B3]]></text>

<text><![line a[line b, line c, line d, line e, line f, line g, line h, C1, C2, C3, C4, D1, D2, D3, D4]]></text>

<text><![line a[Small test, E1, E2, E3, E4, E5, E6, E7, E8, E9, F1, F2, F3, F4, F5, F6, F7, F8, F9]]></text>

<text><![line a[word 1, G1, G2, H1, H2]]></text>

<text><![line a[I1, J1]]></text>

As you can see, this regex S/R is able to differentiate the first common part of two consecutive lines from the second variable part which must be merged in one line only ;-))

So, see you later !

Best Regards,

guy038

I don’t think it’s the same issue.

I didn’t say it was the same. I said it sounds similar. Good job on coming up with a regex that gets you partway there.

The problem you see now is that it looks like more of a problem than a simple regex will solve. (That said, @guy038 can work magic with his regex and multi-step regex.)

But at first blush, the problem you describe looks to me to be something best solved using programming, rather than being able to solve it with a simple regular expression – which is why I pointed out the PythonScript solution for the other merge-based issue. One possible way of doing this is using Notepad++'s PythonScript plugin, which embeds a Python interpreter inside a Notepad++ plugin environment, allowing you to write a script where Python can directly read and write the open Notepad++ files. (You can do something similar with Lua using LuaScript Plugin, or JavaScript using “jN Notepad++ Plugin”.)

I had meant for the script linked in the other topic to give you a starting point, because I had thought I’d used just normal line-by-line reading in one and writing in the other. But since it wants to merge every line in the second onto N copies of every line in the first, I used some tricks, which eliminated the logic which would have helped you; sorry.

If you can code in Python (or Lua, or JavaScript), you could probably come up with an algorithm. The online help for PythonScript is very detailed.

Off the top of my head, the top-level description would be “for each of the matches in the second file (and PythonScript has access to a similar regular expression library, so finding those matches won’t be too difficult), grab the right portion of the matching text, and insert it into the correct line of the first file.” Implementing that in more detail is what programmers get paid for. For some problems, one of us in the Community occasionally writes the script for free (usually if we’re interested in the problem or see that we can apply it generally to a task that we have to do as well, or if it looks like we could get it in a brief amount of time), but that doesn’t always happen (this isn’t a we-guarantee-we’ll-write-your-code-for-free forum, after all). And this one looks to me to be a longer problem than I’m likely to have time for in the forseeable future. Maybe it’ll catch someone else’s eye, though.

if you were to come up with a rough attempt of a PythonScript solution, that got close but not exactly what you wanted, and posted it here, there might be more people who would have the time to help point you in the right direction, or show you what Notepad+±specific features of PythonScript that could help.

Sorry that I don’t offer more of a solution, but while Notepad++ is powerful, there are some things that are better handled with actual programming, and you may have hit one (unless @guy038 proves me wrong).

@PeterJones I don’t think it’s the same issue. There he has 2 list that he wants to merge, without any extra data that he wants to get rid of. What I want to do is just copy some data of the second file, not all.
After googling around I found what you can use expressions to match text and I came up with this that matches the text I want to copy to the other file, but I don’t know how to copy it to the other file. The files are xml files

Here’s what I could come with:
https://regex101.com/r/xR5PG4/2

This sounds very similar to the recent “How to merge” topic. You may be able to use or modify-for-use the regex solution solution that @guy038 posted or the PythonScript solution that I posted. They may have to be tweaked slightly for your exact circumstances, but they are a good starting point.

If you get stuck while trying to modify them to meet your needs, let us know what you’ve tried, and what parts are giving you difficulty, and we may be able to help you get unstuck.

after replace $ with ]]></text>

<text><![line a[word, ads, wdwd , wsws, dfdf, dff]]></text>

For the next line, while it follows the same structure, changes in the content after “line a[” but end in the same "]]></text> ". So basically what I want is a way to fuse the differences together of the lines that differ but I don’t know if it’s possible since there’s not a clear pattern other than the estructure of the lines