How to bookmark lines around a line containing a specific expression 'XXX' ?

Alan Kilborn

…the regex matches a zero length empty string, in any empty line. And, if your try to mark and bookmark these lines nothing is displayed on screen !

Yes, I suppose that one needs to keep in mind that if a (successful) operation results in no marked text (such as a zero-length match) then as a consequence there is not going to be any bookmarked line either.

NotPad001

Hi,
I tried to understand this topic and wonder how to solve the following task:

Below is a list with various data – and I would like to Mark a ’Bookmark Line’ for all the Data for ’GENDER=MALE’. I want to Mark all lines between the words “STARTDATA” and “ENDDATA” for every found ’GENDER=MALE’ as seen in the Before and After text below.

As seen below - the 2nd found ’GENDER=MALE’ contains one more extra line between its “STARTDATA” and “ENDDATA”.

The EXAMPLE USE CASE:

How the Data looks like BEFORE:

STARTDATA:
GENDER=MALE
NAME=JOE
AGE=34
HEIGHT=181
ENDDATA:
STARTDATA:
GENDER=FEMALE
NAME=MARIA
AGE=38
HEIGHT=163
ENDDATA:
STARTDATA:
GENDER=FEMALE
NAME=DIANA
AGE=56
HEIGHT=150
ENDDATA:
STARTDATA:
GENDER=MALE
NAME=KEVIN
AGE=21
HEIGHT=201
WEIGHT=97
ENDDATA:

The requested Data AFTER where I also added the Line Numbers and dots just for highlight.

1 • STARTDATA:
2 • GENDER=MALE
3 • NAME=JOE
4 • AGE=34
5 • HEIGHT=181
6 • ENDDATA:
7 STARTDATA:
8 GENDER=FEMALE
9 NAME=MARIA
10 AGE=38
11 HEIGHT=163
12 ENDDATA:
13 STARTDATA:
14 GENDER=FEMALE
15 NAME=DIANA
16 AGE=56
17 HEIGHT=150
18 ENDDATA:
19 • STARTDATA:
20 • GENDER=MALE
21 • NAME=KEVIN
22 • AGE=21
23 • HEIGHT=201
24 • WEIGHT=97
25 • ENDDATA:

Thanks a lot,

guy038

Hello, @notpad001, and All,

First, thanks for your exact description of your problem :-))

Ah… I see ! My regexes described in previous posts, of this topic, are useless, in your case, because you may not have the same number of lines, between your criterion GENDER= MALE and the end of the current section ENDDATA:. The previous regex examples are line-oriented ( because of the (?-is) syntax ) and catch an exact amount of lines !

In your case, we must use the no-single line concept, so the syntax (?s-i), which allows the regex engine to consider that the dot regex symbol . matches absolutely any single character, including EOL chars. In other words, the regex will be able to match any multi-lines range of text !

Then, if we assume that the line GENDER=..... comes right after the line STARTDATA:, the following regex could be the right one !

SEARCH (?s-i)^STARTDATA:\RGENDER=MALE.+?^ENDDATA:

Notes :

I suppose that the search is sensible to case. If NOT, simply change the beginning of the regex as (?si)
Now, it looks for any line STARTDATA:, beginning a line ( ^ ), followed with its line-break ( \R ) and the line GENDER=MALE
Then the part .+? tries to match the shortest non-null range of any character, till the line ENDDATA:, beginning a line ( ^ )
All lines, even partially, involved in the match, are then bookmarked

Remark : In case the line GENDER=..... is preceded with a fix or variable amount of line(s), even empty, use the generic regex :

SEARCH (?s-i)^STARTDATA:\R(?-s:.*\R){N,M} GENDER=MALE.+?^ENDDATA:

For instance, if we suppose this initial text :

STARTDATA:
11111

3333
GENDER=MALE
NAME=JOE
AGE=34
HEIGHT=181
ENDDATA:
STARTDATA:
GENDER=FEMALE
NAME=MARIA
AGE=38
HEIGHT=163
ENDDATA:
STARTDATA:
GENDER=MALE
NAME=JOHN
AGE=37
HEIGHT=197
WEIGHT=105
ENDDATA:
STARTDATA:
GENDER=FEMALE
NAME=DIANA
AGE=56
HEIGHT=150
ENDDATA:
STARTDATA:
1111
2222
GENDER=MALE
NAME=KEVIN
AGE=21
HEIGHT=201
WEIGHT=97
ENDDATA:

The regex :

(?s-i)^STARTDATA:\R(?-s:.*\R){0,3}GENDER=MALE.+?^ENDDATA:

correctly mark the sections, containing the line GENDER=MALE, if it exists from 0 to 3 lines between a line STARTDATA: and its line GENDER=MALE

Note :

The part (?-s: begins a non-capturing group and any dot regex symbol, inside this non-capturing group, will match a single standard char ( not EOL ones )
The part {0,3} matches from 0 to 3 complete lines, with their line-break(s) .*\R, located before the line GENDER=MALE

Best Regards

guy038

NotPad001

Thanks guy038 and this was very good help –and looks promising! - but I have a dilemma:
For GENDER=MALE I used the regex (?s-i)^STARTDATA:\R(?-s:.*\R){0,3}GENDER=MALE.+?^ENDDATA:
=> This correctly Marked row 1-6 (Great)
However: Row 19-25 was not Marked

For GENDER=FEMALE I used the regex (?s-i)^STARTDATA:\R(?-s:.*\R){0,3}GENDER=FEMALE.+?^ENDDATA:
=> This correctly Marked Two set of FEMALE rows 7-12 and 13-18 (Great)

The dilemma is that the file I have contains a lot of data and I want to be able to filter out all GENDER=MALE date. (Row 1-6 and 19-25)
I toggled:
Bookmark line ticked
Purge for each search
Wrap around
Regular expression

Thanks a lot!

GENDER=MALE.jpg

GENDER=FEMALE.jpg

guy038

Hi NotPad001 and All,

Ah ! I understood why the regex does not match the 2nd section with GENDER=MALE Don’t you see it ? Well, seemingly, from your picture, the last line ( line 25 ) does not end with a colon character ! And it’s obvious that searching from GENDER=FEMALE sections worked perfectly right ;-))

So the correct regex to process is :

SEARCH (?s-i)^STARTDATA:\R(?-s:.*\R){0,3}GENDER=MALE.+?^ENDDATA:?

I just added a regex question mark symbol ( ? ), which is a shorthand of the {0,1} quantifier, at the end of the regex

BTW, note that, if the line GENDER=.... is located right after the STARTDATA: line, you may simply use the shorter regex :

SEARCH (?s-i)^STARTDATA:\RGENDER=MALE.+?^ENDDATA:?

Now, there are a lot of methods to filter out your text : Let’s suppose that you want to keep sections with GENDER=MALE, only :

First, you could use an option from the Bookmark menu ( Search > Bookmark )
- Bookmark sections containing GENDER=MALE, with the appropriate regex and, then, use the option Search > Bookmark > Remove Unmarked lines
- Bookmark sections containing GENDER=FEMALE, with the appropriate regex and, then, use the option Search > Bookmark > Remove Bookmarked lines
Secondly, you could use one of the two regex S/R, below, ( Ctrl + H ), directly, searching for GENDER=FEMALE sections and clicking on the Replace All button :
- SEARCH (?s-i)^STARTDATA:\RGENDER=FEMALE.+?^ENDDATA:?\R?
- REPLACE Leave EMPTY
- SEARCH (?s-i)^STARTDATA:\R(?-s:.*\R){M,N}GENDER=FEMALE.+?^ENDDATA:?\R?
- REPLACE Leave EMPTY

Remark that, in order to delete the entire lines ENDDATA:, we need to add the part \R? at the end of the regexes to match the line-break of lines ENDDATA(:) too, which is optional, in case that the very last line of your file is not followed with a line-break !

Best regards,

guy038

NotPad001

Thanks guy038 – you are spot on!
Now it works very well after I included the missing : on the last row in my example. My fault – and I will be more observant! Also thanks for the additional information. You know your stuff!!

Related questions on this topic:
Is it possible to include wildcard search criteria such as instead of searching for GENDER=MALE you only search for NDER=MA in a similar way as using the star (*) in front of NDER=MA when searching for things in Excel. The requested result is to Bookmark Line the same lines as in the example that you guy038 solved.

Because: I noticed that in case I have spaces in front of the GENDER=MALE – I cannot get it to work. Do you have any ideas how to solve that use case?

Example: GENDER=MALE has 2 spaces in front of it – but the number of spaces can vary. Ideally I would like to use the wildcard approach as well in the cases where there are spaces in front of the text.

Also: In case the lines STARTDATA: and ENDDATA: also have empty Spaces in front of it – can that be captured as well? The use case is to mark the same Lines as successfully marked in the example that you guy038 fixed.

Thanks a lot!

Alan Kilborn

@NotPad001 said in How to bookmark lines around a line containing a specific expression 'XXX' ?:

wildcard search criteria

You should pay closer attention.
@guy038 is attempting to educate you about “regular expressions”.
To even speak of “wildcard search” in the same breath is blasphemous.

guy038

Hello, @notpad001 and All,

No problem ! We just have to add the regex \h*, matching any range, even null, of horizontal blank characters, so, mainly, the tab and space chars, at every beginning of line of the regex

So, in case you want to keep sections, containing the GENDER=MALE string, this would result in the *new regex syntaxes, below :

SEARCH (?s-i)^\h*STARTDATA:\R\h*GENDER=FEMALE.+?^\h*ENDDATA:?\R?
REPLACE Leave EMPTY

OR

SEARCH (?s-i)^\h*STARTDATA:\R(?-s:.*\R){M,N}\h*GENDER=FEMALE.+?^\h*ENDDATA:?\R? ( Do not forget to replace M and N variables with true integers ! )
REPLACE Leave EMPTY

Test, for example, the regex (?s-i)^\h*STARTDATA:\R\h*GENDER=FEMALE.+?^\h*ENDDATA:?\R? against the text, below :

    STARTDATA:
        GENDER=MALE
    NAME=JOE
		AGE=34
    HEIGHT=181
				ENDDATA:
    STARTDATA:
    GENDER=FEMALE
	NAME=MARIA
    AGE=38
    HEIGHT=163
        ENDDATA:
	    STARTDATA:
    GENDER=FEMALE
	NAME=DIANA
    AGE=56
				    HEIGHT=150
    ENDDATA:
	STARTDATA:
    GENDER=MALE
                NAME=KEVIN
    AGE=21
    HEIGHT=201
    WEIGHT=97
	ENDDATA:

You should get the text :

    STARTDATA:
        GENDER=MALE
    NAME=JOE
		AGE=34
    HEIGHT=181
				ENDDATA:
	STARTDATA:
    GENDER=MALE
                NAME=KEVIN
    AGE=21
    HEIGHT=201
    WEIGHT=97
		ENDDATA:

And, in order to delete any blank character, after the first N characters of each line :

Use the Edit > Blank Operations > TAB to Space menu option to replace each tab char with its appropriate number of space character(s)
Secondly, use this generic regex S/R, which will delete any space char, after the first N : characters of the each line
- SEARCH ^\x20{N}\K\x20+ ( we’ll use, in our case, the real regex ^\x20{4}\K\x20+ )
- REPLACE Leave EMPTY

After clicking on the Replace All button, exclusively, you’re left with that expected result :

    STARTDATA:
    GENDER=MALE
    NAME=JOE
    AGE=34
    HEIGHT=181
    ENDDATA:
    STARTDATA:
    GENDER=MALE
    NAME=KEVIN
    AGE=21
    HEIGHT=201
    WEIGHT=97
    ENDDATA:

Cheers,

guy038

guy038

Hi, @notpad001, @alan-kilborn,

Alan, I wouldn’t say it is blasphemous, but rather inappropriate !

BR

guy038

sam rathod

@guy038
Hey, i am trying to extract 10 lines above word “ignored”, i tried using this command from your other post (.*\R){10}^.*ignored.*\R but it is showing Invalid Regular Expression.
Following are few lines from the whole text file.l, can u help me out. Thanks for your valuable posts.

      B465  B416  100.00    0.00    0.00     1.17   -32.75   -12.11   346.17   791.11  1618.77    0.042
B483  B478  B486  100.00    0.00    0.00    -0.88    -2.81     1.55   211.14   417.77   795.80    0.007
      B478  B363  100.00    0.00    0.00     4.29    -2.66   -14.84   302.41   721.07  1413.40    0.011
B479  B476  B477    0.00  100.00    0.00    -0.35     2.33     0.63   183.52   417.34   794.06    0.006
      B476  B481   26.71   73.29    0.00    -0.61    -4.35    -2.34   190.81   417.34   794.06    0.011
      B476  B361  100.00    0.00    0.00     3.32    -1.65    32.38   217.19   472.63   999.46    0.033
B477  B479  B473    3.69   96.31    0.00    -5.24    -5.33     0.82   258.08   587.08  1162.04    0.010
      B479  B485    0.00  100.00    0.00    -5.05     4.64     2.77   256.20   587.08  1162.04    0.009
      B479  B408  100.00    0.00    0.00    -2.39   -10.75   -12.76   421.63   791.10  1618.76    0.016
B489  B479  B487   41.71   58.29    0.00    -0.69    -2.92     0.72   195.22   417.80   795.95    0.007
      B479  B485    0.00  100.00    0.00    -0.39     0.16     0.72   183.81   417.80   795.95    0.001
      B479  B363  100.00    0.00    0.00     0.26    -1.57    22.99   217.53   473.15  1001.83    0.023
B485  B489  B477    9.91   90.09    0.00    -5.01    -5.55     0.06   261.25   587.09  1162.07    0.010
      B489  B492    0.00  100.00    0.00    -4.52    -4.82     4.16   256.20   587.09  1162.07    0.009
      B489  B417  100.00    0.00    0.00     0.30    -6.94    -7.89   346.17   791.11  1618.80    0.010
 
[FF]

SACS CONNECT Edition V(15.1) - CL                                                        Company: Lamprell Energy Ltd.
       CRPO-126-MRJN 2050/2059 - JACKET BOAT IMPACT ANALYSIS                        DATE 11-MAR-2024  TIME 06:50:22   CLP PAGE 1151

                                      ** SACS COLLAPSE IMPACT ENERGY ABSORPTION **
 
 
                                        INCREMENT  37          LOAD FACTOR     6.200
 
                                                Aggregate          Incremental
                                                   (MJ)                (MJ) 
              Energy absorbed by structure  =        0.1262              0.0021
              % of total energy absorbed    =      100.9477   (%)        1.6442   (%)
 
 
     **** WARNING - IMPACT ENERGY ABSORBED AT LOAD STEP    37
     **** WARNING - THE REMAINING    96 INCREMENT(S) OF THE LOAD STEP WILL BE IGNORED
 
[FF]
SACS CONNECT Edition V(15.1) - CL                                                        Company: Lamprell Energy Ltd.

       CRPO-126-MRJN 2050/2059 - JACKET BOAT IMPACT ANALYSIS                        DATE 11-MAR-2024  TIME 06:50:22   CLP PAGE 1152

          **** FINAL DEFLECTIONS AND ROTATIONS FOR LOAD SEQUENCE LCE1 ****
                                 LOAD CASE OE01
                               LOAD FACTOR  6.200
 
 
                   ****** DEFLECTIONS ******   ******* ROTATIONS *******
          JOINT       X        Y        Z          X        Y        Z
                      CM       CM       CM        RAD      RAD      RAD
 
 
          0243       0.192   -0.712   -0.005    0.00146  0.00058 -0.00019
          0269       0.348   -0.873   -0.736    0.00168  0.00070  0.00022
          0276       0.399   -0.518   -1.297    0.00117  0.00063  0.00030
          0277       0.137   -0.584   -0.590    0.00151  0.00037  0.00020
          101L       0.364   -0.914   -0.734    0.00168  0.00070  0.00022
          102L       0.414   -0.547   -1.296    0.00117  0.00063  0.00030

Regards,
Aaditya

—

moderator added code markdown around text; please don’t forget to use the </> button to mark example text as “code” so that characters don’t get changed by the forum

PeterJones

@sam-rathod said in How to bookmark lines around a line containing a specific expression 'XXX' ?:

post (.*\R){10}^.*ignored.*\R but it is showing Invalid Regular Expression.

What you typed in your post is valid regex, so I have to assume that’s not what you had in the FIND WHAT field. If that’s exactly what you had, please show a screenshot of the whole dialog box

mkupper

@sam-rathod As @PeterJones noted, your regular expression is valid.

@all - I discovered it’s challenging as I think I think @sam-rathod intended to start the extraction at the line that starts with SACS CONNECT Edition and that the does not count empty or blank-only lines as “lines.”

But, how can can we go backwards by nine lines that are not blank/empty from the IGNORED anchor?

Thinking forwards is much easier for me: ^SACS CONNECT Edition(?s).*IGNORED(?-s).*

@sam-rathod the (?s) part puts the regular expression engine in a mode where dot also matched end of lines meaning we will skip/match all lines from SACS CONNECT Edition up to the word IGNORED. Once we get to IGNORED we do (?-s) which turns the dot matching end-of-line thing off and the final .* picks up the remainder of the line.

To make this safer I would use the case-sensitive (?-i)^SACS CONNECT Edition(?s).*IGNORED(?-s).*

sam rathod

@PeterJones
Hey
The output that I am expecting:

The area marked in grey is what i want MARKED

This is the error that it is showing after entering the regex command:

I tried attaching files but i am unable to.

Thanks guys for reaching out so quick to such an old topic, much appreciated.

Regards,
Aaditya

sam rathod

@mkupper
Hello,

Actually the occurrence of SACS CONNECT Edition is at multiple times so i guess that might be one issue, also i tried the <(?-i)^SACS CONNECT Edition(?s).IGNORED(?-s).> but it is giving this error:

Regards,
Aaditya

mkupper

@sam-rathod - I start out by trying to see if there is a pattern to the data that I can take advantage of. I test this carefully to understand any possible exceptions to the pattern.

You have provided two examples and so from that the pattern I see is the the sections that you want to highlight start with these lines:

                                      ** SACS COLLAPSE IMPACT ENERGY ABSORPTION **
          **** FINAL DEFLECTIONS AND ROTATIONS FOR LOAD SEQUENCE LCE1 ****

I also see that above this is the page header which starts with SACS CONNECT Edition and so first do a test (?-i)^SACS CONNECT Edition and count how many page headers there are. Let’s say there are 957 in the file. I write down 957 so I won’t forget.

I then build a regular expression that matches the start of the data. I’ll do (?-i)^ +\*+ [A-Z0-9 ]+ \*+$ and verify that it matches exactly 957 times in the file. If it fails to match exactly 957 times then I tighten or loosen the regular expression as needed until it nails 957.

I do the same thing for the IGNORED lines. I first do (?-i)IGNORED$ and count. Let’s say there are 57 and so I write that down. The full pattern for the IGNORED lines seems to be (?-i)^ +\*{4} WARNING - THE REMAINING +[0-9]+ INCREMENT$S$ OF THE LOAD STEP WILL BE IGNORED$ Adjust that expression until it gets exactly 57 matches.

Now we know we have 957 page headers and 57 of them are the ones we are interested in. As the sample size you have provided only has one example of what we want to match I will use a more general

(?-i)^(?: +\*+ [A-Z][A-Z0-9 ]+ \*+\R)(?:.*\R){1,25}(?: +\*{4} WARNING - THE REMAINING +[0-9]+ INCREMENT\(S\) OF THE LOAD STEP WILL BE IGNORED)$

Drop that into Notepad++. I added a couple of extra parentheses in there so that when you move the cursor to a ( or ) that Notepad++ will highlight the other one of of the ( … ) pairs.

The groups within that rather long expression are:

(?-i) - Turn the ignore letter case flag off.
^(?: +\*+ [A-Z][A-Z0-9 ]+ \*+\R) - This is the thing that matches the start of the blocks we want to select. We know it matches 957 times.
(?:.*\R){1,25} - Allow for one to 25 lines that may be empty or may have stuff.
(?: +\*{4} WARNING - THE REMAINING +[0-9]+ INCREMENT$S$ OF THE LOAD STEP WILL BE IGNORED)$ - This matches the last line of the things we are interested in.

In this case I solved the problem by using (?:.*\R){1,25}. I know that the first line will match many times but don’t want to bother with scanning too far before testing for the last line. With a better sample size I likely would tune {1,25} to be a better match for how far down that IGNORED line is.

PeterJones

@sam-rathod said in How to bookmark lines around a line containing a specific expression 'XXX' ?:

This is the error that it is showing after entering the regex command:

That’s an exeedingly fuzzy screenshot.

But to me, that looks a lot more like (.*\R}{10}^.*ignored.*\R instead of (.*\R){10}^.*ignored.*\R – the first group is accidentally closed by a curly-brace } instead of a close-parenthesis ). Assuming that fuzzy character really is }, I can replicate your error; and if I hover over the ... in the error message, it tells me exactly what’s gone wrong with the expression:

If it’s actually something else wrong with yours, that ... hover will help you diagnose it.

But either way, if I enter the regex that you claimed to use, rather than the one that your fuzzy screenshot shows, it just shows that it’s not finding text, not that there was an error in the regex.

I tried attaching files but i am unable to.

That’s not the right way of sharing data, as has been explained in the FAQs about formatting example text and the template for search/replace questions. Those FAQs show how to format your text so that it appears in the copyable text box (which is how I changed your original post using moderator powers to show the data in the text box – I will actually go back and remove the extra line endings, which may have been accidentally introduced when I did the first edit).

When i use the expression that you said you were using, on the data that you had in your post, I match almost what your followon post said you wanted to match:

The reason it doesn’t match everything is because you said you wanted 10 lines before the “ignored” line… but your screenshot with manual highlight shows that you actually wanted 12 lines before the “ignored” line, so you just need to change the count from {10} to {12} …

And, as your regex uses ignored but your actual text is IGNORED, and as we want to make sure that the . from the first capture group doesn’t match newlines, the final regex you should use is
FIND WHAT = (?i-s)(.*\R){12}^.*ignored.*\R – as shown below, this matches what you say you want to match.

sam rathod

@mkupper said in How to bookmark lines around a line containing a specific expression 'XXX' ?:

(?-i)^(?: +*+ [A-Z][A-Z0-9 ]+ *+\R)(?:.*\R){1,25}(?: +*{4} WARNING - THE REMAINING +[0-9]+ INCREMENT(S) OF THE LOAD STEP WILL BE IGNORED)$

This did the wonder, thanks for the help man on my own i would never been able to figure this out. I am new to notepad++ will appreciate if you can share some learning material to start from basics.

Thanks a Lot.

Regards,
Aaditya

sam rathod

@PeterJones said in How to bookmark lines around a line containing a specific expression 'XXX' ?:

(?i-s)(.*\R){12}^.ignored.\R

The screenshot looks fuzzy but i had entered the same equation that was been mentioned by @guy038.

Will go through the FAQs for sharing data and will understand how to post on this.

I tried the final Regex :

(?i-s)(.*\R){12}^.*ignored.*\R

Thanks for actively resolving the issue i was facing, will appreciate if u can share some learning material to start from the basics.

Thanks & Regards,
Aaditya

Alan Kilborn

@sam-rathod said in How to bookmark lines around a line containing a specific expression 'XXX' ?:

will appreciate if u can share some learning material to start from the basics

A good starting point is HERE.

guy038

Hello, @sam-rathod, @peterjones, @mkupper, @alan-kilborn and All,

I suppose that dealing with files with important size may lead to this regex message, even if this regex does work properly with small files :-((

So, @sam-rathod, could you try with this new regex version :

SEARCH/MARK (?-is)^(?:.*\R){12}.*IGNORED.*\R

Best Regards,

guy038