First line replacement

GS Music

Hello everyone,

I have around 1400 txt files. What need is to place a code on the first line of each file like below.

Example:
Before: Title random text
After: {title: Title random text}

Is there a way to do this using Notepad++?

PeterJones

So, your first line of the file is always what you are considering “title random text”? This might work for you. (Make sure you save a backup of the files, or set the filter to just one file before running a regex on 1400 files)

Find in Files

Find what: (?-s)\A^.*$
Replace with: {title: $0}
setup Filters and Directory appropriately
Hit Replace in Files.

Note: I assumed the { and } in your text were literals.

Explanation:

(?-s) turns off dot-matches-newline, overriding the state of the checkbox
\A^ is an idiom that matches the beginning of only the first line in the file
.*$ matches the entirety of the line (excluding line endings)
the whole line’s contents are stored in the $0 complete-match variable
the replacement uses the literal {title: , followed by the complete-match variable contents, followed by literal }

This seems to match what you described, based on my interpretation.

----

Do you want regex search/replace help? Then please be patient and polite, show some effort, and be willing to learn; answer questions and requests for clarification that are made of you. All example text should be marked as plain text using the </> toolbar button or manual Markdown syntax; screenshots can be pasted from the clipbpard to your post using Ctrl+V. Show the data you have and the text you want to get from that data; include examples of things that should match and be transformed, and things that don’t match and should be left alone; show edge cases and make sure you examples are as varied as your real data. Show the regex you already tried, and why you thought it should work; tell us what’s wrong with what you do get… Read the official NPP Searching / Regex docs and the forum’s Regular Expression FAQ. If you follow these guidelines, you’re much more likely to get helpful replies that solve your problem in the shortest number of tries.

guy038

Hello, @gs-music, @peterjones and All,

In addition, to the regex S/R, proposed by Peter, here are two regex S/R to use IF your files may contain true empty lines at their very beginning !

A) You want to keep possible true empty lines, at very beginning of files and modify the first non-empty line of each file, as expected :
- SEARCH (?-s)\A^(^\R)*\K.+
- REPLACE {title:\x20$0}
B You want to delete possible true empty lines, at very beginning of files and modify the first non-empty line of each file, as expected :
- SEARCH (?-s)\A^(^\R)*(.+)
- REPLACE {title:\x20\2}

Notes :

The first part of regexes (?-s) is an in-line modifier, which forces the regex engine to consider that a dot symbol ( . ) matches a single standard character, only ( and not any EOL char )
For explanation of the idiom \A^, refer to this topic : Add line of text to beginning of multiple files and read all posts, preferably from this one :

https://community.notepad-plus-plus.org/post/50951

Best Regards

guy038

Alan Kilborn

@guy038

When I click on your link with URL text of:

https://community.notepad-plus-plus.org/post/50951

it actually takes me here:

https://community.notepad-plus-plus.org/topic/11987/add-line-of-text-to-beginning-of-multiple-files/11

PeterJones

@Alan-Kilborn said in First line replacement:

When I click on your link with URL text of:
https://community.notepad-plus-plus.org/post/50951
it actually takes me here:

Yes. The new forum has both “topic” (which numbers the replies as a subportion of the the URL) and “post”, which links directly to the unique database id for a given post – whether it be the initial topic or a posted reply. If you right click on the datestamp for the post https://community.notepad-plus-plus.org/topic/11987/add-line-of-text-to-beginning-of-multiple-files/11, it shows the URL https://community.notepad-plus-plus.org/post/50951 – they refer to the same reply. Under the hood, the forum redirects from the post/#### to the topic/######/___name___/##.

GS Music

Thanks guys. Both solutions worked fine. Thank you for your help.