Thank you so much for a helpful and constructive reply. I am learning and this really helped a lot. Thanks for a clear explanation.

Certainly, the regex, below, does work properly in the majority of cases :

SEARCH (?s-i)\A(?:(?!\QYour Expression\E).)+\z

However, when files scanned have a size greater than 8 Mb, about, this regex may fail and wrongly matches a file which does contain your specific expression ! I did some tests with such a file, containing the string Your expression once only !

If so, here is a quicker and safer regex which is able to handle huge files. I personally tested a file of 56 Mb and 2,000,000 lines, without any trouble ! This file contained only a single line with the string Your expression ;-))

SEARCH (?s-i)\A(?!.*\QYour Expression\E).+

=> You’ll get your expected list of files which do not contain the string Your expression, with this exact case ;-))

Best Regards,

guy038

P.S. :

In order to get the list of the files, with their full path, displayed in the Find result panel, pasted into a new tab, follow these steps :

• Right-click on any zone of the Find result panel

• Select the Select all option

• Hit the Ctrl + C shortcut ( do not use the Copy option ! )

• Hit the Ctrl + N shortcut to open a new N++ tab

• Hit the Ctrl + V shortcut to paste the results, into this new tab

• Finally, perform the following regex S/R, below :

  • SEARCH ^(?!\x20\x20).*\R|\Q (1 hit)\E$

  • REPLACE Leave EMPTY

Thanks mate. No its not to much reading at all. Simply pointing me in the right direction would have been a sufficient answer.

Thank you for the time it took you.

However, if it is too much reading for you–I just read it, there’s A LOT there–then this might work for your situation:

Find what box: (?s)\A(?:(?!\QAdd-Content -path *.cfg -Value 'input_overlay_enable = "true"'\E).)+\z

Your question is kind of similar to this old one: https://community.notepad-plus-plus.org/topic/16141/find-content-in-files-and-rename-delete-files-not-containing-content

As well as this one: https://community.notepad-plus-plus.org/topic/14870/regex-find-all-files-that-do-not-contain-some-words