Search in target is sometimes failing

Peter Goddard

I see what you mean, but I don’t think that applies to my situation as when my plugin fails, I can simply reopen notepad and continue to format some more content until it fails again. If this issue was happening to every instance of content all of the time then I could see why this makes sense.

Ekopalypse

@Peter-Goddard

yes, it could be that this is not the issue, but a new npp start also means that your data is not the same as before,
but you certainly have more information to evaluate this than I do,
I am fishing here more or less in the dark.
Can you describe in pseudocode what you are doing, maybe this could be helpful to find the issue.

Peter Goddard

@Ekopalypse

Sure. This plugin just places a “\n” infront every case of “<” in the selected area.

function(){

Set the target search area to the area that has been selected.

Look for the first case of “<” in the targeted area.

While a, “<” can be found, get the placement of, “<”, insert a “\n” at that spot. Set the beginning of the target search area just ahead of where “<” is now found and increase the end of the target search area by 1. Search again for the next “<” in the target search area

}

Ekopalypse

@Peter-Goddard

From your explanation this doesn’t work.
You need to advance the start by 2, correct?
Assuming the following, 0123… are positions made visible.

0123456789
ab<def<h

position of < is 2 correct?
Insert c at that position results in

0123456789
abc<def<h

and if you set the start now to position+1 (=3) it will re-find the same <

Sure this is what you do?
My pseudocode would look like this

target = selected text
target_end = last position of selected text
position = search in target for '<'
while position > -1:
    insert char '\n' at position 
    reset target_start to position+2 and target_end to target_end+1
    position = search in target for '<'

Peter Goddard

@Ekopalypse

Sorry, I am increasing the start by 2, I just didn’t clarify that. I meant that when I said, “Set the beginning of the target search area just ahead of where “<” is now found”. My mistake. I know my code works because when I select the text,

<<<<

it results in

<
<
<
<

Sorry for the confusion

Peter Goddard

@Ekopalypse Of course, my code works, until it breaks liked we talked about before

Ekopalypse

@Peter-Goddard

ok, then I would say it is time to debug/print some info about
target_start, target_end and position found.
Make a debug build, use OutputDebugStringW and tools like DebugView
to capture the output. Of course only, if you can’t run within Visual Studio.

Ekopalypse

Actually, it doesn’t have to be a debug build, a release build should do it as well.

Peter Goddard

@Ekopalypse

Okay, I’m trying that now. I am using visual studios and I have added in my code a OutputDebugStringW, now where would I find the values that it outputs when I use my plugin in notepad?

Ekopalypse

@Peter-Goddard

Did you start npp from within Visual Studio or did you attach (from Debug menu) npp to visual studio? If so, those should appear in
View->Output window.

Peter Goddard

@Ekopalypse

I think I have made a very obvious mistake. I forgot to specify my search flag as you mentioned in my other post. After switching it to Regexp, it seems to be working. I feel like that was very obvious and you have taken a lot of your time to help me, so thank you again for all your help.

If anything else happens, I’ll post again. Thanks.