Replace help

Gert Beliën

Hi,
I like some help on a replacement

If the Line starts with a 2 and position 13-15=998
Then I want to replace whatever on position 51-54 by 1250.

Any suggestions?
Thx in advance,
gert

Ekopalypse

@Gert-Beliën

If I’m correct, then this regular expression might do what you are looking for

(?<=^2.{11}998.{34}).{4}

Gert Beliën

So that string I have to place in the search.
What do a place in the replace section?
maybe stupid question but I’m new to this, so I apologise

Ekopalypse

@Gert-Beliën

Yes, replace with 1250 and make sure you have checked regular expression search and put your cursor in the very first position of the document or check wrap aronud

Alan Kilborn

@Ekopalypse said in Replace help:

(?<=^2.{11}998.{34}).{4}

Is there a one-off problem here?
I see this matching positions (one-based) 50-53, not 51-54.
Or maybe it’s me.
If it IS wrong, let’s see if OP is savvy enough to see the patterns in the expression and correct it himself. :-)

EDIT: Guess it was me as the OP is happy (see post below). Disregard!!

Gert Beliën

@Ekopalypse said in Replace help:

(?<=^2.{11}998.{34}).{4}

I don’t understand but hey “It works” :-)
Thank you very much @Ekopalypse

Ekopalypse

@Alan-Kilborn

you are right. I’m one off.
So the correct regex would be (?<=^2.{11}998.{35}).{4}

I am still confused by the fact that the position as shown in the statusbar no longer starts at 0.

@Gert-Beliën
Could it be that we both had a off by one issue? :-D

Gert Beliën

I needed indeed .{35} to make it work but that I found out myself -:)

Ekopalypse

@Gert-Beliën

Great :-)

A short explanation what the regex does,
it is using a lookbehind (?<=...) for the condition to match .{4}

^ means start of line
2
.{11} any character but 11 times
998
.{35} any character but 35 times

So basically it means the line has to start with 2, followed by 11 characters, followed by 998, followed by 35 characters and then match the next 4 characters.
Lookbehind can only be used with a fixed length term to search, which was the case here. :-)

Alan Kilborn

@Ekopalypse said in Replace help:

I am still confused by the fact that the position as shown in the statusbar no longer starts at 0.

You mean the Pos: thing?
It’s relatively new, right?
But I believe it has always been “one based”, never “zero based”.

(I wish it was zero-based, as that would help when writing my PythonScripts – Scintilla always deals with zero-based positions)

Ekopalypse

@Alan-Kilborn said in Replace help:

But I believe it has always been “one based”, never “zero based”.

Really, I’m getting old and confused :-D

PeterJones

@Ekopalypse said in Replace help:

@Alan-Kilborn said in Replace help:

But I believe it has always been “one based”, never “zero based”.

Really, I’m getting old and confused :-D

I’ve always just added a line like

123456789x123456789x123456789x123456789x123456789x123456789x123456789x123456789x

when I’m answering positional-based requests, That method works in any version of Notepad++ and doesn’t make me think about 0-based vs 1-based. :-)

Alan Kilborn

@PeterJones said in Replace help:

I’ve always just added a line like

Ha! I did that too!:

(RegexBuddy pictured)

This, in N++ is even handier, but I can’t find where I’ve put it quickly enough sometimes:

123456789-123456789-123456789-123456789-123456789-123456789-123456789-123456789-123456789-123456789-123456789-
         10        20        30        40        50        60        70        80        90       100

Ekopalypse

@Alan-Kilborn @PeterJones

Lazy as I’m I looked at the statusbar until I saw 50(thinking it must be 51 because scintilla start from 0) and then selected the dots - which was obviously wrong.

PeterJones

@Alan-Kilborn said in Replace help:

This, in N++ is even handier, but I can’t find where I’ve put it quickly

I find it’s faster to re-create than to store in some useful copy-and-paste location. Typing the 10 characters, then duplicating 8+ times, is pretty fast (and almost in my muscle memory now).

I suppose we could create macros to insert those. :-)

Ekopalypse

Yeah, we could. Maybe I should have written a python script to do it :-)

And now the question, why were the first dots correct? I counted them. :-D

astrosofista

@Ekopalypse, @Alan-Kilborn, @PeterJones

Actually there is a Python script for it. In my configuration is at

“D:\Applications\npp.7.9.1.portable.x64\plugins\PythonScript\scripts\Samples\InsertRuler.py”

For learning purposes I replicated most of it in AutoHotkey, but I rarely use any of both.

Take care and have fun!

Ekopalypse

@Ekopalypse said in Replace help:

Really, I’m getting old and confused :-D

once again …