Need Guidance -- How can I find a specific line segment and remove all spaces and tabs from ONLY that segment.

John Tee

Ex. I want to find all “EQD” lines and remove all spaces and tabs from JUST those lines.

See below sample data, as you can see 2 of the 3 EQD lines have a space. I need to remove any “space” or “tab” from just that line.

EQD+CN+ZMLU XXXXXXX+45GP+++5
NAD+CA+ZMLU:172:ZZZ
LOC+147+0260808::5
FTX+AAA+++ALUMINUM ARTICLES
MEA+WT++KGM:16549
LOC+9+DOHAI:139:6
LOC+11+USSAV:139:6
RFF+BM:1
EQD+CN+ZMLU XXXXXXX+45GP+++5
NAD+CA+ZMLU:172:ZZZ
LOC+147+0260202::5
FTX+AAA+++ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGES
MEA+WT++KGM:27797
LOC+9+JMKIN:139:6
LOC+11+USSAV:139:6
RFF+BM:1
EQD+CN+ZMLUXXXXXXX+45GP+++5
NAD+CA+ZMLU:172:ZZZ

I appreciate everyone’s time that is looking into this.

Cheers

Terry R

@John-Tee said in Need Guidance -- How can I find a specific line segment and remove all spaces and tabs from ONLY that segment.:

I want to find all “EQD” lines and remove all spaces and tabs from JUST those lines.

Using the Replace function we have:
Find What:(?-is)(?=^EQD).*?\K\h
Replace With:nothing in this field empty

As this is a regular expression the search mode MUST be regular expression and you must use the “Replace All” button as I have used the \K meta character in the expression. Run it multiple times if any line has more than 1 instance of a blank space or tab (you can see when it’s completed when the Replace Window states “0 occurances were replaced in entire file”. This expression will remove ONLY one at a time from each of the lines with EQD in then, it will not touch any line with eqd

Terry

guy038

Hello, @john-tee, @terry-r and All,

Ah, yes, @terry-r, we may also use this variation :

(?-is)^(?=EQD).*?\K\h

Now, if more than one horizontal blank char is present, in a line beginning with EQD, these two syntaxes do not work !

In that case, we need to use the generic regex, belox, discussed in other posts, like this one :

https://community.notepad-plus-plus.org/post/62799

SEARCH (?-i:BSR|(?!\A)\G)(?s:(?!ESR).)*?\K(?-i:FR)

REPLACE RR

where :

FR (Find Regex ) is the regex which defines the char, string or expression to be searched
RR (Replacement Regex ) is the regex which defines the char, string or expression which must replace the FR expression
BSR ( Begin Search-region Regex ) is the regex which defines the beginning of the area where the search for FR, must start
ESR ( End Search-region Regex) is the regex which defines, implicitly, the area where the search for FR, must end

For @John-Tee’s need, we have :

FR = \h
RR = Empty string
BSR = ^EQD
ESR is implicit and we don’t need the (?s:(?!ESR).)*? syntax . Indeed, due to the (?-s) modifier, the range of chars, matched with the part .*? cannot go beyond the current line, anyway, as the line-break char(s) are not allowed !

Thus, if several space or tabulation characters may appear in the EQD...... lines, the appropriate regex S/R is rather :

SEARCH (?-s)(?-i:^EQD|(?!\A)\G).*?\K\h

REPLACE Leave EMPTY

Best Regards,

guy038

John Tee

@guy038 said in Need Guidance -- How can I find a specific line segment and remove all spaces and tabs from ONLY that segment.:

@guy038 @Terry-R

Is there a way to adjust the provided SEARCH: " (?-s)(?-i:^EQD|(?!\A)\G).*?\K\h " to further clean spaces and tabs for all the following lines at once: EQD, NAD, LOC, MAE, RFF - but don’t touch line FTX?

I welcome your feedback and thank you both again for your time.

Terry R

@John-Tee said in Need Guidance -- How can I find a specific line segment and remove all spaces and tabs from ONLY that segment.:

Is there a way to adjust the provided SEARCH: " (?-s)(?-i:^EQD|(?!\A)\G).*?\K\h " to further clean spaces and tabs for all the following lines at once: EQD, NAD, LOC, MAE, RFF - but don’t touch line FTX?

Certainly. The changes are:
for my regex it becomes (I made an additional change putting the ^ outside of the lookahead)
(?-is)^(?=EQD|NAD|LOC|MAE|RFF).*?\K\h
and for @guy038 regex it would be
(?-s)(?-i:^(EQD|NAD|LOC|MAE|RFF)|(?!\A)\G).*?\K\h

You can easily see how it expands to any additional codes, so if you need to change it, you should be able to do so easily. Try that.

Terry

John Tee

@Terry-R Thank you very much the new update works great just what I needed. All the best and thank you @Terry-R and @guy038 for your time and guidance. Cheers