Delete all text before a string

guszn10mm · Jan 10, 2022, 8:28 PM

Hello, I am trying to delete all text in a file before the first instance of a string. There are multiple instances of the string, but I need to essentially find the first occurrence of the string, and delete all text preceding the string.

As an example, the file is:

aaa
bbb
ccc
111
222
333
2021-05-26abcdefg
ddd
444
123456789
2021-05-26

I need the locate the FIRST occurrence of the string - “2021-05-26” and delete all text before that string, NOT including “abcdefg” on the same line. So I would need to delete the lines, aaa | bbb | ccc | 111 | 222 | 333

The desired output being:

2021-05-26abcdefg
ddd
444
123456789
2021-05-26

I have been looking for a regex command for this, but haven’t had any luck so far. Any assistance is appreciated.

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PeterJones · Jan 10, 2022, 8:41 PM

@guszn10mm

FIND = (?s)\A.*?(2021-05-26)

(?s) will allow . to match newline (or you can set the flag in the dialog box)
\A represents the start of the file
.*? says “0 or more, as few as possible”
(...) puts whatever’s in the parens in a group
2021-05-26 literal string you want to match

REPLACE = $1

$1 refers to the contents of the first group from the FIND

SEARCH MODE = regular expression

Do the replacement

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Delete all text before a string

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