Delete All Lines After Bookmark then Combine Text Files

[ProfessorSethO]

Hi! I have a set of 385 text documents which all have a consistent format – headings are always the same, but content under them differs. The files are viewable on my Google drive: R2d documents

For each document, I want to delete the heading and everything after the heading “REPORTER’S NOTES”. I know that I can mark this text with bookmarks, but I cannot figure out how to automatically select and delete everything that follows after that. Help invited and welcomed!

Also, when this process is complete, I want to concatenate the 385 documents into a single document. Does notebook++ have a concatenate feature?

This is for an educational project. Many thanks in advance for helping me provide reference information to students!

[Alan Kilborn]

@professorsetho

I really don’t think many people want to click a link for your google drive.
The proper way to do it is to post a sample of your text here.
The best instructions for posting such a question are HERE.

I want to concatenate the 385 documents into a single document. Does notebook++ have a concatenate feature?

Short and sweet answer: No.

[guy038]

Hello, @professorsetho, @alan-kilborn and All,

Not difficult to achieve !

I assume that :

• All your 385 documents are in a specific folder

• Each of these files contains only one heading REPORTER’S NOTES

• You already backup these 385 documents within an other folder

---

Then, here is the road map :

• Start Notepad++

• Open the Find in files dialog ( Ctrl + Shift + F )

  • Find what: (?-si)^.*REPORTER’S NOTES(?s).*

  • Replace with: Leave EMPTY

  • Filters: *.txt

  • Directory: Your specific folder

  • Select the Regular expression search mode

  • Click on the Replace in Files button

  • Valid the Are you sure? dialog

=> For all your files, it will delete the line containing the string REPORTER’S NOTES and any text which follows

• IF, in addition, you want that you future single document contains a separation line, between each document, use, for instance, the following regex S/R :

  • Find what: \z

  • Replace with: \r\n================================================================================\r\n

  • Filters: *.txt

  • Directory: Your specific folder

  • Select the Regular expression search mode

  • Click on the Replace in Files button

  • Valid the Are you sure? dialog

• Close the Find in files dialog ( Esc )

• Now, open a cmd window ( no need to open it in administrator mode )

• Move to your directory containing these 385 documents

• Type in the command copy *.txt Total.txt and valid with the Enter key

=> The Total.txt file is created and should contain a concatenation of all your 385 files. Of course, your individual files are not modified !

Voilà :-))

Best Regards,

guy038

[Neil Schipper]

Hi @guy038,

Find what: (?-si)^.+REPORTER’S NOTES(?s).+

The ^.+ requires at least one character at line start before ‘REPORTER’S NOTES’ but all the files I sampled have that text in the 1st column.

[guy038]

Hello, @neil-schipper,

Thanks for pointing this to me ! So, I replaced the two plus signs with two star symbols, in my previous post

BR

guy038