add characters

[Mr Schnok]

Hello,

I have a file of 160 000 lines with some empty lines.
I would like to add characters at the beginning of each line, but not when they are empty. I found how to add characters at the beginning or end of the line, but I don’t know the regular expression syntax to go further.
Could someone help me please?

Thank you in advance.

[guy038]

Hello, @mr-schnok and All,

Not difficult !

SEARCH (?x) ^ (?! \R )    OR    ^(?!\R)

REPLACE Your text to insert at BEGINNING of NON-EMPTY lines

---

The search regex means :

Change any beginning of line ( ^ ) with the text to replace, but ONLY IF not immediately followed with a line-break character, as \R represents, either \r\n or \r or \n

Best Regards

guy038

[guy038]

Hi, @mr-schnok and All,

Oh… I did not notice that you spoke about adding characters at the end of non-empty lines as well !

In this case, the regex S/R becomes :

SEARCH (?x-s) (?<= . ) $    OR    (?-s)(?<=.)$

REPLACE Your text to insert at END of NON-EMPTY lines

---

The search regex means :

Change any end of line ( $ ) with the text to insert, but ONLY IF immediately preceded with a standard character ( . )

BR

guy038

[Mr Schnok]

Hello @guy038

Thank you very much. It works very well.
And especially thank you for the explanation.

Have a nice day.
Phil