Find and replace white space with tabs

Thomas Allister

Hi everybody I’m looking for help for this issue.

I have a txt file with more than 7000 lines with this content:

10 FIRST FOO
1001 SECOND FOO
100101 THIRD FOO
10010101 FOURTH FOO
10010102 EVEN MORE FOO
10010103 STILL FOOING 
11 BAR
1102 SECOND BAR
110201 THIRD BAR
11020101 FOURTH BAR
11020102 EVEN MORE FOURTH BAR

and I need it to become like this:

10		FIRST FOO
1001		SECOND FOO
100101		THIRD FOO
10010101	FOURTH FOO
10010102	EVEN MORE FOO
10010103	STILL FOOING
11		BAR
1102		SECOND BAR
110201		THIRD BAR
11020101	FOURTH BAR
11020102	EVEN MORE FOURTH BAR

I thought that i can try to search for white space in third column 3, 5, 7 and 9 and replace it with three tabs , but when i run the search with regular expression like

^.{2}\s

to find the blank in column 3 and then go to replace it, the editor replace all the characters from the start of the line, how can i replace only the character (or the whitespace) in column 3 (and 5, 7, 9)?

Is there maybe another way to accomplish such result?

TIA everybody for your attention.

Alan Kilborn

@Thomas-Allister

Do:

Find: ^\S+
Replace: $0 and then add bunch of spaces after the 0
Search mode: Regular expression

You’ll obtain something like this:

10                                                 FIRST FOO
1001                                                 SECOND FOO
100101                                                 THIRD FOO
10010101                                                 FOURTH FOO
10010102                                                 EVEN MORE FOO
10010103                                                 STILL FOOING 
11                                                 BAR
1102                                                 SECOND BAR
110201                                                 THIRD BAR
11020101                                                 FOURTH BAR
11020102                                                 EVEN MORE FOURTH BAR

Then put your caret at some reasonable spot in the big bunch of spaces on line 1, and press Alt+Shift+b (requires N++ 8.5 or later). Note the column you are in from the N++ status bar.

Move to the last line of the file, and get to the same column. Press Alt+Shift+b again.

You’ll obtain:

Finally, press and hold Ctrl while you tap and release the Delete key, to get:

From there you can use the Backspace key or the space bar to reduce or increase the amount of space on all of the lines simultaneously.

namx3249

Alan, sorry, but does not work for me …

also Alt+Shift+b does not provide any events …
i have latest 8.5.2 np++ version

PeterJones

@namx3249 ,

sorry, but does not work for me

My guess is that you didn’t notice the “then add a bunch of spaces after the 0”. Your replacement needs to be a long piece of text – the literal $0 then a bunch of spaces.

Since spaces at the end of a regex replacement can be hard to see, I like using \x20 (which is regex speak for “ASCII HEX 20” which is the space character) when I post in the forum, like: $0\x20\x20\x20\x20\x20\x20\x20\x20\x20\x20\x20\x20\x20\x20\x20\x20\x20\x20\x20\x20\x20\x20\x20\x20\x20\x20\x20\x20\x20\x20\x20\x20\x20\x20

also Alt+Shift+b does not provide any events …

Yes it does. You just need to do two of them.

012345
67890A
BCDEFG
HIJKLM

If you have your cursor between 0 and 1, then hit Alt+Shift+B, then move your cursor to between the L and the M and hit Alt+Shift+B, then you will have a rectangle selection from the 1 to the L.

After the first Alt+Shift+B, if you looked at the Edit menu, you would see a checkmark next to Begin/End Select in Column Mode, indicating that you’d done the begin but not yet done the end.

Alan Kilborn

@namx3249 said in Find and replace white space with tabs:

Alan, sorry, but does not work for me …

Maybe there is some misinterpretation of what you actually have, and/or what you want.

You said something about “three tabs” – do you really want to end up with tab characters in your file?

Coises

@Thomas-Allister said in Find and replace white space with tabs:

I thought that i can try to search for white space in third column 3, 5, 7 and 9 and replace it with three tabs , but when i run the search with regular expression like
^.{2}\s
to find the blank in column 3 and then go to replace it, the editor replace all the characters from the start of the line, how can i replace only the character (or the whitespace) in column 3 (and 5, 7, 9)?

You want to use capture expressions, so that you include the original text in the replacement:

Find: ^(.{2})\s
Replace: \1\t

The parentheses create a capture expression. They are numbered from 1 to 9 from the left (counting by where the opening parenthesis occurs, in case parentheses are nested). Capture expressions get more complicated, but that’s the simple version.

It looks like you could do all your lines at once with:

Find: ^(\d+)\s
Replace: \1\t

namx3249

@PeterJones
thanks for you clarification. now i’ve understand. and all work fine for me too

@Alan-Kilborn

You said something about “three tabs” – do you really want to end up with tab characters in your file?

really i don’t understand what you’re referring to…

Alan Kilborn

@namx3249 said in Find and replace white space with tabs:

really i don’t understand what you’re referring to…

Then it isn’t important, as long as everything is now working fine for you.

namx3249

so, the final solution is:
find: ^\S+
replace: $0\x20\x20\x20\x20\x20\x20\x20\x20\x20\x20
put caret on blank space in a space between text in the first line, hold Alt+Shift+B (Edit menu - Begin/End Select in Column Mode), with arrow key put on the last line, hold again Alt+Shift+B
then with Ctrl + Del key all text on right side is aligned to the cursor. done

simply and interesting. thanks folks for this new trick

Alan Kilborn

Just be careful not to do Ctrl+Delete in this situation:

If you do, it will remove FIRST on line 1 and BAR on line 7.

Always have at least one space character on each line to the right of the “tall skinny” caret.