Replace a specific char with the begining of the line
-
Hi friends, I hope you can help me please
i have a text file formatted like this :
Cell1-value1++value2++value3++value4…
Cell2-valuea++valueb++valuec++valued…
…
Cell1213…
Cell1214…What I want to do is to insert the Cell number between the double +
Cell1-value1+Cell1+value2+Cell1+value3+Cell1+value4…
Cell2-valuea+Cell2+valueb+Cell2+valuec+Cell2+valued…I tried with regex but didn’t find out how to solve this.
Thank you for your help
-
@Axel-Blitz said in Replace a specific char with the begining of the line:
Cell1-value1++value2++value3++value4…
Cell2-valuea++valueb++valuec++valued…- FIND =
^(\w+).*?\K\+\+ - REPLACE =
+$1+ - SEARCH MODE = Regular Expression
- REPLACE ALL
Will replace the first
++on each line with the cell value. Clicking Replace All N times (where N is the maximum number of++on any of the thousands of lines in your file – or just stop clicking when the Replace dialog says “0 occurrences were replaced in entire file”) will propagate it to the very end.Quick explanation:
^= start match at beginning of line(\w+)= grab as many word characters (A-Z, 0-9, _) and store in group#1.*?= move forward on the line until whatever comes next in the regex is matched (this is a way to skip 0 or more characters, when you don’t know how many characters it will be)\K= this is a fancy thing that says “do all the matching before this symbol, but don’t include the text before this when i do a replacement later” – or, essentially, “keep (hence the\K) the text that comes before this”\+\+= match two literal+signs (+ is special to regex, so need a \ before it)- REPLACE:
+$1+=> replace just the two + from the match with a single + then the contents of group 1 then a single + .
(Sorry that you might have to hit Replace All multiple times. it might be possible to do with a very complicated single regular expression even if we cannot guarantee how many
++there are beforehand, but it’s much easier to explain one where you just replace one++per line at a time. With a file with 1000 or 10000 lines, if you only have 10++per line, so it grows with the number of++not with the number of lines, so there is at least that. And honestly, if you had more than 10 in a given row, the regex would be too complicated to type and use, so hitting 10 Replace All seems doable. If you might have 100++on a single line, then I suggest recording the replacement I showed as a macro, then use Macro > Run a Macro Multiple Times to specify that you want to run the replacement 100 times without having to do 100 clicks.)----
Useful References
- FIND =
-
@PeterJones said in Replace a specific char with the begining of the line:
Peter Jones you saved my day !!
Thank you very much <3