use the “alt” key to highlight a chuck of text on multiple lines, then delete that section

Yep, there was that “alt” column mode +DEL undo regression (from N++ v8.8.9), some details & STR in the fix-PR:

https://github.com/notepad-plus-plus/notepad-plus-plus/pull/17307

The fix is in the already released v8.9 but due to some other problems in that version, it hasn’t been triggered for a N++ autoupdate (so if you wanna use it, you have to dl & run the v8.9 installer yourself).

@PeterKee
Do you also use N++ macros?

Currently I’ve identified another such (this time a longstanding) bug in the N++ codebase (PR fix is still in progress, it’ll be hopefully in the next version, for a STR look here).

I fixed one such problem but users still report occasionally occurrences of it, so it’s clear that there should be more code to fix. Unfortunately, so far I could not reproduce (so cannot fix it…) and the users have not been able to describe 100% reproducible steps. So if you find such a STR, it will be great.

@xomx I don’t have a 100% foolproof way to reproduce yet, but if I use the “alt” key to highlight a chuck of text on multiple lines, then delete that section and continue working. The next time I “ctrl+z” to undo (no matter how long it’s been, right now it’s been about 15 minutes of working), it goes back to when I highlighted the chuck of text. I experience this more often than not when I use that method to select. It’s not 100% of the time, but it’s often enough that I can reproduce it if I try long enough.

Has anyone else experienced this?

Sounds similar as the infamous GitHub issue #9426.

This never happened with the 32-bit version,

Oldest report there is for Notepad++ v7.9 (32-bit), so some users had it even for the 32-bit N++.

I fixed one such problem but users still report occasionally occurrences of it, so it’s clear that there should be more code to fix. Unfortunately, so far I could not reproduce (so cannot fix it…) and the users have not been able to describe 100% reproducible steps. So if you find such a STR, it will be great.

But you’ve got a few plugins in your Debug Info that I don’t have much experience with, and there are times when plugin X interferes obscurely with plugin Y.

I know that you likely have that list of plugins for good reason to help you with your workflow, but the best advice I have for you to debug the problem is to either start with just the NppFTP plugin, and see if it has the problem after a few hours; if so, then you have found the culprit, and can put in a bug report; if not, you can add one plugin at a time until the problem does arise. But that might make your workflow too unwieldly during the experiment, so maybe start with removing one at a time (which will thus hopefully only take one part of your workflow away at a time, which might be workable) – so, for example, have all the plugins installed except WebEdit (you can follow the directory-rename suggestion in this FAQ to disable one plugin without truly uninstalling it), then try it for a few hours: if it doesn’t crash, maybe it was WebEdit or some interfererence between that and another plugin; if it does crash, you know that WebEdit wasn’t the sole culprit, so you can re-enable it, then move on to disabling the next (for example, QuickText).

I know it’s not an ideal solution, since each experiment will at least partially inhibit, and each takes a few hours, and unless there is a crash, you won’t ever be truly sure you’ve tested it long enough. But it’s the best idea I can come up with to narrow things down.