Search++ (\W)'(\w) regex replace failure

[Coises]

@M-Andre-Z-Eckenrode said:
Am I supposed to be able to run the portable copy of NPP while the installed copy is also running? When I tried to open the portable, it just brought my installed copy window to the front, and didn’t open anything new.

The portable version has its own settings stored within the portable folder. By default, Notepad++ runs in single instance mode. I tried it and it appears that when the Notepad++ you are attempting to open is in single instance mode, if any Notepad++ executable is open, it will switch to it instead. If you open the portable alone, with no other Notepad++ running, and change Settings | Preferences… | Multi-Instance & Date to Always in multi-instance mode, then you’ll be able to open the portable when the installed version is already running.

Then I tried closing the installed copy, but immediately got an error dialog. I was hoping to do a screenshot of it but somehow failed to (it may have been something about my session file having been corrupted, as there was no session restoration when I eventually re-opened my installed copy).

I have no guess about that.

Rather than hitting OK or whatever option it gave me in the dialog, I tried opening a new installed NPP instance via my AutoHotkey keyboard sequence so I could take some notes that hopefully wouldn’t be affected by whatever problems the first instance was having at that point, but I then immediately got another error dialog, this one specifically for Search++:

A configuration file was found, but it does not contain valid JSON and will be ignored.

Installed copies all share a single set of configuration files (for Notepad++ and plugins). This was probably related to the previous error. A possibility is that, since (if I’m following correctly) the instance with the error was still open, the file might have been present but locked, or incomplete.

Search++ puts up that message when the system says there is a file in the right place with the right name, but when I pass the file name to the JSON parser, it says it doesn’t make sense. I haven’t tested, but I suspect that could happen if the file is inaccessible as well as if it contains invalid JSON.

The next message:

A configuration file found at startup was ignored because this plugin could not use it.
Do you want to save the current configuration settings? (If Yes, the old file will be overwritten.)

is then expected when you close Notepad++; if there was some reason you didn’t want to lose the current contents of the file (for example, to diagnose how the file came to contain invalid JSON), that would let you preserve them.

I’m sorry that was such a mess. :-(

I then finally got the portable copy to open, and tried my regex in it. It all worked.

Then that means the cause is almost certainly either a plugin or a Notepad++ setting. I don’t know of any Notepad++ settings that would cause what you saw. My guess is that it’s an interaction with one of the plugins.

If you want to try to figure it out, I think the easiest way would be to go to your installed copy of Notepad++ in Windows Explorer, copy the plugins folder, then go to the portable copy, delete the plugins folder, and paste what you copied. Run the portable again and verify that all your plugins are listed. Then see what happens.

If the problem still doesn’t occur in the portable, then there must be a setting that Search++ doesn’t accommodate properly. If the problem does occur in the portable, try removing plugins one by one to see if you can isolate which one makes it go away.

I understand if you don’t want to pursue all this, though. I’ll look at the plugins listed in your debug information and see if I can find any that might cause a conflict.

[Alan Kilborn]

@Coises said:

By default, Notepad++ runs in single instance mode. I tried it and it appears that when the Notepad++ you are attempting to open is in single instance mode, if any Notepad++ executable is open, it will switch to it instead. If you open the portable alone, with no other Notepad++ running, and change Settings | Preferences… | Multi-Instance & Date to Always in multi-instance mode, then you’ll be able to open the portable when the installed version is already running.

I think that rather than mucking with the settings that you already have set the way you want in your main N++, to run a portable alongside it is as simple as adding the -multiInst command line parameter to the invocation of the portable.

[Coises]

@Alan-Kilborn said:

@Coises said:

By default, Notepad++ runs in single instance mode. I tried it and it appears that when the Notepad++ you are attempting to open is in single instance mode, if any Notepad++ executable is open, it will switch to it instead. If you open the portable alone, with no other Notepad++ running, and change Settings | Preferences… | Multi-Instance & Date to Always in multi-instance mode, then you’ll be able to open the portable when the installed version is already running.

(emphasis added)

I think that rather than mucking with the settings that you already have set the way you want in your main N++, to run a portable alongside it is as simple as adding the -multiInst command line parameter to the invocation of the portable.

I didn’t suggest changing the settings of the installed copy, nor would it help if he did. There’s nothing wrong with your method, either, if he’d rather create a shortcut and/or run from the command line.

[Alan Kilborn]

@Coises said:

I didn’t suggest changing the settings of the installed copy

Gotcha; didn’t catch that on the first read, sorry.

[M Andre Z Eckenrode]

@Coises

I didn’t experiment with adding or subtracting any plugins (other than having already added Search++) in the portable version yet. but I did just open the portable again, this time via command line and -multiInst, per @Alan-Kilborn’s suggestion (thanks, Alan), while my installed version was already open. I then retried my regex, but this time got anomalous results, such as:

this
u’dos I am
that

this
’Round and ’round
that

I then undid all replacements, and redid them, with all results correct the second time around.

Quit the portable copy, then reopened it (as -multiInst) again, then redid the regex, with anomalies:

this
’Cos I am
that

this
’Round and-’-ound
that

Quit the portable copy again, then reopened it (as -multiInst) again, then redid the regex again, with slightly different anomalies:

this
’Cos I am
that

this
-’-ound and ’round
that

Talk about bizarre. But it seems we can rule out conflicts from the other plugins I use in my installed version, unless there’s some way for them (or something else) to cross-contaminate the process in active memory due to the installed version still being open.

[…shuts down both portable and installed versions; reopens portable version; retries regex…]

Nope. Still had anomalous results:

this
’Cos I am
that

this
-’-ound and ’round
that

I’m out of guesses. It’s hit or miss whether or where or how it happens.

[Coises]

@M-Andre-Z-Eckenrode said:

I’m out of guesses. It’s hit or miss whether or where or how it happens.

Thank you for the reports. I don’t know the cause yet either, but I now think it is very likely that it is a fault in my code which I just haven’t encountered yet.

I notice that the literal ’ is always correct; when something is wrong, it’s the \1 and \2 substitutions. I have a hunch that if you were to show line endings, in the ones where a spurious character appears before a ’ at the beginning of a line the preceding line ending would have lost its LF and become just a lone CR.

I will work on it. Thank you again for your patience and this information. The reports that it occurred in a clean, portable version are very helpful in that they tell me what it isn’t; with something I can’t readily reproduce, that’s valuable knowledge.

[M Andre Z Eckenrode]

@Coises said:

I notice that the literal ’ is always correct

Ah, but don’t forget in my initial post, I was sometimes getting question marks (?) instead of ’. When I first saw that, I suspected that maybe Search++ was failing to make the conversion back from UTF to ANSI, since I believe it was previously stated that text is treated internally as UTF, but I was actually working on ANSI text at the time, and a question mark is what I usually get when accidentally trying to paste a UTF character in an ANSI file. But, I guess that’s not the case.

[M Andre Z Eckenrode]

@Coises said:

I have a hunch that if you were to show line endings, in the ones where a spurious character appears before a ’ at the beginning of a line the preceding line ending would have lost its LF and become just a lone CR.

Here ya go… This is what happened when I just now tried it:

Note that only one CRLF became just LF (line 8), but also that in the case of what you see here as line 5, it’s actually a combination of what were lines 5 and 6 from the pre-replacement text, so an entire CRLF is now missing. I don’t particularly think that’s related to the fact that I had View > Show Symbol > Show End of Line enabled, but what do I know?

[M Andre Z Eckenrode]

M-Andre-Z-Eckenrode said:

Note that only one CRLF became just LF (line 8)

Correction: Only one CRLF became just CR.

[guy038]

Hello, @m-andre-z-eckenrode, @alan-kilborn, @coises, @mpheath, @thomas-knoefel and All,

Just an observation : if you modify the proposed replacement :

FIND (\W)'(\w)

REPLACE \1’\2

by this one :

FIND (?<=\W)'(?=\w)

REPLACE ’

No problem occurs for a step by step replacement sequence or a Replace All operation for, either, an ANSI or UTF-8 encoded file. I verified this assumption with four regex engines :

• The native Search > Replace dialog of N++

• The Plugins > Column++ > Search... dialog

• The Plugins > Search++ > Search... dialog

• The Plugins > MultiReplace > MultiReplace... dialog

---

May be, this result will help to resolve possible bugs, with the other regex syntaxes

Best Regards,

guy038

[Coises]

@m-andre-z-eckenrode:

I’ve been looking, but so far I have not found a potential cause for the results you obtained.

@guy038’s post just led me to think of something.

The debug information in the post where you asked about the failure to replace in Notepad++ showed that you have Columns++ installed.

The search and replace code Search++ uses is derived from what I used in Columns++, but I have made some changes. Would you try and see if you can get the search in Columns++ to misbehave under the same circumstances as the one in Search++? (It’s fine to use the installed version of Notepad++ for this test.)

Knowing whether or not the fault also appears in Columns++ could help me narrow the scope of what I could be missing.

As always, I understand if you don’t have the time for this sort of thing. Thank you for your observations so far, and many thanks in advance if you are willing to do this additional test.