Complex find and replace in notepad++ - search

I'm trying to do a find and replace in notepad++ where i remove the dashes from a set of numbers and letters formatted as following: aa-aaa-nn-nnnnn
I've considered writing a plugin, but it just seems like too much work to be worth it.
Here's an example of what I have and what I need.
I have this: <ISRC>AB-CED-12-34567</ISRC>
And the result should be: <ISRC>ABCED1234567</ISRC>
I've tried finding (A-Z+)-(A-Z+)-(\d+)-(\d+) and replacing this with \1\2\3\4
but then it can't find the "text". If I knew how to write the darned search codes, I could do this myself, but I just can't find a complete guide anywhere.

You're close, you want to use character class:
Ctrl+H
Find what: ([A-Z]+)-([A-Z]+)-(\d+)-(\d+)
Replace with: $1$2$3$4
Replace all
[A-]+ means one or more uppercase letter, if you want to match also lowercase, use [A-Za-z]+

Related

Is there any way to copy few characters to clipboard in textpad?

I'm trying to replace a few character word in one place with the word searched in another. I.e
VARIABLE INT005 SOME TEXT BETWEEN NAME=INT020;
I want the program To copy whats after VARIABLE (INT005 in this case) and paste it after NAME=(here should be again INT005 replaced into the place of INT020)
A regex replacement should work here. Assuming you are only looking to make these replacements on a single line, you may try the following find and replace:
Find: \bVARIABLE (\S+)(.*?)\bNAME=\S+;
Replace: VARIABLE $1$2NAME=$1
Demo
Edit:
If your text could span multiple lines, then either turn on "dot all" mode from Textpad (not sure where you would do that), or use this find version:
\bVARIABLE (\S+)([\s\S]*?)\bNAME=\S+;

replacing part of regex matches

I have several functions that start with get_ in my code:
get_num(...) , get_str(...)
I want to change them to get_*_struct(...).
Can I somehow match the get_* regex and then replace according to the pattern so that:
get_num(...) becomes get_num_struct(...),
get_str(...) becomes get_str_struct(...)
Can you also explain some logic behind it, because the theoretical regex aren't like the ones used in UNIX (or vi, are they different?) and I'm always struggling to figure them out.
This has to be done in the vi editor as this is main work tool.
Thanks!
To transform get_num(...) to get_num_struct(...), you need to capture the correct text in the input. And, you can't put the parentheses in the regular expression because you may need to match pointers to functions too, as in &get_distance, and uses in comments. However, and this depends partially on the fact that you are using vim and partially on how you need to keep the entire input together, I have checked that this works:
%s/get_\w\+/&_struct/g
On every line, find every expression starting with get_ and continuing with at least one letter, number, or underscore, and replace it with the entire matched string followed by _struct.
Darn it; I shouldn't answer these things on spec. Note that other regex engines might use \& instead of &. This depends on having magic set, which is default in vim.
For an alternate way to do it:
%s/get_\(\w*\)(/get_\1_struct(/g
What this does:
\w matches to any "word character"; \w* matches 0 or more word characters.
\(...\) tells vim to remember whatever matches .... So, \(w*\) means "match any number of word characters, and remember what you matched. You can then access it in the replacement with \1 (or \2 for the second, etc.)
So, the overall pattern get_\(\w*\)( looks for get_, followed by any number of word chars, followed by (.
The replacement then just does exactly what you want.
(Sorry if that was too verbose - not sure how comfortable you are with vim regex.)

Delete anything other than pattern

Let's say this is my text:
this is my text this
is my text this is my text
my text is this
I would like to highlight all text except pattern and delete the highlighted text.
p.e. text: this must be the result.
text
texttext
text
I've found the code how to select all text except pattern:
\%(\%(.{-}\)\#!text\zs\)*
however I don't know how to delete all highlighted text.
This doesn't work:
:%s/\%(\%(.{-}\)\#!bell\zs\)*//
Can anyone help me?
Try this:
:%s/\(^\|\(text\)\#<=\).\{-}\($\|text\)\#=//g
Explanation:
\(^\|\(text\)\#<=\) # means start of line, or some point preceded by “text”
.\{-} # as few characters as possible
\($\|text\)\#= # without globbing characters, checking that we reached either end of line or occurrence of “text”.
Another way to do it:
Create a function that count matches of a pattern in a string (see :help match() to help you design that)
Use: :%s/.*/\=repeat('text', matchcount('text', submatch(0)))
Forgive me, because I'm not a vim expert, but wouldn't prepending the search with v find the inverse so that you could do something like this?
:v/pattern/d
I've implemented Benoit's clever regular expression as a custom :DeleteExcept command in my PatternsOnText plugin. It offers other related commands like :SubstituteExcept or :SubstituteInSearch, too.
OP's example would be
:%DeleteExcept /text/
Comparing that with #Benoit's explicit command (:%s/\(^\|\(text\)\#<=\).\{-}\($\|text\)\#=//g), it's a lot simpler.

vim does not find and replace simple phrase that is clearly present

I have a simple vim problem that Google hasn't managed to help me with. Any thoughts are appreciated.
I do the following search and replace:
:s/numnodes/numnodes1/g
On a file containing the following text:
numprocs=0
numnodes=0
I get
E486: Pattern not found
The position of the green square which indicates where I'd start typing is clearly above the pattern. I tried searching for other short phrases not involving regex, which are also present, which also fail. A simple /numnodes highlights matches as expected. Does anyone have any idea what might be the matter with vim?
Try :%s/searchphrase/replacephase/g
Without the % symbol Vim only matches and replaces on the current line.
try using this:
:%s/numnodes/numnodes1/g

How to search for a character the displays as "<85>" in Vim

I have a file that was converted from EBCDIC to ASCII. Where there used to be new lines there are now characters that show up as <85> (a symbol representing a single character, not the four characters it appears to be) and the whole file is on one line. I want to search for them and replace them all with new lines again, but I don't know how.
I tried putting the cursor over one and using * to search for the next occurrence, hoping that it might show up in my / search history. That didn't work, it just searched for the word that followed the <85> character.
I searched Google, but didn't see anything obvious.
My goal is to build a search and replace string like:
:%s/<85>/\n/g
Which currently just gives me:
E486: Pattern not found: <85>
I found "Find & Replace non-printable characters in vim" searching Google. It seems like you should be able to do:
:%s/\%x85/\r/gc
Omit the c to do the replacement without prompting, try with c first to make sure it is doing what you want it to do.
In Vim, typing :h \%x gives more details. In addition to \%x, you can use \%d, \%o, \%u and \%U for decimal, octal, up to four and up to eight hexadecimal characters.
For special character searching, win1252 for example, for the case of <80>,<90>,<9d>...
type:
/\%u80, \/%u90, /\%u9d ...
from the editor.
Similarly for octal, decimal, hex, type: /\%oYourCode, /\%dYourCode, /\%xYourCode.
try this: :%s/<85>/^M/g
note: press Ctrl-V together then M
or if you don't mind using another tool,
awk '{gsub("<85>","\n")}1' file

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