Notepad++ multiline regex

Question

I've got hundreds of files of the type linked here: http://pastebin.com/fGgLfZf8

But I want to remove all the comments that occupies more than one line eg.

<!--- MPU --->

should be left untouched, while

<!--
************
blablabla
************
-->

should be removed.

I know the Notepad++ feature to lookup through more than a document with regexp and I'm tryin to use it but I have some difficulty. For a start I'm trying this regexp:

<\!\-\-(.*?)\-\->

which tested in here: http://www.regextester.com/ works at least partially (because it highlights the comments made of just on line) But if I copy and paste this regexp on Notepad++ it will match just the one-line comments =\

Does anybody know how to do this in Notepad++?

score 46 · Accepted Answer · edited Oct 24 '13 at 21:00

46

Next to the "Regular expression" selection in "Search Mode" there is a "matches newline" checkbox (according to @glatapoui it should be noted that this only works in Notepad++ v6, not in previous versions).

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edited Oct 24 '13 at 21:00

fresskoma

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answered Dec 18 '12 at 14:03

lilwupster

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Wow, writing `<\!\-\-(.*?)\-\->` and selecting that one really seems to work! Thank you. Now I just have to find out how to exclude the mono-line ones – Andrea Silvestri Dec 18 '12 at 14:47

score 4 · Answer 2 · answered Apr 25 '13 at 19:43

4

This expression  matched the multi-line comments only in Notepad++ as well.

answered Apr 25 '13 at 19:43

Mike Perrenoud

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Igor Aleksandrov · Answer 3 · 2021-04-19T13:37:08.910

1

Another way to catch multi-line text is use the expression:

<!---([\S\s]+?)--->

\S+ matches all no-space symbols,
\s+ matches all space symbols (including \r \n \t).

It works for notepad++, maybe, otherwise too...

EDIT: At the first look I didn’t noticed that problem issue is catch and delete only multiline comments excluding monoline ones. I found method of two iterations. First we need to find and replace by nothing following text

<!—-(?:(?!.*—->)[\s\S]+?—->|)

That will catch all multiline comments and prefixes of monoline ones. Then what we need is bring back the monoline prefixes, that we lost:

Find:
(.+—->)

Replace:
<!—-\1

It will fix monoline comments. Combination of “—->“ can not appear xml code otherwise end of comment.

edited Apr 19 '21 at 13:37

answered Jul 31 '20 at 20:07

Igor Aleksandrov

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This will also match lines without linebreaks. – Toto Aug 01 '20 at 08:29
@Toto, I didn’t noticed it at the first time. Now I propose another method of two replaces. – Igor Aleksandrov Aug 28 '20 at 13:51

anthonyme · Answer 4 · 2012-12-18T14:27:35.187

0

this one seems to only take multi-line comments in notepad++

Edit: little mistake : spaces are a problem with this one. You can try 

edited Dec 18 '12 at 14:27

answered Dec 18 '12 at 14:14

anthonyme

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neither of them works for me =\ Do they work in your Notepad++? – Andrea Silvestri Dec 18 '12 at 14:45
Yes, they work with me. In notepad++ and in Regextester as well. Could you have some spaces before the first newline of a comment ? – anthonyme Dec 18 '12 at 15:09

score 0 · Answer 5 · answered Feb 09 '22 at 11:43

0

A simple trick if it was a single document, is to convert the line endings to Unix .

Menu: [Edit] -> [EOL Conversion] -> [Unix]

Then just use simple \n to detect newline in your expression.

This way you don't have to change expressions constructed/copied from some online regex builders.

note: don't forget to switch line endings back to Windows, just in case.

answered Feb 09 '22 at 11:43

Assem

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How is this answering the question? – Toto Feb 09 '22 at 12:31
I know the question is about "multiple" documents at once, where my hint won't help this specific case. But I though it could help others who land on this question because they need to find how to handle multi-line search in the NP++ without the need to change a per-constructed search expression that depends on \n for new lines or setting the '.' to be include newlines in search dialog. – Assem Feb 09 '22 at 20:01

Notepad++ multiline regex

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