Visual Studio Code - Removing Lines Containing criteria

Question

This probably isn't a VS Code-specific question but it's my tool of choice.

I have a log file with a lot of lines containing the following:

Company.Environment.Security.RightsBased.Policies.RightsUserAuthorizationPolicy

Those are debug-level log records that clutter the file I'm trying to process. I'm looking to remove the lines with that content.

I've looked into Regex but, unlike removing a blank line where you have the whole content in the search criteria (making find/replace easy), here I need to match from line break to line break on some criteria between the two, I think...

What are your thoughts on how criteria like that would work?

James · Answer 1 · 2023-02-15T07:14:08.837

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If the criteria is a particular string and you don't want to have to remember regexes, there is a few handy keyboard shortcuts that can help you out. I'm going to assume you're on a Mac.

Cmd-F to open find.
Paste your string.
Opt-Enter to select all of the instances of the string on the page.
Cmd-L to broaden the selection to the entire line of each instance on the page.
Delete/Backspace to remove those lines.

edited Feb 15 '23 at 07:14

answered May 13 '20 at 13:24

James

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On Windows, replace "Cmd" with "Ctrl" and this works perfectly. – OLP Jun 01 '20 at 14:20
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I also prefer this solution over the regex solution. Matching text with special characters is easier/faster with this solution since you don't have to manually escape each special character. – MKANET Jul 14 '20 at 15:56
Hi @James, can you please my this question? https://stackoverflow.com/questions/64365300/how-can-i-remove-unused-imports-declarations-from-the-entire-project-of-react-ty – DevLoverUmar Oct 20 '20 at 03:59
Another variant is to highlight one occurrence in the file, right-click, select Change All Occurances then do Ctrl+L and backspace. I guess it's a combination of this answer and the one from Sanket Patel – trademark Feb 22 '21 at 18:10
this approach didn't screw up my yaml formatting unlike the regex approach – James Render Aug 20 '21 at 13:26
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Thanks!! This worked great on a huge kafka dump file. I use Regex normally but using regex crashed VSCode. btw 3 should be Opt-Enter instead of Alt-Enter – Siraj K Jan 05 '23 at 04:21

Tim Biegeleisen · Accepted Answer · 2018-07-31T16:44:45.593

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I think you should be able to just search for ^.*CONTENT.*$\n, where the content is the text you showed us. That is, search on the following pattern:

^.*Company\.Environment\.Security\.RightsBased\.Policies\.RightsUserAuthorizationPolicy.*$\n

And then just replace with empty string.

edited Jul 31 '18 at 16:44

answered Jul 31 '18 at 16:41

Tim Biegeleisen

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Don't forget to escape the periods in the middle `\.` – aaldilai Jul 31 '18 at 16:44
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@aaldilai Thanks for the correction. The pattern still would have worked, but for all the wrong reasons. – Tim Biegeleisen Jul 31 '18 at 16:45
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Maybe worth to note: In the Studio Code 'Regular expression' search mode should be enabled to be able to search with the RegExp. – szhuravel Sep 26 '19 at 10:05

Sanket Patel · Answer 3 · 2021-01-29T06:00:20.763

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I have already up-voted answer of @james. But.. still I found one more easy and many feature available extension in VS Code. Here it is

It have much easy options to apply filters.

To match specific case mentioned in question. I am attaching screenshot which display how to use for it. I am posting this for others who come here in search for same issue. (Like I came)

edited Jan 29 '21 at 06:00

answered Jan 29 '21 at 05:53

Sanket Patel

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useless for larger files, keep showing error when use function "This function requires an active editor" – Mr.Devops Aug 04 '21 at 17:07

Visual Studio Code - Removing Lines Containing criteria

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