Delete text block with regexp in notepad++

Question

Textfile contains blocks:

<tr>
    <td>waitForElementPresent</td>
    <td>//div</td>
    <td></td>
</tr>
<tr>
    <td>assertElementPresent</td>
    <td>//div</td>
    <td></td>
</tr>

I want to remove all blocks with regexp in notepad++ with the word assertElementPresent in it:

<tr>*assertElementPresent*</tr>

who can help me with the regular expression??

Regex is not very useful for HTML parsing; are those other strings (`//div` etc.) always the same, or can they vary? (I'm sorely tempted to close this as a duplicate: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1732348/regex-match-open-tags-except-xhtml-self-contained-tags ) — Piskvor left the building, Apr 05 '11 at 12:33
I don't think he cares about parsing it... this is a text editor, after all. — BoltClock, Apr 05 '11 at 12:41
@BoltClock: I'm not sure I noticed that in the initial version; it is possible I missed that. — Piskvor left the building, Apr 05 '11 at 12:44

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Apr 05 '11 at 12:39

1

<tr>.*?assertElementPresent.*?</tr>

should be a good start (note the ungreedy matches), however, it's rather brittle.

answered Apr 05 '11 at 12:39

Piskvor left the building

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It should not matter whether they're greedy or ungreedy, but this should work. – BoltClock Apr 05 '11 at 12:41
@BoltClock: Regexes will match greedy by default - so if you're matching across lines, it would match the first ``, then most of the text, then assertElementPresent, then the rest of the text, then the very last ``. Probably not what the OP wanted. – Piskvor left the building Apr 05 '11 at 12:41
it does not work.. because the regexp needs to search over more lines – Daan Apr 05 '11 at 12:45
@Daan: there should be a "multiline" option somewhere; not sure how exactly it's implemented in Notepad++, but most regex-capable tools have it (append `/m` ???). – Piskvor left the building Apr 05 '11 at 12:46
This is where it gets complicated... :) There is no multiline option. As much as I love Notepad++ its regex support is hopeless. – BoltClock Apr 05 '11 at 12:48
@BoltClock: hmm...I was wondering if it had anything near POSIX regex capabilities. – Piskvor left the building Apr 05 '11 at 12:49
@Piskvor: I wouldn't count on it. – BoltClock Apr 05 '11 at 12:50
When it has not changed with the last release, then Notepad++ is not able to handle multiline regex. Regex support only within one row. – stema Apr 05 '11 at 14:24

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Apr 05 '11 at 13:20

1

<tr>(?!.*<tr>.*).*?assertElementPresent.*?</tr>

It has been tested with RAD and RegExr. The previous suggested solution picks the previous row also..

answered Apr 05 '11 at 13:20

Gursel Koca

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NOtepad++ does not support multiline regex and look ahead/behind assertions. – stema Apr 05 '11 at 14:45
Within Notepad++ I don't know a solution for this problem. – stema Apr 05 '11 at 18:56

Delete text block with regexp in notepad++

2 Answers2