How to delete several lines containing only whitespaces in nano? - bash

I have been using nano to write a bash script and I am at several times indenting various lines at once with Alt + }. The problem is that the following occurs:
Several lines without text in them get white-spaces by the amount that I indent the text and they are coloured green. They don't affect the program but they make it look bad. I have been deleting them one by one but it gets frustrating over time. Is there a way to get rid of all the white-spaces at once? maybe some way to select the text (short cut for selecting text in nano is Alt + a) and have a short cut do it?

Use global search and replace with the expression ^\s+$.
Switch to search and replace mode with C-\.
Switch to regex mode with Alt-R.
Type the expression ^\s+$.
Hit Enter to replace with an empty string.
On the match, hit A for All.

Related

How can I refactor an existing source code file to normalize all use of tab?

Sometimes I find myself editing a C source file which sees both use of tab as four spaces, and regular tab.
Is there any tool that attempts to parse the file and "normalize" this, i.e. convert all occurrences of four spaces to regular tab, or all occurrences of tab to four spaces, to keep it consistent?
I assume something like this can be done even with just a simple vim one-liner?
There's :retab and :retab! which can help, but there are caveats.
It's easier if you're using spaces for indentation, then just set 'expandtab' and execute :retab, then all your tabs will be converted to spaces at the appropriate tab stops (which default to 8.) That's easy and there are no traps in this method!
If you want to use 4 space indentation, then keep 'expandtab' enabled and set 'softtabstop' to 4. (Avoid modifying the 'tabstop' option, it should always stay at 8.)
If you want to do the inverse and convert to tabs instead, you could set 'noexpandtab' and then use :retab! (which will also look at sequences of spaces and try to convert them back to tabs.) The main problem with this approach is that it won't just consider indentation for conversion, but also sequences of spaces in the middle of lines, which can cause the operation to affect strings inside your code, which would be highly undesirable.
Perhaps a better approach for replacing spaces with tabs for indentation is to use the following substitute command:
:%s#^\s\+#\=repeat("\t", indent('.') / &tabstop).repeat(" ", indent('.') % &tabstop)#
Yeah it's a mouthful... It's matching whitespace at the beginning of the lines, then using the indent() function to find the total indentation (that function calculates indentation taking tab stops in consideration), then dividing that by the 'tabstop' to decide how many tabs and how many spaces a specific line needs.
If this command works for you, you might want to consider adding a mapping or :command for it, to keep it handy. For example:
command! -range=% Retab <line1>,<line2>s#^\s\+#\=repeat("\t", indent('.') / &tabstop).repeat(" ", indent('.') % &tabstop)
This also allows you to "Retab" a range of the file, including one you select with a visual selection.
Finally, one last alternative to :retab is that to ask Vim to "reformat" your code completely, using the = command, which will use the current 'indentexpr' or other indentation configurations such as 'cindent' to completely reindent the block. That typically respects your 'noexpandtab' and 'smarttabstop' options, so it use tabs and spaces for indentation consistently. The downside of this approach is that it will completely reformat your code, including changing indentation in places. The upside is that it typically has a semantic understanding of the language and will be able to take that in consideration when reindenting the code block.

No current text sorting works for numbers

In the DOS-era, text sorting when it comes to numbers use to work normally. ASCII order was correctly taken into account by any editor. Example: the list 100,1,20,3,10,2 would of been arranged in the correct order: 1,2,3,10,20,100. Now-days any text editor seems to disregard numbers (and special characters), resulting in something like: 1,10,100,2,20,3, which is practically a mess. This is also valid for other characters.
How can I make a correct sorting now-days ?
Note: I'm trying to use this to put many IP addresses in order.
What sort or any editor does:
103.207.39.0
124.248.228.0
125.75.132.0
13.107.6.0
136.243.202.0
139.217.27.0
14.139.200.0
14.53.187.0
144.76.109.0
148.251.204.0
This is the desired output:
13.107.6.0
14.53.187.0
14.139.200.0
103.207.39.0
124.248.228.0
125.75.132.0
136.243.202.0
139.217.27.0
144.76.109.0
148.251.204.0
Open your file of IP addresses in Notepad++. Do a regex Find-and-Replace:
Find what: (?:^|(?<=\.))\d(\d)?(?=\.|$)
Replace with: \x20(?1:\x20)$0
Make sure the search mode is "Regular expression" and click Replace All.
Now sort the lines using Edit > Line Operations > Sort lines Lexicographically Ascending
Now do another regex Find-and-Replace in order to get rid of the spaces:
Find what: \x20
Replace with nothing: make sure the search mode is "Regular expression" and click Replace All.
source: https://notepad-plus-plus.org/community/topic/14354/can-i-sort-ip-addresses-in-numeric-value

Is there a way to delete all comments in a file using Notepad++?

Notepad++ obviously recognizes all comments as such. Is there a way to simply delete all?
Edit: Stat-R's bookmark method has helped greatly, not only for removing comments but for conditionally removing lines in general.
For a general file, first of all you need to know the comment operator of the language you are writing the file in. For example, in java script the comment operator is //.
For the following code...
In NP++, you need to
Mark the lines that contains '//'. Make sure the bookmark option is enabled.
Then, choose from NP++ menu Search>Bookmark>Remove Bookmarked lines
EDIT:
Another solution after #Chris Mirno 's suggestion is as follows:
Use regular expression. See the image below. It is self explanatory
To understand it better, refer to these
In the Find & Replace Dialog, put the following regex and adjust the search options as depicted.
/\*.*?\*/
Replace with: (empty)
Select Mode: Regular Expression AND .(dot) matches newline
This should remove all your C style comments spanned across lines.
Star-R and Chris Mirno Answer are also Correct and Good.
But For Line Comment:
//.*?(?=\r?$)
Explanation:
// will be the Starting Position
.*? Will be any character
(?=\r?$) will search to the end of the line (as it is required in line comment)
Note:
But Still check each of the line because for example if your code contains soap format like
//www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance\x2......");
it will capture this line because the starting is // and it goes to end of the line so watch out for this :)
Warning to all using Stat-R's solution:
This method will remove lines of code if formatted like this:
echo "hello"; //This comment will be detected
Following his method, the entire line will be removed.
Therefore make sure to go through and make these comments, their own line before doing this method.
I have had some luck running a macro for the above. Basically:
search for // (F3)
select to end of line (shift+end)
delete (delete)
Put // into the search dialog by just searching for it once. Then record the three steps in a macro, then play it back until EOF.
The first time I did it I had a problem, but then it worked, not sure what I did differently.
Anton Largiader's answer was the most reliable one, including complex inline comments.
However, it will leave many empty lines, including ones with empty characters (space, tabs...) so I would just add another step to make it almost perfect:
After running the macro, just do:
Edit > Line Operations > Remove Empty Lines
OR
Edit > Line Operations > Remove Empty Lines (Containing Blank Characters)
1st option is good if you wish to remove only really empty lines
2nd options will remove every empty line even containing space etc. so there will be no more actual spacing left between code blocks. 1st option might be the safest with some manual cleanup afterwards.
As someone suggested in another post, the simplest and most reliable is maybe to export the all text in .RTF format using Menu Plugin-->NppExport-->Export to RTF and then:
-Open the newly created file in Word
-Select any part of any comment
-On the top-right side of Word clic Select--> Select all texts with similar formatting
-Remove the selected comments all at once (del or cut if doesn't work)
To remove Powershell comments if someone find it handy:
Removing Comment in a Powershell using Notepad ++
To find just lines beginning with # (and not with # elsewhere in the line).
Notepad++ SEARCH Menu > Find
‘Mark‘ Tab – fill in as below.
Select ‘Mark All’ (clear all marks if used previously).
Regex ^[#}
enter image description here
SEARCH Menu > bookmark > Remove (or do anything on the list with
them)
Clear all marks to reset
You can select no comments just code by doing the following:
Regex ^[^#}
enter image description here
Enter ctrl+shift+K to remove comment

Block Indent Regex

I'm having problems about a regexp.
I'm trying to implement a regex to select just the tab indent blocks, but i cant find a way of make it work:
Example:
INDENT(1)
INDENT(2)
CONTENT(a)
CONTENT(b)
INDENT(3)
CONTENT(c)
So I need blocks like:
INDENT(2)
CONTENT(a)
CONTENT(b)
AND
INDENT(3)
CONTENT(c)
How I can do this?
really tks, its almost that, here is my original need:
table
tr
td
"joao"
"joao"
td
"marcos"
I need separated "td" blocks, could i adapt your example to that?
It depends on exactly what you are trying to do, but maybe something like this:
^(\t+)(\S.*)\n(?:\1\t.*\n)*
Working example: http://www.rubular.com/r/qj3WSWK9JR
The pattern searches for:
^(\t+)(\S.*)\n - a line that begins with a tab (I've also captured the first line in a group, just to see the effect), followed by
(?:\1\t.*\n)* - lines with more tabs.
Similarly, you can use ^( +)(\S.*)\n(?:\1 .*\n)* for spaces (example). Mixing spaces and tabs may be a little problematic though.
For the updated question, consider using ^(\t{2,})(\S.*)\n(?:\1\t.*\n)*, for at least 2 tabs at the beginning of the line.
You could use the following regex to get the groups...
[^\s]*.*\r\n(?:\s+.*\r*\n*)*
this requires that your lines not begin with white space for the beginning of the blocks.

Inserting characters before whatever is on a line, for many lines

I have been looking at regular expressions to try and do this, but the most I can do is find the start of a line with ^, but not replace it.
I can then find the first characters on a line to replace, but can not do it in such a way with keeping it intact.
Unfortunately I don´t have access to a tool like cut since I am on a windows machine...so is there any way to do what I want with just regexp?
Use notepad++. It offers a way to record an sequence of actions which then can be repeated for all lines in the file.
Did you try replacing the regular expression ^ with the text you want to put at the start of each line? Also you should use the multiline option (also called m in some regex dialects) if you want ^ to match the start of every line in your input rather than just the first.
string s = "test test\ntest2 test2";
s = Regex.Replace(s, "^", "foo", RegexOptions.Multiline);
Console.WriteLine(s);
Result:
footest test
footest2 test2
I used to program on the mainframe and got used to SPF panels. I was thrilled to find a Windows version of the same editor at Command Technology. Makes problems like this drop-dead simple. You can use expressions to exclude or include lines, then apply transforms on just the excluded or included lines and do so inside of column boundaries. You can even take the contents of one set of lines and overlay the contents of another set of lines entirely or within column boundaries which makes it very easy to generate mass assignments of values to variables and similar tasks. I use Notepad++ for most stuff but keep a copy of SPFSE around for special-purpose editing like this. It's not cheap but once you figure out how to use it, it pays for itself in time saved.

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