Need to replace blocks of vertical text in a bunch of files, how to?

malcolm · Jun 2011

Notepad++ only seems to support search and replace with horizontal strings, I have some blocks of text I need to replace in many files. Anyone got a solution?

malcolm · Jun 2011

Nevermind this program did the trick.

http://www.replsoft.com/

MoP · Jun 2011

You can actually copy/paste multi-line strings in Notepad++'s search and replace fields. Not super-clear, but it works.

pedroluchini · Jun 2011

I don't know if you're aware, but many of these text-editing programs allow vertical selection by holding the Alt key while you select. This allows you to select, copy, and paste colums of characters.

I know this works in Microsoft Visual Studio, SciTE, and Notepad++.

malcolm · Jun 2011

Mop, share your trickery I could not figure out how to do it.

pedroluchini, I'm looking to search and replace a block of text in 100+ files, already know about the alt select trick which is quite handy, but I'm looking for a batch solution in notepad++

Lamont · Jun 2011

Yeah, notepad++ can do multiple files in a directory.

malcolm · Jun 2011

Lamont, the issue isn't search and replace in multiple files that parts easy, how to you replace blocks of vertical text. Notepad++ only seems to be able to replace a single horizontal line at a time.

Lamont · Jun 2011

It can do whole vert blocks of text, but I don't know it it will do multiple files in that style. Just the open file as far as I know.

malcolm · Jun 2011

Holding alt to select a block of text won't do the trick as I need it to work in batch mode. Not an issue anymore since I solved it with that other program.

Taguiera · Dec 2011

I'm using a very old file and am unable to look at it in the original formatting. It's supposed to be a list, but, instead, it returns row after row of data. There are no line breaks where there should be, rather it has replaced all of them with this: \tab. What I'd like to be able to do is replace the \tab with a blank line, as if I'd used the enter key. Any suggestions?

Eric Chadwick · Dec 2011

Look into Regex (regular expressions). Notepad++ supports this in its Replace function, as do many other tools.
http://www.regular-expressions.info/

Need to replace blocks of vertical text in a bunch of files, how to?

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