Append lines one after another in notepad++

Question

How do we achieve the following using replace function in notepad++?

Transforming the following

cow
horse
elephant
camel

into

'cow','horse','elephant','camel'

I know ^ and $ (under Regular Expression) will let me access the beginning and end of the line and therefore I can put the single quotes at the extremes but then how do I append the lines thereafter? Also, I want to do everything (putting quotes and appending) in one go if possible.

Thank you very much for your help.

Answer 1

1. Download the latest version, it includes regular expression fixes.

2. Replace using the regular expression: (.*)[\r\n]* and turn it into '\1',

3. Remove the last ,, it's not possible to do this inside the regular expression in Notepad++.

Answer 2

This solution is not a 100% percent solution, but it gets you most of the way there and is very simple. When I want to do this I use the "Extended" search mode on the replace dialog and use \r\n as the search term. In your case you would replace it with ','. That will get you to

cow','horse','elephant','camel

Now you just need to fix the first and last elements manually.