11

So this is my situation: I have a lot of lines like this:

line1
     line2
              line3
     line4

And they all start with different spaces. What I want to do is merge all the lines in the document into one, but separate each one with some character, something like this:

line1 | line2 | line3 | line4

How can I do this?

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4 Answers 4

Reset to default
27

No regex required in this case.

  1. Edit > Blank Operations > Trim leading Space.

  2. Replace All "\r\n" with " | " (make sure Extended Search Mode is selected):

    1

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8
  • Awesome works perfect. Can I ask you if can do this operation but only with the bookmarked lines? Of course just the step 2. I see i can select them and then use the "In selection" checbox but I use the bookmark function to bookmark all lines that contains a certain word
    – Hyperion
    May 17, 2015 at 20:24
  • Don't think that's possible directly, but you can use Search > Bookmark > Cut bookmarked lines, paste in a temporary file, do the above and cut-paste back.
    – Karan
    May 17, 2015 at 20:28
  • Uhm seems not working with a macro, at least when copy back step.
    – Hyperion
    May 17, 2015 at 20:43
  • What does not work precisely? And what does "when copy back step" mean?
    – Karan
    May 17, 2015 at 20:46
  • When I do the operation in the document 2 all goes fine, but when I try to cut the new line (witch is in document 2 and cointains all the merged lines), he doesn't record the "past this line in document 1".
    – Hyperion
    May 17, 2015 at 20:57
1

As @Karan answers regex it's not necessary to solve your question, anywise you can use it to do it in one step and to avoid errors with different UNIX/Windows end lines (\n or \r\n).

To do so you can use the Replace All "\s*(.+)\s+" with "$1 | " with Regular Expression mode selected:

enter image description here

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1

Actually, a much simpler way is to go to Edit/Line Operations/Join Lines. It's a built-in function that works in one easy click.

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2
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    – Community Bot
    May 3, 2023 at 11:54
  • This will not remove extra spaces.
    – Toto
    May 3, 2023 at 12:54
0

This is how I do it very easily. Let's say I want to merge all my lines but separate them with a semi colon.

Remove any headers Select from end of first line (hold shift key) to beginning of second line

Then Control H

This will bring up your Replace dialog box where the "Find what:" will be blank, and the "Replace with:" enter your separator like the semi colon ;

Then Replace All

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