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I am trying to reposition every line in a .txt file in the following way below. However I have no idea on how to go about it. Is this possible with Notepad++?
From
apple|apple123@aol.com|orange
celery|celery@aol.com|cabbage
sandwich|sandwich@aol.com|turkey
To
apple|orange|apple123@aol.com
celery|cabbage|celery@aol.com
sandwich|turkey|sandwich@aol.com
Yes this is possible within vanilla Notepad++, though as noted there are also plugins that will do it. A better (more robust) approach might be to use some command-line text-processing tools, but if you need a quick-and-dirty solution you can find that below:
Assuming your exact input (col1|col2|col3, pipe delimeter, no pipe in col2):
Find: (.*?)\|(.*?)\|(.*)
Replace: \1|\3|\2
works for me here in Notepad++, built Jan 2015. Somewhat brutish, but it works.
.* - matches any character (except newline), between zero and unlimited times
.*? - matches any character (except newline) as above, in a non-greedy manner (ie match as little as possible)
(.*) - plain brackets denote capturing group of above (to use in Replace as eg \1, \2, \3 etc )
\| - \ escapes pipe (|) to match it literally
\1|\3|\2 - print 1st matching group, pipe, third matching group, pipe, second matching group
.* non-greedy, I.e. .*? to avoid a lot of backtracking?
Aug 3, 2015 at 5:25
? character seems silly.
Aug 3, 2015 at 12:48