Notepad++ regex -> newLine

Question

I use Notepad++ and I need to delete all lines starting with, say "abc".

Attention, I don't need to replace the line starting with "abc" with a empty line, but I need to completely delete these lines.

How do I proceed (using regex, I suppose)?

Answer 1

Try replace

^abc.*(\r?\n)?

with

nothing

The ^ indicates the start of a line.

The . means wild-card.

The .* means zero or more wild-cards.

x? means x is optional.

The \r?\n covers both \r\n (generally Windows) and \n (generally Unix), but must be optional to cover the last line.

Answer 2

Search for this regular expression

^abc.*\r\n

Replace with nothing.

Answer 3

Try the regex \nabc.* in "Find and Replace" --> "Replace"
Leave "Replace With" field empty.

EDIT : This won't work with first like (because '\n' means "new line")

Answer 4

Searching a little bit more on regex in Notepad++ I discovered that the new line character is not \n as I expected (Windows), but the \n\r.

So, my regex replace expression should be:
Find: abc.*\r\n
Replace with: (nothing, empty field)

Answer 5

Press Ctrl+H to bring up the Replace window. Put

^abc.*(\r?\n)?

in the Find what and leave Replace with empty. Select Reqular expression and hit Replace All.

This reqular expression handles all the edge cases:

• When the first line of the file starts with abc
• When the last line of the file starts with abc and there is no new line at the end of the file.