How to delete lines with specific character string?

byteshredder · Jan 03, 2020#12020-01-03T00:46+00:00

My users used to have a macro with UltraEdit v16.xx that would delete all the lines from an HTML file contained the string [[. We have migrated to the current version of UE for Mac and this macro doesn't work exactly as written anymore and that's OK as I would like to automate their process a little bit more by using UE script.

I found the delLinesCntgStr.js script that prompts the user for the string they want to find. This script works fine when the user enters \[\[. I tried to hard code the string "\[\[" into the script and comment out the prompting section. When I run my version of the script it fails, telling me I have "entered an invalid regular expression".

How do I hard-code the [[ search string into this script so the user does not have to respond to a pop-up prompt each time they run it?

Mofi · Jan 03, 2020#22020-01-03T11:50+00:00

The common mistake you have made is described in point 2 of second post of JavaScript tutorial, power tips and more at top of the Scripts forum.

Here is a commented UltraEdit script optimized for this task.

Code: Select all

if (UltraEdit.document.length > 0)  // Is any file opened?
{
   // Define environment for this script.
   UltraEdit.insertMode();
   if (typeof(UltraEdit.columnModeOff) == "function") UltraEdit.columnModeOff();
   else if (typeof(UltraEdit.activeDocument.columnModeOff) == "function") UltraEdit.activeDocument.columnModeOff();

   // Move caret to top of the active file.
   UltraEdit.activeDocument.top();

   // Define the parameters for a case-sensitive Perl regular
   // expression replace all to delete all lines containing [[.
   UltraEdit.perlReOn();
   UltraEdit.activeDocument.findReplace.mode=0;
   UltraEdit.activeDocument.findReplace.matchCase=true;
   UltraEdit.activeDocument.findReplace.matchWord=false;
   UltraEdit.activeDocument.findReplace.regExp=true;
   UltraEdit.activeDocument.findReplace.searchDown=true;
   UltraEdit.activeDocument.findReplace.searchInColumn=false;
   UltraEdit.activeDocument.findReplace.preserveCase=false;
   UltraEdit.activeDocument.findReplace.replaceAll=true;
   UltraEdit.activeDocument.findReplace.replaceInAllOpen=false;

   // [ has a special meaning in a Perl regular expression (begin of a
   // character class). For that reason the opening square bracket must
   // be escaped with a backslash to be interpreted as literal character
   // by the Perl regular expression engine of UltraEdit. The backslash
   // character is also the escape character in a JavaScript string. For
   // that reason it is necessary to escape both backslashes with one more
   // backslash to really pass the regular expression string with \[\[ from
   // JavaScript core engine to UltraEdit's Perl regular expression engine.
   // The non-marking (non-capturing) group at end selects either a carriage
   // return + line-feed pair (DOS/Windows line termination) or just a
   // line-feed (Unix line termination) or just carriage return (old Mac
   // line termination) or results in selecting till end of file if the
   // last line of a file does not have a line termination, but contains [[.
   UltraEdit.activeDocument.findReplace.replace("^.*\\[\\[.*(?:\\r?\\n|\\r|$)","");
}

This script is much more efficient (much faster, only one undo step recorded) than user-contributed script delLinesCntgStr.js.