Notepad++ find string with a new-line and replace

Question

[Notepad++ Question]

How do I use find-and-replace to replace the attribute of a series of tags using expression?

Case scenario:

Let's say I have a couple of lines of something like this:

<li><a title="Bla bla" href=
    "http://www.url.com/etc">Text</a></li>

And I want to replace them with this:

<li><a title="Bla bla" href="">Text</a></li>

Note the new line and double tabs on the original.

Solution 1

Speaking specifically about the newline and double-tabs, using the Extended Searched Mode find:

\r\n\t\t

and replace with:

(blank, nothing, empty string)

And assuming you are wanting to remove the URL from the href, leaving a blank reference, you'll want to use the Regular expression Search Mode to find:

href=\"(insert-http-url-regex-here)\"

and replace with:

href=\"\"

Solution 2

AFAIK you can't use regular expression-replace over multiple lines (in Notepad++) so you have to make them one-liners first. Here is how to do that using a macro:

1. Hit CTRL+F and enter href= then hit Enter and Escape
2. Start recording a macro (CTRL+SHIFT+R)
3. Press Delete 3 times (once for linebreak, twice for tabs)
4. Finish recording the macro (CTRL+SHIFT+R again)
5. Hit F3 to search the next href= occurence.
6. Execute macro (CTRL+SHIFT+P)
7. Continue with Step 5 until all occurences are replaced.

Note: If all your href= appearences are the same, you can also put the search into the macro (i.e. switch steps 1 and 2) and execute the macro until everything is on one line.

Now you can do a search & replace with regular expressions (CTRL+H):
Search for: href=".*">
Replace with: href="">

Comments

[Doltknuckle]

for some reason, notepad++ uses the SciTE implementation of regular expression which is a line by line search pattern. That's why this is a two step process, you can't use regular expression in Notepad++ to find line breaks. You might want to check out Textpad if you are going to be doing this kind of work all of the time.

[JMD]

Sure, but as I detailed in my answer you CAN find line breaks using Extended search mode. Is it a problem to run two steps? And while I did use and promote Textpad for years, I switched, and the asker asked specifically about Notepad++.