Notepad++: Replace find query with words from list

Question

I would like to replace all "var_"

var_
   Hello
var_
   Whats
var_
   Up?
...

with words from this list

alpha
beta
gamma
...

so the end result is

alpha
   Hello
beta
   Whats
gamma
   Up?
...

Would appreciate help on achieving this!

Answer 1

This is sort of impossible / overly complicated with a regex. However, if you combine it with a programming language, you can get it done quickly. E.g. in python it would look like this:

import sys
import re
import fileinput

if len(sys.argv) < 3:
  exit("Usage: " + sys.argv[0] + " <filename> <replacements>")

input_file = sys.argv[1]
replacements = sys.argv[2:]
num_of_replacements = len(replacements)
replacement_index = 0
searcher = re.compile("^var_\\b")

for line in fileinput.input(input_file, inplace=True, backup='.bak'):
  match = searcher.match(line)
  if match is None:
    print(line.rstrip())
  else:
    print(re.sub("^var_\\b", line.rstrip(), replacements[replacement_index]))
    replacement_index = replacement_index + 1

Usage: replacer.py ExampleInput.txt alpha beta gamma

Update

It's possible to modify the program to accept the string you search for as the 1st param:

replacer.py "var_" ExampleInput.txt alpha beta gamma

The modified python script looks like this:

import sys
import re
import fileinput

if len(sys.argv) < 4:
  exit("Usage: " + sys.argv[0] + " <pattern> <filename> <replacements>")

search = "\\b" + sys.argv[1] + "\\b"
input_file = sys.argv[2]
replacements = sys.argv[3:]
num_of_replacements = len(replacements)
replacement_index = 0
searcher = re.compile(search)

for line in fileinput.input(input_file, inplace=True, backup='.bak'):
  match = searcher.match(line)
  if match is None:
    print(line.rstrip())
  else:
    print(re.sub(search, line.rstrip(), replacements[replacement_index]))
    replacement_index = replacement_index + 1

Note: this script still has a few limitations:

• it expects that the string you search for occurs only once each line.
• it replaces the searched string only if it's a distinct word
• you can accidentally incorporate any python regex syntax into the search param