In Notepad++, how do I split long lines in specific amount of rows?

Question

I'm looking for something similar to this question. However, I'd like to chose the amount of columns and export it as table.

My input is a .txt file with a single line and many numbers separated by a variable amount of spaces.

32 45 2.65   -845     1 -84    97.236        454   35.78 77.12    948.87       
         151    -23.5         -787.48     13.005   31

I know every x numbers (being x a fix amount in every file) there should be a break. For instance the first 4 numbers in 4 columns the first row, next 4 the second row and so on.

+-------+---------+--------+------+
| col1  |  col2   |  col3  | col4 |
+-------+---------+--------+------+
| 32    | 45      | 2.65   | -845 |
| 1     | -84     | 97.236 |  454 |
| 35.78 | 77.12   | 948.87 |  151 |
| -23.5 | -787.48 | 13.005 |   31 |
+-------+---------+--------+------+

Actually the objective is to create a .csv file with the right amount of columns. Is it possible to do this in Notepad ++?

Answer 1

• Ctrl+H
• Find what: (?:\A|\G)(\S+)\s+(\S+)\s+(\S+)\s+(\S+)\s+
• Replace with: $1,$2,$3,$4\n
• CHECK Wrap around
• CHECK Regular expression
• UNCHECK . matches newline
• Replace all

Explanation:

(?:             # non capture group
   \A           # beginning of file
 |              # OR
   \G           # Restart from lastmatch position
)               # end group
(\S+)           # group 1, 1 or more non spaces
\s+             # 1 or more spaces
(\S+)           # group 2, 1 or more non spaces
\s+             # 1 or more spaces
(\S+)           # group 3, 1 or more non spaces
\s+             # 1 or more spaces
(\S+)           # group 4, 1 or more non spaces
\s+             # 1 or more spaces

Replacement:

$1,$2,$3,$4     # content of the 4 gcapture groups, comma separated, you can use any kind of separator
\n              # line feed, use \r\n for windows end of line

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