WildEdit Newbie Find expression

[PaulChad]

Hi all,
I'm new to WildEdit and need a bit of help.
I need an expression that will remove all the blank lines in a file and also for each blank line remove the next two lines which may or may not contain text.

Thanks,
Paul.

[Bob Hansen]

Search for ^\n.*\n.*\n

Replace with nothing

POSIX with Regular Expression checked

[MudGuard]

Careful!

Whether this works as assumed depends on the setting for

'.' does not match a newline character

If that option is switched off, it will match not only two lines, but ALL lines after the blank line

[Bob Hansen]

Thanks for that caution MudGuard.

I was responding with TextPad, forgot it was the WildEdit forum. Only tested in TextPad, not in my copy of WildEdit.

Many more options to define, tough to assume default values in WildEdit.

[PaulChad]

Thanks for the help, it gave me enough to go on, in the end I used:
^\r\n.*\r\n.*\r\n

[PaulChad]

The first expression has worked a treat, but I also need to remove the first line from each file is this possible?

Thanks,
Paul.

[ben_josephs]

Hmm.

\A or \` should match the beginning of the document. These are not in the WildEdit documentation, but you'll find them in the documentation for the regex library it uses at http://www.boost.org/libs/regex/doc/syntax.html.

However, they seem to match the beginning of any line. I think this is a bug (but I don't know what in).

If they behaved as expected, then \A.*\r\n (with option '.' does not match a newline character ticked) should match only the first line. As it is, it matches any line.

Helios...?