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regexnotepad++

Delete all lines starting with # or ; in Notepad++

Using Notepad++, how do I remove all lines starting with # or ;?

Solution

  • Find:

    ^[#;].*

    Replace with nothing. The ^ indicates the start of a line, the [#;] is a character class to match either # or ;, and .* matches anything else in the line.

    In versions of Notepad++ before 6.0, you won't be able to actually remove the lines due to a limitation in its regex engine; the replacement results in blank lines for each line matched. In other words, this:

    # foo
; bar
statement;

    Will turn into:

    

statement;

    However, the replacement will work in Notepad++ 6.0 if you add \r, \n or \r\n to the end of the pattern, depending on which line ending your file is using, resulting in:

    statement;