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regexnotepad++

Regex to match lines that do NOT have exactly three pipes in a Notepad++ csv

I have a pipe-delimited csv. Each row should have just three pipes to separate the columns. I need to find any lines that do NOT have three pipes - more OR less should match.

I'm learning regex and I came up with this (kind of hacked together finding parts I thought would work...)

^(?:[^|\r\n]*\|){3,}.*$

However, it's just matching all rows, regardless of the number of pipes in the row.

What's the correct syntax for what I want to do?

[UPDATE]

As @anubhava pointed out, I should provide an example.

This is example data in my file:

John Doe|1hgds234|Some comment|
Mary Jane|5df678|This column is the end of this record|Harry Jones|3456|Harry's record should be on the next line|
Sue Anderson|037dsf533|Another comment|

Harry Jones' record should start on a new line, starting at "Harry". Each line ends in a pipe and CRLF.

So I need a find/replace with a regex that would match on that second line and put a CRLF after the third pipe in the second line.

Solution

  • Assuming you don't have escaped | or | inside quoted cell value, uou can match using this regex:

    ^((?:[^|\n]*\|){3})(?![\r\n])

    And replace this with:

    $1\n

    RegEx Demo

    RegEx Details:

    • ^: Start
    • (: Start capture group #1
      • (?:[^|\n]*\|){3}:
    • ): End capture group
    • (?![\r\n]): Negative lookahead to assert that we don't have \r or \n ahead of the current position