Need assistance with Notepad++ to remove the last column from a huge ascii file

Question

Good day.

I need to delete the last column from a huge file. The last column could be a a word, digit, symbol or sentence in quotes. I've tried (\w+).$ and (\w+)?.$ and several others which will remove single words or digits but not those linked by underscore words containing special characters ie: ,.+_- etc. Because the parameters are of varied length, I can't use Shift-Alt to block mark and edit the file.

Original contents:

parm1 parm2 parameter_with_different_length false
parm1 parm2 parameter_with_different_length 0
parm1 parm2 parameter_with_different_length 1
parm1 parm2 parameter_with_different_length off
parm1 parm2 parameter_with_different_length "INVITE MESSAGE"
parm1 parm2 parameter_with_different_length ""
parm1 parm2 parameter_with_different_length /tmp/audit/out
parm1 parm2 parameter_with_different_length +12345@mysite.com
parm1 parm2 parameter_with_different_length hss_ctr
parm1 parm2 parameter_with_different_length +g.poc.groupad
parm1 parm2 parameter_with_different_length S1AP-MISC
parm1 parm2 parameter_with_different_length 3002,3004,3007,4002

Expecting:

parm1 parm2 parameter_with_different_length
parm1 parm2 parameter_with_different_length
parm1 parm2 parameter_with_different_length
parm1 parm2 parameter_with_different_length
parm1 parm2 parameter_with_different_length
parm1 parm2 parameter_with_different_length
parm1 parm2 parameter_with_different_length
parm1 parm2 parameter_with_different_length
parm1 parm2 parameter_with_different_length
parm1 parm2 parameter_with_different_length
parm1 parm2 parameter_with_different_length
parm1 parm2 parameter_with_different_length

Please advise.

Regards, Bjoern

Answer 1

• Ctrl+H
• Find what: \h(?:"[^"\r\n]+"|\S+)$
• Replace with: LEAVE EMPTY
• TICK Wrap around
• SELECT Regular expression
• Replace all

Explanation:

\h              # horizontal space
(?:             # non capture group
"               # a double quote
[^"\r\n]+       # 1 or more any character that is not a quote or linebreak
"               # a double quote
|               # OR
\S+             # 1 or more any non space character
)               # end group
$               # end of line

Screenshot (before):

Screenshot (after):