Find lines not starting with " in Notepad++
RegexNotepad++Regex Problem Overview
I try to verify a CSV file where we had problems with line breaks.
I want to find all lines not starting with a ".
I am trying with /!^"/gim but the ! negation is not working.
How can I negate /^"/gim properly?
Regex Solutions
Solution 1 - Regex
In regex, the ! does not mean negation; instead, you want to negate a character set with [^"]. The brackets, [], denote a character set and if it starts with a ^ that means "not this character set".
So, if you wanted to match things that are not double-quotes, you would use [^"]; if you don't want to match any quotes, you could use [^"'], etc.
With Notepad++, you should be able to search with the following to find lines that don't start with the " character:
^[^"]
If you want to highlight the full line, use:
^[^"].*
Solution 2 - Regex
In Notepad++ you can use the very usefull negative lookahead
In your case you can try the following:
^(?!")
If you want to match wholes lines add .+ or .{1,7} or anything e.g.:
^(?!").*
will also match empty lines.
Explanation part
^ line start
(?!regexp) negative lookahead part: this means that if the regexp match, the result will not be shown
Solution 3 - Regex
Step 1 - Match lines. Find dialog > Mark tab, you can bookmark lines that match.
Step 2 - Remove lines bookmarked OR Remove lines not bookmarked. Search > Bookmark > Remove Unmarked Lines or Remove Bookmarked lines