How do I add similar text to the beginning of every line in textpad without doing it one at a time?

I'm not familiar with Textpad - I use Notepad ++ for this type of chore - but check to see if TextPad will support doing a Find/Replace using a Regular Expression pattern, or look to a deditcated piece of RegEx software such as Regex Suite.

You can create your pattern that will key off of the CR/LF found that the end of each line in the document (assuming, of course, there is a CR/LF at the end of each line) to "wrap" that CR/LF with the new code you want.

I'm not a huge RegEx guy but this should work:
Find: \r?\n
Replace with: DesiredEndofLine\r\nDesiredBeginningofLine

I hope this helps...a good site for learning about Regular Expressions is RegularExpressions.Info http://www.regular-expressions.info

Take care,
Ric

Tried that out but it just gave me a an error that said "Cannot find literal string \r?\n". I also tried it with just "\r\n" because I wasnt sure if that question mark was a typo but it had the same response.

I found in textpad you can put a ^ to replace all items at the beginning of the line and then $ for the end, but for some reason if there is an ampersand in the text you are trying to insert, it doesnt get inserted. Example.


search: $
replace with: " &myCrLf

It puts " myCrLf at the end of every line but leaves out the &, any thoughts on this. Fixes?

John,

Try:
search: $
replace with: " !myCrLf

and then go back and try:
search: !
replace with: &

Or, look to see if you can "escape" a character...it might be treating that & symbol as a special character like it's treating the $ and the ^

I hope this helps,
Ric

John,

Or, you could switch over to Notepad which doesn't treat the & as a special character and do the second pass on the replace. I know...a long way to get to where you want to go, but it may be the only way.

Ric

Hey rcastagna,

Your response really helped a lot. It was required to do a second pass, just had to make sure that Regular Expressions was checked on the first pass and then unchecked on the second one.

I finally did a

search: $
replace with: " &myCrLf

WITH the regular expressions activated

and then went back and did a:
search: " myCrLf
replace with: " &myCrLf

with them not activated. Worked like a charm.

WOW this is almost 4 years old post.

Any way, I was looking for the same thing and I got it so let me share it for any future searcher...

You can use notpad2 ( an open source code editor) in the edit menu>Block modify lines

you can add at the beginning and end