{"id":22596,"date":"2019-04-30T01:00:24","date_gmt":"2019-04-30T00:00:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jurnsearch.wordpress.com\/?p=22596"},"modified":"2019-04-30T01:00:24","modified_gmt":"2019-04-30T00:00:24","slug":"how-to-remove-every-nth-line-in-list","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/jurnsearch\/index.php\/2019\/04\/30\/how-to-remove-every-nth-line-in-list\/","title":{"rendered":"How to remove every nth line in a list"},"content":{"rendered":"

How to remove every nth line in a list. The list is made up of repeating four-line blocks of text.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The situation:<\/strong><\/p>\n

You have a long and mostly cleaned text list that looks like this…<\/p>\n

Random article title
\nRandom author name
\nGibbery wibble<\/em>
\nRandom journal title<\/p>\n

Random article title
\nRandom author name
\nGibbery wibble<\/em>
\nRandom journal title<\/p>\n

Random article title
\nRandom author name
\nGibbery wibble<\/em>
\nRandom journal title<\/p>\n

… and you of course wish to delete all the unwanted Gibbery wibble<\/em> lines. All the Gibbery wibble<\/em> text is different. Indeed, there’s no keyword or repeating element in each four-line data block for a search-replace operation to the grab onto. The only repeating element is the blank line that separates each data block of four lines.<\/p>\n

So far as I can see, after very extensive searching, there’s as yet no way to deal with this in Notepad++, even with plugins and Python scripts.<\/p>\n

The slower solution:<\/strong><\/p>\n

The more flexible but longer solution is Excel. However, the latest version of Notepad++ (not the older, 32-bit version) will let you quickly take the first and vital step. You first delete the blank lines with…<\/p>\n

Edit | Line Operations | Remove Empty Line<\/p>\n

It’s far easier to delete blanks in a long list in Notepad++, rather than wrestling with complex ten-step workflows<\/a> in Excel, just to do such a simple thing.<\/p>\n

Then you copy-paste the list into a new Excel sheet. You then add these two Excel macros<\/a> and run the first. Both run fine in Excel 2007. The first splits the column into chunks of 4 (if you have three lines per block, change all the 4s in the macro to 3s, if six lines then change to 6s, and so on). Each chunk is placed into a new column on the same sheet. <\/p>\n

You can then delete the offending Gibbery wibble<\/em> row, which will run uniformly across the spreadsheet. In this example, it all runs across row 3.<\/p>\n

The second macro is then run and this recombines all the columns back into a long list, and places the recombined list onto a new sheet.<\/p>\n

The free ASAP Utilities<\/a> for Excel can then ‘chunk’ this list back into blocks of four<\/a>, enabling you to add a blank line between each block. Optionally, you can add the HTML tag for a horizontal rule.<\/p>\n

The same core method can be used to re-sort the lines each block, or to add numbering to each line as: | 1. 2. 3. 4. | 1. 2. 3. 4. | These operations are something Notepad++ can’t yet do.<\/p>\n

The quicker solution:<\/strong><\/p>\n

If you need a quicker option, and don’t need to re-sort the lines in each data block in Excel, then try the Windows freeware List Numberer<\/a>. As you can see below, once you’ve used this utility to run a simple operation, then a regex search back in Notepad++ (.*line3.*<\/strong> \u2014 used in Replace | Replace All) will clear all the unwanted lines.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How to remove every nth line in a list. The list is made up of repeating four-line blocks of text. …<\/p>\n

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