Question

Regular Expression - Replace in Textpad

Asked by: drgdrg

I have a massive text file I need to import into SQL.   Unfortunately, it is broken up one field per line, with a double line break between records.  It looks like the code below.

I don't know how to import this into SQL directly, but I'm hoping to clean it up in TextPad a bit ...

I'd like to get it down to one real "row" per line, with a pipe delineating the lines, and a tab delineating the columns.  I need the regex expression to basically find instances where there are characters followed by a new line (I've tried:   [A-Z0-9._%+-,;][\n] ) and replace it with that same text followed by a tab  (I've tried:  \0\t)

Thanks

field 1:                apple
field 2:                pear
field 3:                whatever
 
field 1:                this
field 2:                that
field 3:                the other
 
field 1:                apple
field 2:                pear
field 3:                whatever
 
MY GOAL:
 
field 1:                apple                field 2:                pear                field 3:                whatever
field 1:                this                  field 2:                that                  field 3:                the other
field 1:                apple               field 2:                pear                field 3:                whatever
 
... I can't represent it well here, but there is a tab before "field 2:" and before "field 3:"

                                  
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Asked On
2009-06-05 at 12:41:38ID24468091
Tags

Regular Expression Regex Textpad

Topics

Miscellaneous Programming

,

Regular Expressions

Participating Experts
3
Points
500
Comments
5

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Answers

 

by: mrjoltcolaPosted on 2009-06-05 at 12:47:37ID: 24559614

Can you clarify if "field 1:" etc. is part of the data, or is the data like:

apple
pear
whatever

this
that
the other

 

by: amit_gPosted on 2009-06-05 at 13:25:30ID: 24559897

Three steps...

Find:\n\n
Replace:__NEWLINE__

Find:\n
Replace:\t

Find:__NEWLINE__
Replace:\n

 

by: drgdrgPosted on 2009-06-05 at 14:36:24ID: 24560317

Thanks ... I had tried something extremely similar ... unfortunately, on the:

Find:\n
Replace:\t

TextPad keeps hanging up & crashing (didn't think it was possible ... TextPad is an animal).

Was hoping for the one regex & one pass, maybe it would work better.

Thanks

 

by: amit_gPosted on 2009-06-05 at 15:03:25ID: 24560507

If it is crashing in Find:\n Replace:\t then the file is too big for textpad to handle. You can test it in a smaller sample just o ensure that you are selecting proper options.

Have you tried loading this file as is in SQL? What version of SQL server are you using? You may be able to use \n as column delimiter and \n\n as row delimiter. It should work in SQL 2005 onwards.

 

by: kaufmedPosted on 2009-06-05 at 18:23:53ID: 24561133

I've got the following RegEx; the only thing is you would need to add two blank lines at the end of your file. After replacing, there will be one blank line at the end of the file which you may want to remove.

Find:
 
    (.*)\n(.*)\n(.*)\n\n
 
Replace:
 
    \1     \2     \3\n

                                              
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