Advance cursor past any sequence of non-blank characters and following blank, tab, or newlines
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Is there any way to advance the cursor to the next “word” where “word” means any non-blank characters delimited by spaces, tabs, or newlines? The definition of “word” in NotePad treats every punctuation character as a word, which I find mostly unhelpful. For example,
142
is treated as a word but
-142
is treated as two words.
abc
is treated as one word but
“abc”
is treated as 3 words. This definition of a word when using CTRL-rightarrow to advance through the text is no doubt useful in some contexts, but often inhibits defining effective keyboard macros to advance through the blank-separated fields of a table, because where the cursor stops depends on the field contents.I would like to be able to advance through the current sequence of nonblank characters and whatever whitespace follows, and land on the next non-blank character after that. Is this possible? Is there a keyboard shortcut that does that?
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@Russ-Jones found another post about the same subject that seem to have the answer
https://community.notepad-plus-plus.org/topic/24248/ctrl-l-r-arrow-keys-distance-modificationI tried what guy038 proposed and used the characters you gave: - and " ( how do you make the text have the nice red color people use when giving characters? ), and with your examples it does what you want.
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Hello, @russ-jones, @freemeow and All,
I think, @russ-jones, that we can simulate these behaviors that you’re longing for, with macros !
Add in your active
Shortcuts.xml, in the macros node, this section, below :<Macro name="End Previous NON-Blank chars" Ctrl="no" Alt="yes" Shift="no" Key="190"> <Action type="3" message="1700" wParam="0" lParam="0" sParam="" /> <Action type="3" message="1601" wParam="0" lParam="0" sParam="\S+\K(?=\s)" /> <Action type="3" message="1625" wParam="0" lParam="2" sParam="" /> <Action type="3" message="1602" wParam="0" lParam="0" sParam="" /> <Action type="3" message="1702" wParam="0" lParam="256" sParam="" /> <Action type="3" message="1701" wParam="0" lParam="1" sParam="" /> </Macro> <Macro name="End Next NON-Blank chars" Ctrl="no" Alt="yes" Shift="no" Key="191"> <Action type="3" message="1700" wParam="0" lParam="0" sParam="" /> <Action type="3" message="1601" wParam="0" lParam="0" sParam="\S+\K(?=\s)" /> <Action type="3" message="1625" wParam="0" lParam="2" sParam="" /> <Action type="3" message="1602" wParam="0" lParam="0" sParam="" /> <Action type="3" message="1702" wParam="0" lParam="768" sParam="" /> <Action type="3" message="1701" wParam="0" lParam="1" sParam="" /> </Macro>As, you’re probably an American or English person, I chose, on purpose, the shortcuts
Alt + <andAlt + >, near the spacebar key, for these two macros !They move the caret/cursor to the END of the Previous/Next
NON-Blankcharacters. Unfortunately, you’ll always get the additional message^ zero length matchI hope you’ll be happy with this solution !
Best Regards,
guy038
P.S. :
Here are ALL the positions
|where the caret stops within the lastchange.logfile :Notepad++| v8.9.1| regression| fixes,| bug-fixes| &| new| improvements:| 1.| Fix| EOL| duplication| regression| when| playing| back| old| recorded| macros.| 2.| Remedy| search| failure| for| pasted| text| containing| trailing| invisible| EOL| character.| 3.| Fix| customized| context| menu| regression| where| separator| (id="0")| escapes| FolderName| submenu.| 4.| Fix| issue| where| a| single| undo| reverted| multiple| changes| after| macro| execution.| 5.| Fix| visual| glitch| when| dragging| dockable| dialogs| on| a| 2nd| monitor.| 6.| Fix| inconsistent| automatic| search| mode| switching| (RegEx| to| Extended)| in| Find| dialog.| 7.| Fix| incorrect| URL| parsing| caused| by| Unicode| special| spaces.| 8.| Update| to| Boost| 1.90.0.| 9.| Improve| update| themes| feature:| fix| JavaScript.js| edge| case.| 10.| Update| javascript.js| to| better| match| javascript| (embedded)| in| all| themes.| 11.| Function| List:| enhance| for| Perl| &| PHP;| add| for| Nim.| 12.| Fix| comments| and| highlighting| in| TCL.| 13.| Update| perl| keywords| and| autocomplete| for| 5.42.| 14.| Improvement:| display| Find| dialog| status| message| with| invisible| characters| warning.| Get| more| info| on| https://notepad-plus-plus.org/downloads/v8.9.1/| Included| plugins:| 1.| NppExport| v0.4| 2.| Converter| v4.7| 3.| Mime| Tool| v3.1| Updater| (Installer| only):| *| WinGUp| (for| Notepad++)| v5.3.9|IMPORTANT :
You cannot go backward, with the
Alt + <shortcut, if the caret is, presently, at the very beginning of any line , but you still can go forward, with theAlt + >shortcut, then go backward, again, if necessary ! -
@guy038 said in Advance cursor past any sequence of non-blank characters and following blank, tab, or newlines:
Unfortunately, you’ll always get the additional message ^ zero length match
You should be able to immediately dismiss that message by issuing a final keystroke of
ESCat the end of the macro. That works for a macro I recently created, which moves the cursor to the next position following two line breaks (next paragraph, for my purposes). -
Hi, , @russ-jones, @freemeow, @m-andre-z-eckenrode and All,
Ah… many thanks, @m-andre-z-eckenrode for your valuable input ! Thus, @russ-jones, my macros can be improved as below, just adding a final
Esckey stroke :<Macro name="End Previous NON-Blank chars" Ctrl="no" Alt="yes" Shift="no" Key="190"> <Action type="3" message="1700" wParam="0" lParam="0" sParam="" /> <Action type="3" message="1601" wParam="0" lParam="0" sParam="\S+\K(?=\s)" /> <Action type="3" message="1625" wParam="0" lParam="2" sParam="" /> <Action type="3" message="1602" wParam="0" lParam="0" sParam="" /> <Action type="3" message="1702" wParam="0" lParam="256" sParam="" /> <Action type="3" message="1701" wParam="0" lParam="1" sParam="" /> <Action type="0" message="2325" wParam="0" lParam="0" sParam="" /> </Macro> <Macro name="End Next NON-Blank chars" Ctrl="no" Alt="yes" Shift="no" Key="191"> <Action type="3" message="1700" wParam="0" lParam="0" sParam="" /> <Action type="3" message="1601" wParam="0" lParam="0" sParam="\S+\K(?=\s)" /> <Action type="3" message="1625" wParam="0" lParam="2" sParam="" /> <Action type="3" message="1602" wParam="0" lParam="0" sParam="" /> <Action type="3" message="1702" wParam="0" lParam="768" sParam="" /> <Action type="3" message="1701" wParam="0" lParam="1" sParam="" /> <Action type="0" message="2325" wParam="0" lParam="0" sParam="" /> </Macro>BR
guy038
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