Multicriteria search with Notepad

Hello,

As mentioned above, creating an updated version of the file with a spreadsheet (Excel, ...) would be easy.

However, if Notepad doesn't refer to Windows' notepad but to the Notepad++ editor, we can get the job done with regular expressions.

Not in a single command, because while the EXCEPT function allows you to target a line, you can only replace it entirely, not retrieve elements (*).

Thus, with the replace function in Notepad++ (regular expression option checked),

^(CAR,)((?!BLUE).)*$

identifies car lines EXCEPT blue and allows us to replace the line with

AUTO,GREY

but does not allow us to retrieve the original information.

We can then proceed in steps:
- CAR BLUE becomes #AR BLUE
replace

^(CAR,)(.*?,)(BLUE,)(.*?,)(.*)

with

#AR,\2\3\4\5

.
- CAR XXX becomes AUTO GREY
replace

^(CAR,)(.*?,)(.*?,)(.*?,)(.*)

with

AUTO,\2GREY,\4\5

.
- #AR BLUE becomes CAR BLUE again
replace

^#AR

with

CAR

.

Best regards
(*) if anyone has a solution ....

Hello
Unfortunately, Notepad ("notepad.exe") is just a text editor with a rather rudimentary Find/Replace function.
Your request for "conditional" searching is more in the realm of a spreadsheet, provided you have some familiarity with it. Commas could easily be interpreted as column separators.
See you later
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Let him who has never opened a user manual throw the first mouse at me.

Hello everyone,

@jeepee, your solution uses combined commands capable of performing all sorting and filtering, but it "forces" you to master the syntax.

Since you're inviting us to do so, I propose to retrieve the text file in the Base software from the LibreOffice suite.

By using the functions of this database, I think we can achieve the same result by filling out a simple query, or even chaining them together using the Basic programming language.

What do you think?

Best regards