^((?!not here).)*$

Sometimes I find myself repeating the same set of Search/Replace operations in order to format text. If I’m going to do this more than a couple of times, I record a script using PyPN to make things easier for myself. Today I was turning text like this:

    LogStep("Do something");
    MyClass.DoReallyCleverStuff();
    MyClass.VerifySomethingAwesome();

    LogStep("Do another thing");
    MyClass.DoSomethingLessClever();
    MyClass.VerifySomethingBad();

Into text like this:


Do something
Do another thing


There are many ways to do something like this, and I could have written a PyPN script by hand to do it. However, combining Regular Expressions and Script Recording means I can do this without a lot of manual code effort. Here’s what I did:

1. Tools > Record Script
2. Replace All: ^((?!LogStep).)*$ with (nothing)
3. Replace All: (\r\n){2,} with \r\n
4. Replace All: \s*LogStep\("([^"]+)"\); with \1
5. Tools > Stop Recording

At the end of this Programmer’s Notepad added a script to the Scripts window (Recorded\New Script) and placed the code for that script in a new editor window. Because I wanted to keep the script for future use, I changed it’s name and saved it to C:\Program Files\Programmer’s Notepad\Scripts. Here’s the script (which I reduced slightly for posting here):

import pn, scintilla

@script("Clean Up Log Steps", "Testing")
def CleanUpLogSteps():
	doc = pn.CurrentDoc()
	sci = scintilla.Scintilla(doc)
	opt = pn.GetUserSearchOptions()
	opt.FindText = u'^((?!LogStep).)*$'
	opt.MatchWholeWord = False
	opt.MatchCase = False
	opt.UseRegExp = True
	opt.SearchBackwards = False
	opt.LoopOK = True
	opt.UseSlashes = False
	opt.ReplaceText = u''
	opt.ReplaceInSelection = False
	doc.ReplaceAll(opt)
	# When recording, the result of this operation was: pn.FindNextResult(37)

	opt.FindText = u'(\\r\\n\\r\\n){2,}'
	opt.ReplaceText = u'\\r\\n'
	doc.ReplaceAll(opt)
	# When recording, the result of this operation was: pn.FindNextResult(16)

	opt.FindText = u'\\s*LogStep\\("([^"]+)"\\);'
	opt.ReplaceText = u'\\1'
	doc.ReplaceAll(opt)
	# When recording, the result of this operation was: pn.FindNextResult(10)

If I was going to use this script a lot, I could bind it to a shortcut key in Tools > Options > Keyboard.

Download:
PyPN 0.12 for Python 2.6

As of this release, I have dropped support for Python 2.4 and 2.5, as there seems to be little benefit in maintaining multiple versions especially as these releases are so old. I am considering trying to bundle a specific version of Python with future releases, to avoid the need for separate installs.

Once you have installed PyPN 0.12, you can now use Python code in your Text Clips by enclosing it in backticks, e.g.


`print "Hello from PyPN"`


Anything you print to stdout will be included in the clip text.

Zen Coding is a system for writing HTML and CSS in text editors, expanding shorthand notation to full code.

I hadn’t used Zen myself, but a quick read of the excellent Smashing Magazine Introduction and a watch of the above video and I was intrigued.

Zen itself is an editor-agnostic set of scripts available in both Javascript and Python. That’s right, Python!

As testament to the good design of Zen, it was a piece of cake to integrate it with PyPN, allowing you to drop Zen for PyPN into your scripts directory and start taking advantage of this useful shorthand.

If you use PN 2.1.4 or later, you can start using Zen yourself right now:

1. Download Zen Coding for PyPN Preview
2. Extract the contents of the zip into your Programmer’s Notepad\Scripts directory
3. Start PN
4. Optionally bind the Expand Abbreviation script to a keyboard shortcut

Future enhancements to this implementation (and PN 2.1.5) will bring tab stops so that you can tab through the generated code, and probably other Zen Coding commands. For now, let me know what you think!

Download 2.1.1.2047 Installer
Download 2.1.1.2047 Portable

In case you haven’t been keeping up with the various announced changes, 2.1 has these headline features:

1. Full Unicode Support
2. Support for Translations – PN in your language
3. Prototype Command Bar feature (with PyPN)
4. Multiple simultaneous selections, including typing into block selections
5. Virtual space

There are also a lot of bug fixes, smaller improvements and extensions interface improvements. This release of 2.1 is close to what I want to release as the new stable build as soon as it’s proven at least as stable as 2.0.10.

The handling for the commands is entirely implemented in PyPN, and it’s designed so it’s easy for you to extend and test your extensions immediately. Just edit commands.py and run it as a script and the command handling is updated.

The look and feel will obviously be worked on over time, but this version will be in the forthcoming testing release and can be enabled from the options if you have PyPN installed. This quick video doesn’t show you all of the features already supported (skipping search and some other combination commands) but gives you a feel for what can be done.

Scriptshare in Google Chrome

There are a bunch of scripts already there, and hopefully you will add yours too! We’re working on getting this moved over to pnotepad.org eventually.

My thanks to James for putting this effort in and creating such a useful site in such short time!

Downloads

• PyPN 0.10.973 for Python 2.6
• PyPN 0.10.973 for Python 2.5
• PyPN 0.10.973 for Python 2.4

Downloads

• 0.9.962 Installer
• 0.9.962 Portable

There is also a new PyPN release fixing a couple of issues with the included scripts from the last build:

• PyPN 0.13.962 for Python 2.6
• PyPN 0.13.962 for Python 2.5
• PyPN 0.13.962 for Python 2.4

Thanks to all the users who have put time and effort into reporting and following up on bugs, testing, and contributing patches.

1. Updates to the extensions interface allowing extensions to create menu items
2. International input fixed (I know this will please a whole bunch of users)
3. Read only edit protection cleaned up
4. More text transforms, also available from context menu
5. Tab to space and vice versa conversions fixed
6. Notepad’s .LOG feature natively supported
7. Fix a problem using PN on the Windows 7 beta causing PN to hang on exit

Downloads

• 0.9.921 Installer
• 0.9.921 Portable

There is a new PyPN release supporting the updated plugin interface:

• PyPN 0.11.921 for Python 2.4
• PyPN 0.11.921 for Python 2.5
• PyPN 0.11.921 for Python 2.6

Thanks to all the users who have put time and effort into reporting and following up on bugs, testing, and contributing patches.

d = pn.CurrentDoc()
s = scintilla.Scintilla(d)

searchopts = pn.GetUserSearchOptions()

while not pn.CurrentDoc().FindNext(searchopts) == -1:
    # s.GetStyleAt(s.TargetStart) will work in the next PyPN release
    style = d.SendMessage(2010, s.TargetStart, 0)
    # pn.AddOutput(str(style)) - find the current style
    if d.SendMessage(2010, s.TargetStart, 0) == 2:
    break

That small bit of code will find whatever is in the current user’s search options only where the style is 2 – that’s the C++ comment style number. Sadly these numbers are not uniform across schemes, so we’d need to do a bit more work to do this properly across anything. To turn that small snippet of code into a script that can be run from a keyboard shortcut is also easy:

import pn, scintilla

@script("Find In C++ Comments")
def FindInCComments():
    d = pn.CurrentDoc()
    s = scintilla.Scintilla(d)

    searchopts = pn.GetUserSearchOptions()

    while not pn.CurrentDoc().FindNext(searchopts) == -1:
        style = d.SendMessage(2010, s.TargetStart, 0)
        if d.SendMessage(2010, s.TargetStart, 0) == 2:
        break

Just save that into your scripts directory and you’re good to go!