{"id":8728,"date":"2019-04-19T07:59:10","date_gmt":"2019-04-19T07:59:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/198.58.113.91\/blog\/?p=8728"},"modified":"2019-08-13T13:01:09","modified_gmt":"2019-08-13T13:01:09","slug":"remove-lines-containing-word-string-text-file","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.winhelponline.com\/blog\/remove-lines-containing-word-string-text-file\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Remove Lines Containing a Word or String in a Text File"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you have hundreds of lines in a text file and want to bulk delete lines that contain a word or string, this article is for you.<\/p>\n

Let’s use the excellent third-party text editor Notepad++<\/a> (free) for deleting lines containing a word in a text-based file, using different methods.<\/p>\n

Remove Lines Containing a Word, Phrase or String in a Text File<\/h2>\n

Scenario:<\/strong> I have a huge HOSTS<\/code> file containing thousands of lines in it. I want to remove MSN advertising server entries from the file. In other words, I need to remove lines containing the string “.msn.com<\/strong>” in the HOSTS<\/code> file. Let’s use Notepad++ for the job.<\/em><\/p>\n

Related: How to Replace Notepad With Notepad++ or Any Other Text Editor?<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Note:<\/strong> As always, be sure to create a backup copy the text file before modifying it.<\/em><\/div>\n

Method 1: Remove lines using Bookmark feature in Notepad++<\/h3>\n
    \n
  1. Open the text-based file using Notepad++<\/li>\n
  2. Press Ctrl<\/kbd> + F<\/kbd> to open the Find and Replace dialog.<\/li>\n
  3. Click to select the Mark<\/strong> tab.<\/li>\n
  4. Type the search word or phrase in the “Find what” text box. In this example, I’d be typing .msn.com<\/code><\/strong><\/li>\n
  5. Enable the Bookmark line<\/strong> checkbox.<\/li>\n
  6. Set Search Mode<\/strong> to Normal.
    \n\"remove<\/li>\n
  7. Click Mark All<\/strong>.This marks (bookmarks) all the lines containing the string .msn.com<\/code>, as seen below:
    \n\"remove<\/li>\n
  8. Close the Find dialog by clicking Close<\/li>\n
  9. From the Search menu, click Bookmark, and click Remove Bookmarked Lines<\/strong>.
    \n\"remove<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    This removes all lines that contain the search string\/word\/phrase in the text file.<\/p>\n

    \n

    How to Remove lines that DO NOT contain a word or string?<\/h3>\n

    To do the opposite of the above — i.e., delete lines that do not contain a word or phrase:<\/p>\n

      \n
    1. Repeat the steps 1 \u2192 8 above.<\/li>\n
    2. In step 9, from the Search menu in Notepad++, click Remove Unmarked Lines<\/strong>\"remove<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

      This removes all the lines except the ones which contain the search word or string.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

      Method 2: Delete lines using Find and Replace method with RegEx<\/h3>\n

      This method uses regular expressions to find and replace lines containing a word or phrase. This method is very powerful as you can match almost anything (such as words “beginning with”, or lines that have a specific “pattern”.)<\/p>\n

        \n
      1. Open the text-based file using Notepad++.<\/li>\n
      2. Press Ctrl<\/kbd> + F<\/kbd> to open the Find and Replace dialog.<\/li>\n
      3. Click the Replace<\/strong> tab to select it.<\/li>\n
      4. In the Find what:<\/strong> text box, type the search word, preceded and followed by .*<\/code>e.g., if you’re wanting to replace lines containing the word books<\/code>, you’d type .*books.*<\/code><\/em>\n

        Whereas, it’s slightly different in our case<\/strong> where we have two (special) .<\/code> (dot) characters in our search string .msn.com<\/code>. So we need to type the following in the Find what:<\/strong> text box:<\/p>\n

        .*\\.msn\\.com.*<\/pre>\n
        .*<\/code> – matches any character any number of repetitions.
        \n\\.<\/code> – is used to escape the dot (.)So, the system understands you’re looking to match the string .msn.com<\/code><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/li>\n
      5. Set the Search Mode to Regular expression<\/strong><\/li>\n
      6. Make sure that the Replace with:<\/strong> text box is left blank.\"remove<\/li>\n
      7. Click Replace All<\/strong>.Now, Notepad++ replaces all those matching lines with blank lines. In the Replace dialog, you’ll see the number of occurrences replaced. Next, you need to remove those blank lines.<\/em><\/li>\n
      8. Close the Find\/Replace dialog.<\/li>\n
      9. To remove the empty lines, click Edit<\/strong> \u2192 Line Operations \u2192 Remove Empty Lines<\/strong>.\"remove<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
        This removes all the lines except the ones which contain the search word or string.<\/p>\n
        \n
        How to Remove lines that DO NOT contain a word or string using Regex?<\/h3>\n
        To do the opposite of the above — i.e., delete lines that do not contain a word or phrase using Regex:<\/p>\n
          \n
        1. Follow steps 1 to 3 above.<\/li>\n
        2. In step 4, use the regex search keyword ^(?!.*\\.msn\\.com).*$<\/code>\"remove\n
          The above search operator finds lines that don’t contain the word or string .msn.com<\/code> and replaces them with empty lines.<\/li>\n
        3. Then follow steps 5 to 9 to remove the empty lines.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/div>\n
          That’s it! Hope the above methods proved helpful to quickly remove lines containing (or not containing) a specific string, word or phrase in a text file.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
          If you have hundreds of lines in a text file and want to bulk delete lines that contain a word or string, this article is for you. Let’s use the excellent third-party text editor Notepad++ (free) for deleting lines containing a word in a text-based file, using different methods.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,7],"tags":[339],"class_list":["post-8728","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-utilities","category-windows","tag-notepad"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":9886,"url":"https:\/\/www.winhelponline.com\/blog\/notepad-plus-find-and-replace-text\/","url_meta":{"origin":8728,"position":0},"title":"Notepad++ Tips: Find and Replace, and Text Manipulation Examples","author":"Ramesh","date":"June 21, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"Notepad++ is an excellent light-weight text editor with many useful features. 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