text processing
 

Hopefully someone can point me in the right direction.

I have a large text document (1.7mb) in size and I want to edit a recurring line of text in it so that it is blank

The line of text is standard bar the last few characters which represent the page number.

For example, the text would read "thesis title n" where n can be anything from 1 to 700. I would like to change the whole line including the page number to a blank.

Can any one suggest a way to do this. I have access to Linux/OSX and Windows so any can be used for a solution :-)

you want to use regular expressions, however i suck at regular expressions.

Textpad for Windows will be your new hero. It's the best text editor I've ever used; regular expression search and replace, syntax highlighting for all the major languages, force upper, force lower, macro support for things like java compiling, sentence case, auto code indenting, Windows shell integration... I fuckin' love it.

That said, download Textpad at www.textpad.com and open your file with it.

F8 for replace, check "Regular expression", put "Thesis Title *[0-9]*" in the Find Box, leave Replace empty, and click Replace / Replace All.

That will blank the line. If you want to blank the line and also remove it (move everything up one line) use "Thesis Title *[0-9]*\n" for the Find field.

Excellent, I actually use Textpad my self but never realised the search and replace was that powerful.