Notepad++ also has session saving capabilities. This means you can save which files you're working on, close Notepad++, and reload those files at a later date. It's cool. On Sun, Jan 31, 2010 at 4:51 PM, Ashley Sheridan <ash@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>wrote: > On Mon, 2010-02-01 at 11:28 +1100, clancy_1@xxxxxxxxxxxx wrote: > > > I use Dreamweaver as my editor, mainly because I'm familiar with it, > although I only use > > about 1% of its capabilities. However it generally handles long files > well. The other day > > I downloaded the two shortest of Brian Dunning's sets of test data *. I > opened the > > shortest in Dreamweaver, had a quick look at it, and realised I would > have to replace the > > quote, comma, quote separators with semicolons, as part of converting the > files to my > > format. > > > > So I thought I would do that while I was working out what else I had to > do. I entered the > > old separator and the replacement in the 'Find and replace' window, then > hit 'Replace > > all', expecting the job be done in a few seconds. First I thought nothing > was happening, > > but then I realised it was trudging through the file, as if it was wading > through waist > > high molasses. > > > > So I closed the results window, and opened another file, but a few > seconds later focus > > switched back to the original file. I tried a couple of times more, but > each time it > > returned to the original window. I watched in morbid fascination for a > bit, then decided I > > would let it go, just to see how long it took. > > > > The file contained 500 lines, and was about 80 K. It was taking five > seconds to process > > each line, and eventually finished in about 40 minutes. > > > > The problem appeared to be the results processing. I have only looked at > the results list > > about twice, out of idle curiosity, but never saw any thing that I > thought could be > > remotely useful. I would like to be able to turn results logging off > altogether, as it > > wastes real estate (and time!), but this appears to be impossible. > > > > On this occasion the program was apparently writing a new line every time > it replaced a > > separator (9 times in each line), and then when it finished processing a > line it would > > erase all the intermediate result lines, and write a new one for the > whole line. At the > > same time it reopened the results window if I had closed it, and return > focus to the file > > being processed. > > > > I then wrote a PHP program to read the file, split it, clean up and > re-arrange the various > > elements, enter them into an array in my format, and finally save it as a > file my program > > could handle. > > > > After I had got this running on the 500 line file I used it to process > the 5000 line > > file. The whole process was done in the blink of an eye -- literally a > fraction of a > > second. > > > > > > * http://www.briandunning.com/sample-data/ > > > > > > > Don't use Dreamweaver then :p > > Joking aside (Dreamweaver is a very capable editor, although it is quite > large for simple find and replace tasks) how were you performing the > find and replace? Regular expression replacements will be much slower, > although it shouldn't account for quite the speed hit you saw. For > simple tasks like that, I'd recommend Notepad++. It has code > highlighting and folding, regex find/replace features, and a slew of > other bits that make it a very good editor, and it's very speedy to > boot. > > Thanks, > Ash > http://www.ashleysheridan.co.uk > > >
