When working with different information systems sometimes you need to convert data files from one format to another. Not all systems can generate or export data in common or standard ways. Lately, I had to convert a huge Fixed-Width file to a Tab-delimited one in order to load it to my system, so I thought I’d share one quick way of doing so.
I’ve developed a Notepad++ plugin that adds the option to keep only regex patterns in a text file.
When working with large text files and wanting to extract specific data from them, such as log files or data files, it’s convenient to be able to filter out everything in one click.
Whoever worked a lot with text files possibly had this problem before, you have text file filled with unwanted characters, some are “hidden” (another way of saying that there are characters that your system can’t represent as symbols on your screen) and some are just redundant and not needed.