I've got a list of files that I've copied from my terminal and pasted into gedit and into OO.o writer. Since the files are all created by gedit, in each case there is both
file
and
file~.

I want to get rid of all the 'file~' lines. I thought I could do search and replace using *~, but this doesn't work.

What am I missing?

You're missing .

With regexp * means that previous character can repeat, it's not a wildcard. Therefore you need .*, in which . is the wildcard and * means it can repeat.

Great. That worked. Thanks!

Next problem. The regexpr .*~ succeeds in getting rid of the file~, but leaves an empty paragraph:

file1

file2

Following the openoffice.org wiki (http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/...ns_in_Writer):
gives me "Search string not found."

A bit of experimentation indicates that there are hidden spaces before each new paragraph mark--I can arrow through the spaces, but they do not show with View Nonprinting Characters, the way spaces I enter do. But if I manually remove the spaces, then ^$ works to remove the empty paragraph.

Now my problem is to figure out how to replace all those spaces. Just putting a blank space into the "Find" box doesn't do it, not does using [:space:].

Maybe

^[:space:]*$

would match?

Yes, I know this is a very old thread but... it helped me research the solution I needed but did not have the exact solution so..... in the event that someone else searches and needs the same solution, I am adding to this thread.

As the title says, I needed to remove a large number of blank lines. I most likely got into this need because I did a search and replace, but ... probably not correctly, and removed the text I wanted removed but left a blank line for each replace. Whew!, now that the preamble is out of the way....

To remove blank lines, you can try searching for \n OR \CR OR \CRLF or any of the other programming methods of creating a new line, depending on the source of the text and replacing with nothing. e.g. search for \n and replace with nothing. You might want to test a few lines before doing a Replace All to prevent getting one line of run-on text.

If you are unsure of what format the blank line takes, you can highlight the entire blank line (shift+ (down arrow)) and click the replace button or select replace from the search menu. To extend the easy use of Replace, you can highlight what you want to replace in the document, then select Replace eliminating the need to type in the 'Search for' box.

Thanks, Jim