> To do this, just modify your existing pattern to find successive pairs of
> matching lines and combine their contents:

> Find:       (\d{6})(.+)(?:\r\1(.+))

> Replace:    \1\2\3

> and then repeatedly apply Replace All until all line pairs which start
> with
> the same numeric prefix have been consolidated to single lines.

> (E.g. for groups of 16 lines or fewer, this will take at most 4 passes of
> Replace All; for groups of 64 lines or fewer, 6 passes; etc.)

> PS: John Delacour's text filter is a much nicer general solution; the only
> advantage of the above is it doesn't require knowledge of Perl.

> Regards,

>  Patrick Woolsey
> ==
> Bare Bones Software, Inc.             <http://www.barebones.com/>

> At 23:50 -0700 10/05/2012, jmichel wrote:
> >Thanks for these explanations. They confirm what I suspected.
> >Assuming that the number of lines in one group can never exceed, say, 15
> >or so, could one circumvent the difficulty by explicitly repeating the
> >search pattern a sufficient number of times?

> Yes, and please see below.

> >Then the problem would be to ensure a match also in the case when the
> >number of lines is smaller. Any idea on how that could be achieved? Could
> >conditional matching help (I am not familiar with those "advanced
> >features")?

> To do this, just modify your existing pattern to find successive pairs of
> matching lines and combine their contents:

> Find:       (\d{6})(.+)(?:\r\1(.+))

> Replace:    \1\2\3

> and then repeatedly apply Replace All until all line pairs which start
> with
> the same numeric prefix have been consolidated to single lines.

> (E.g. for groups of 16 lines or fewer, this will take at most 4 passes of
> Replace All; for groups of 64 lines or fewer, 6 passes; etc.)

> PS: John Delacour's text filter is a much nicer general solution; the only
> advantage of the above is it doesn't require knowledge of Perl.

> Regards,

>  Patrick Woolsey
> ==
> Bare Bones Software, Inc.             <http://www.barebones.com/>

> At 23:50 -0700 10/05/2012, jmichel wrote:
> >Thanks for these explanations. They confirm what I suspected.
> >Assuming that the number of lines in one group can never exceed, say, 15
> >or so, could one circumvent the difficulty by explicitly repeating the
> >search pattern a sufficient number of times?

> Yes, and please see below.

> >Then the problem would be to ensure a match also in the case when the
> >number of lines is smaller. Any idea on how that could be achieved? Could
> >conditional matching help (I am not familiar with those "advanced
> >features")?

> To do this, just modify your existing pattern to find successive pairs of
> matching lines and combine their contents:

> Find:       (\d{6})(.+)(?:\r\1(.+))

> Replace:    \1\2\3

> and then repeatedly apply Replace All until all line pairs which start
> with
> the same numeric prefix have been consolidated to single lines.

> (E.g. for groups of 16 lines or fewer, this will take at most 4 passes of
> Replace All; for groups of 64 lines or fewer, 6 passes; etc.)

> PS: John Delacour's text filter is a much nicer general solution; the only
> advantage of the above is it doesn't require knowledge of Perl.

> Regards,

>  Patrick Woolsey
> ==
> Bare Bones Software, Inc.             <http://www.barebones.com/>