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Comment by wvenable | Hacker News Reader

I admit I don't use Notepad++ to actually write anything -- I use it view large files, do complex search & replace, regex, reformat files, data manipulation, etc.

I probably use it a couple of times a week but never to write. I don't even consider it in competition with tools like VS Code, etc.

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Me too! It's my go-to large text file manipulator. It's also what I keep open all the time to paste things into since it's so easy to open a new tab and it keeps temp files of things i haven't saved until i've closed them and told it I don't want them saved, so it opens up with a decent history of crap I've been using until I'm ready to clear it.

For Windows 11 users, the latest Notepad.exe can also pick up where you left off the last time the app was closed.

And offers tabs

I love it with the exception that one day, when it started to lag (my fault for opening up 400+ unsaved tabs), I realized there is no "Close All and Don't Save Changes" functionality. Clicked the "No" button around 80 times, searched for some registry or appdata hack to see if it could get rid of the rest which didn't work, and then sadly went back to clicking No for the rest. I'll try to avoid that in the future.

Looks like this has changed at some point :)

I just tried this, opened a bunch of tabs and edited the text in them all.

Right click tabs, close all to the right, left or close all but this.

Then it shows a message box asking to save, click No To All.

All tabs closed :)

It keeps temp files in one of the appdata folders. You could just blow them away and it would just remove them from the tab list. The issue is do you want to keep that stuff or not. Also ctrl-w and n. should work fine too.

Does it also offer syntax highlighting? One nice thing about Npp is not only the temp files and tabs, but also that it offers syntax highlighting if needed. Sometimes when viewing a large Json it's nice to paste it in, turn on syntax highlighting and finding the information needed.

Except when you try to close it, it asks whether or not you want to save the unsaved tab, with a modal, one per every unsaved tab. It kind of defeats the purpose of this feature.

That must be some setting for you. It doesn't prompt to save on any of my several Windows machines, and I don't recall configuring that anywhere.

for me it only happens if I run in multiple instance mode where you can have multiple notepad++s open

I meant Windows Notepad on Win11 is doing this annoying thing, not Notepad++.

Strange it does prompt me to save and I also don't do any extra configuration for the Win11 Notepad. It is a fairly annoying app, and definitely worse than previous versions. But will look into what config options there are, but being a modern software I expect it's probably got limited options.

Based on the products name I think this was the main goal--to replace windows' bundled notepad.exe. For me, notepad.exe had some ridiculous issue, which I can't remember (I think maybe a very low limit on the file size?), that forced me to look for a replacement ca. 2005. The other piece of software from that time I'm still using is sumatrapdf.

my primary use for it is to open files quickly and as a dumping ground scratch pad since you can just close windows and it won't bitch about "do you want to save this file?" no, sir, i do not, just reboot windows please, and when I come back to notepad, I want my scratch buffers back.

It definitely isn't a replacement for VS Code for actual programming. However, I'd certainly use npp for a lot more than viewing large files and quick editing if it had better LSP, remote filesystem, terminal support, etc.

As it stands, I use it frequently - just not for code.

Same here. Specially back when Atom was a thing, Notepad++ would always be my "side editor" for any kind of heavy lifting (or even heavy-ish - looking back I really ask myself why I didn't just use it for everything ^^)

Wow I can't believe how fast I had forgotten Atom was even a thing. Hell I even used it professionally (with Nuclide) for years.

Basically the same search and replace and most of the time reading log files and of course searching in those.

yes this is me too mostly. i also love the sort/mark/delete marked options for extracting data.

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