How to KEEP empty line after removing duplicates in Notepad++

Question

I am trying to remove duplicates by using Notepad++, but in previous versions there was a default way to do that and leave empty lines. Now it isn't helping, or I am missing something.

The whole idea is the following - when I have 1000 lines with duplicated text/links with code, I will select "Remove Duplicate Lines” option and I if all of my lines was duplicated I will see 500 lines. But I want to see 1000 rows and play with empty lines/rows.

In example I have identical lines of code like this:

href a 
href a 
href a 
href b 
href b

I want to achieve this:

href a 
empty line 
empty line 
empty line 
href b 
empty line

And using search and replace isn’t an option because there are 3k+ lines when unique lines are around 1k What I am missing here?

Empty lines are needed for me because I will manipulate with it after pasting to the csv file.

Answer 1

This can't be done in a single pass.
Here is a way to go but it needs the replace all key to be press as many times as needed.

• Ctrl+F

• Select "Mark" tab

• Ctrl+M

• Ctrl+H

• Find what: ^(.+)$\R+\K\1

• Replace with: LEAVE EMPTY

• TICK Match case

• TICK Wrap around

• SELECT Regular expression

• UNTICK . matches newline

• Replace all

Explanation:

^           # beginning of line
(.+)        # group 1, 1 or more any character but newline
$           # end of line
\R+         # 1 or more any kind of linebreak
\K          # forget all we have seen until this position
\1          # backreference to group 1

Screenshot (before):

Screenshot (after):