This post covers different examples of how to make and remove duplicate lines in Visual Studio Code
It contains Multiple ways to Create and delete a duplicate line or rows in a text file opened in VSCode.
How to create a duplicate line in VSCode?
You can create a duplicate line in multiple ways.
-
using Copy and paste You can use the normal copy and paste option to duplicate the lines. First, select the line you want to duplicate using the below command.
Ctrl +C
for copy,Ctrl + V
for paste. -
Inbuilt Copy Line Up and Down feature
Go to
Selection
Menu >Copy Line Up
orCopy Line Down
Arrow key -
Using shortcut commands
- Windows:
Shift + Alt+ Down
key andShift + Alt+ Up
key - Linux:
Ctrl + Shift + Alt + Down
key andCtrl + Shift + Alt + Up
key - MacOS:
Shift + Option + Down
key andShift + Option + Up
key
- Windows:
by default, these shortcut commands are bound to the below properties in Key bindings
with File
> Preferences
> Keyboard shortcuts
- editor.action.copyLinesDownAction
- editor.action.copyLinesUpAction
So you can customize these bindings in shortcuts or modify them in the
keybindings.json
file with these properties.
How to delete duplicate rows or lines in a visual Studio Code?
Let’s have a first.txt file opened in text content.
abc
def
abc
abc
def
abc
And output:
abc
def
One approach is to hover over a line and select a text, then remove the duplicate lines manually.
It’s simple for files that aren’t very large. For a larger file with many lines of text, however, it is a time-consuming job.
There are multiple ways you can remove duplicate or blank lines.
In the builtin Delete Duplicate Lines feature
This feature is available as inbuilt vs code.
-
Select
Views
Menu +Command palette
or use the following shortcut commands- Windows: hotkeys:
Ctrl + Shift + P
- Mac: shortcuts:
⌘ + Shift +P
- Windows: hotkeys:
-
It opens the
command palette
and typesdelete
in the search box and selects theDelete Duplicate Lines
option
- It removes Duplicate lines from the current file.
Find and Search with regular expression
Find and search is an inbuilt feature in the editor.
-
Open
Edit
>Replace
or use ShortcutCtrl + H
in Windows,⌘ + Alt + F
on Mac. -
It opens
Replace
popup upper right corner -
Select and type below
- first find box with
^(.*)(\n\1)+$
- for duplicate lines - Second input box with
$1
- Select Search Mode as
Regular Expression(.*)
or ShortCutAlt + R
in Windows,⌘ + Alt + R
in Mac - Click on
Replace All
button or useCtrl + Alt + Enter
- first find box with
-
It removes duplicate lines from the file.
Use the Transformer extension
Transformer
is a custom extension that deletes duplicate lines for an entire file or selection of a file apart from other things such as filtering lines and combining lines' end and beginning spaces and tabs and deleting comments.
Install the Transformer Package.
-
Go to Extensions icon and Left Side vertical bar
-
type “transformer” and Select
Transformer
extension -
Once
Transformer
extension is installed, Go to the next steps. -
Go to Command Palette with one of the options - Select
Views
Menu +Command palette
or - use following shortcut commands - Windows: hotkeys:Ctrl + Shift + P
- Mac: shortcuts:⌘ + Shift +P
-
It opens the
command palette
and typetransform
in the search box and selects thetransform: Unique Lines
option -
It removes duplicate lines or rows