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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-17T20:41:16+00:00

I am curently busy with bulding a synthax document in SPSS and have a

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I am curently busy with bulding a synthax document in SPSS and have a column of variable strings that consists of approximately 40 lines (it will be much much more in coming week). SPSS has a nice way of creating it (can be seen here 🙂
http://vault.hanover.edu/~altermattw/methods/stats/reliable/reliability-1.html) but it can be done per one variable at a time which is possible to automatize.

I am a total beginner (I wouldn’t mind if you would call me n00b) at search&replace with reqular expressions in notepad++ but I can use the extended search function as a basic user 😛

The data contains scores Likert scale (from 1-7) and I would like to reverse it to do some tests.

For example: my variable name on the line is q_4_SQ001 and the sline in synthax editor is q_4_SQ001=COMPUTE q_4_SQ001r=8-q_4_SQ001.

My question so far is thus:

How can I convert a line containing a unique variable name into it’s revers formula?

So in this case, how can I replace the following lines: 

q_4_SQ001
q_4_SQ002
q_4_SQ003
q_4_SQ004

into the synthax given under:

COMPUTE q_4_SQ001r=8-q_4_SQ001.
COMPUTE q_4_SQ002r=8-q_4_SQ002.
COMPUTE q_4_SQ003r=8-q_4_SQ003.
COMPUTE q_4_SQ004r=8-q_4_SQ004.

Please remark the dots in the end of each line I did this manually to give you an impression of what I would like to achieve. My data set has different questions and different variable strings so I would like to make my life a bit easier right now 😛

I also tried recording and running a macro as stated in here (http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2467875/notepad-replace-all-regular-expression-start-of-the-line-and-end-of-the-line) but that still is pretty time consuming since I have to do each line manulally and clean up with extended search in the end.

Wouldn’t it be easier to convert each line?

Thanks a bunch in advance 🙂

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    Funny, Notepad++ works under Wine, as I just found out 😉

    New file, inserted:

    q_4_SQ001
q_4_SQ002
q_4_SQ003
q_4_SQ004

    Select all (CTRL+A), replace (CTRL+R).

    Tick Regular Expr, stick ^(.*)$ in the “find” bit (first textbox), and COMPUTE \1r=8-\1. in the “replace” bit (second textbox). Hit the Find button, and then the Replace Rest button.

    Parenthesis () around a pattern cause the pattern to be “memorised”, each set of parenthesis available to the replacement pattern via \1, \2, etc.

    After the replace, I got:

    COMPUTE q_4_SQ001r=8-q_4_SQ001.
COMPUTE q_4_SQ002r=8-q_4_SQ002.
COMPUTE q_4_SQ003r=8-q_4_SQ003.
COMPUTE q_4_SQ004r=8-q_4_SQ004.

    Which I assume is what you wanted. Enjoy.

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