The Find / Replace dialog is opened from menu . It enables you to define search and replace operations on the current document. The find works on multiple lines, which means a find match can cover characters on more than one line. Special characters like newline and tab can be inserted using the contextual menu.
To insert a new line in the find or replace text area, press (CTRL + Enter) instead of (Enter). The replace operation can bind Perl 5 regular expression group variables ($1, $2, etc.) from the find match. For example to replace the tag with attributes called tag-name with the tag tag-name1 use <tag-name(\s+)(.*)> in the Text to find area and <tag-name1$1$2> in the Replace with area.
The following actions can be executed in the Find / Replace dialog:
- Find occurrences of a word or string of characters including white spaces, represented on one or multiple lines. Highlight their position in the editor.
- Replace occurrences of target defined in the Text to find area with a word or string of characters, including white spaces, that can be on a line or on multiple lines, defined in the Replace with area.
- Replace all occurrences of a word or string of characters including white spaces that can be on a line or on multiple lines.
The dialog contains the following options:
- Text to find - The target character string to search for. You can search for Unicode characters specified in the \uNNNN format. Also, hexadecimal notation (\xNNNN) and octal notation (\0NNNN) can be used. In this case you have to check the Regular expression checkbox. For example, to search for a space character you can use the \u0020 code.
- Replace with - The character string with which to replace the
target. The string for replace can be on a line or on multiple lines. Special characters
like newline and tab can be inserted using the contextual menu. It may contain Perl 5
regular expression group markers, only if the search expression is a regular expression and
the Regular expression checkbox is checked.Note: Some regular expressions may block indefinitely the Java Regular Expressions engine. If the execution of the regular expression does not end in about five seconds, the application displays a dialog that allows you to interrupt the operation.Unicode characters can also be used in the Replace with area.
- The history buttons
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The last find and replace operations history is available using the history buttons from the top of the
find and replace text areas. - Direction - Specifies if the search direction is from current position to end of file (Forward direction) or to start of file (Backward direction).
- Scope - Specifies if the search is executed on all file or only on the lines that were selected when the dialog was invoked. If the selection was on a single line the search is executed on the whole file (by default the All option is selected).
- Find - Executes a find operation for the next occurrence of the target. It stops after highlighting the find match in the editor panel.
- Replace - Executes a replace operation for the target followed by a find operation for the next occurrence.
- Replace All - Executes a replace operation in the entire scope of the document.
- Replace to End - Executes a replace operation starting from current target until the end of the document, in the direction specified by the current selection of the Direction switch (Forward or Backward).
- Case sensitive - When checked, operations are case-sensitive.
- Whole words only - When checked, only whole occurrences of a word will be included in the operation.
- Incremental - When checked, the search operation is started every time you type or delete a letter in the Text to find text box.
- Regular expression - When checked, it allows you to use regular expressions in Perl 5 syntax. A content completion assistant window is available to help you edit regular expressions. It is activated every time you type \(backslash key) or on-demand if you press Ctrl-Space.
- Dot matches all - A dot used in a regular expression matches also end of line characters.
- Wrap around - Continues the find from the start (end) of the document after reaching the end (start) when the search is in forward (backward) direction.
