The Find / Replace dialog is opened from menu
or the toolbar button
Find / Replace.
Use this dialog to perform the following operations:
- Find occurrences of a word or string of characters including white spaces, represented on
one or multiple lines. All occurrences are highlighted.
- Replace occurrences of target defined in the Text to find area with
a new fragment of text defined in Replace with area.
- Find all occurrences of a word or string of
characters including white spaces that can be on a line or on multiple lines and display a
result list to the message panel.
The
find operation works on multiple lines, meaning that a find match can cover
characters on more than one line of text. To input multiple-line text in the
Text
to find and
Replace with areas:
- press
(CTRL + Enter);
- use the Insert newline contextual menu action.
You can use the Perl 5 regular expressions to define patterns. A content completion assistant
window is available in the Text to find and Replace
with areas to help you edit regular expressions. It is activated every time you
type \(backslash key) or on-demand if you press Ctrl-Space.
The replace operation can bind Perl 5 regular expression group variables ($1,
$2, etc.) from the find match.
To replace an XML tag 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 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 select the
Regular expression option. 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. It may contain Perl 5
regular expression group markers, only if the search expression is a regular expression and
the Regular expression option is selected.
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.
Note: Special characters like newline and
tab can be inserted in the Text to find and
Replace with text boxes using dedicated actions in the
contextual menu (Insert newline and Insert
tab).
Unicode characters can also be used in the
Replace
with area.
- The history buttons
-
Contain lists of the last find and replace expressions.
- XPath - The XPath 2.0
expression you input in this combo is used for restricting the search scope.
The content completion
assistant
helps you input XPath expressions,
valid in the current context.
- Direction - Specifies if the search direction is from current
position to end of file (Forward) or to start of file
(Backward).
- Scope - Specifies if the search is executed on the entire file
content or only on the selected lines of text. If the selection spans on a single line, the
search operation 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.
- Find All - Executes a find
operation and displays all results to the message panel. The results are displayed in the Results
view.
- 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, the search
operation follows the exact letter case of the Text to find.
- Whole words only - Only entire occurrences of a
word will be included in the search operation.
- Incremental - The search operation is started every time you type
or delete a letter in the Text to find text box.
- Regular expression - It allows you to use regular
expressions in Perl 5 syntax.
- Dot matches all - A dot used in a regular expression matches also
end of line characters.
- Wrap around - When the end of the document is reached, the search
operation is continued from the start of the document, until its entire content is
covered.
- Enable XML search
options - Provides access to a set of options that allow you to search
specific XML component types when editing in Text mode:
- Element names - Only the element names are included in the
search operation which ignores XML-tag notations ('<', '/', '>'), attributes or
white-spaces..
- Element contents - Search in the text content of XML
elements.
- Attribute names - Only the attribute names are included in the
search operation, without the leading or trailing white-spaces.
- Attribute values - Only the attribute values are included in
the search operation, without single quotes(') or double quotes(").
- Comments - Only the content of comments are included in the
search operation, excluding the XML comment delimiters ('<!--', '-->').
- Processing Instructions (PIs) - Only the content are searched,
skipping '<?', '?>'. e. g.: <?processing instruction?>
- CDATA - Searches inside content of CDATA sections.
- DOCTYPE - Searches inside content of DOCTYPE sections.
- Entities - Only the entity names are searched.
The two buttons Select All and Deselect
All allow a simple activation and deactivation of all types of XML
components.
Note: Please note that since searching in some XML component types is
performed only on their content skipping some of their headers / footers (see the list
above), even if all the XML component types are checked, some filtering is still
performed. To completely disable it you have to uncheck the option Enable XML
search options.
- Find All Elements / Attributes
... - While editing in Author mode, press the Find All Elements /
Attributes ... to extend the search scope to XML-specific markup (names and
values of both attributes and elements)