Search++: A work in progress

Coises

Correct failure to find a zero-length match at the end of a file, selection or span of marked text when the previous match included last character of the file, selection or span of marked text.
Condense Tools | Synchronize sub-menu.
Implement Tools | Expand visible configure tool window.
Keep use of hidden lines in Search++ (almost) consistent with the way Notepad++ handles hidden lines and fold points. Hidden lines now show unhide margin markers. Hidden lines stay hidden after leaving and returning to a tab (except for the first and last line, which Search++ Hide all lines and implicit hide before Show commands hide, but Notepad++ native actions never do).
Stepwise searches, Select and Show commands, and clicking on a match in the results window now properly unfold collapsed sections when necessary to show a match.

Comments, criticisms, suggestions, bug reports and other observations are most welcome!

A little over a month ago I claimed:

I use Scintilla’s hidden lines feature directly. Notepad++ also uses that feature, but it doesn’t provide a way for plugins to use it through Notepad++, and it keeps internal status information that assumes only it is using hidden lines. There appears to be no way to make Notepad++ synchronize its own idea of which lines it thinks are hidden with the actual state of Scintilla. Various bizarre things happen because of this.

I was wrong about that. I didn’t read the Notepad++ code carefully enough and jumped to an incorrect conclusion.

I fixed a couple bugs in this release, but the main change in 0.7.2 is making hidden lines, particularly as used by the Show command, work consistently with the way Notepad++ uses them. Aside from any errors in my implementation, the one known, intentional discrepancy is that when Search++ hides all lines that includes the first and last line of the document. Notepad++ refuses to hide those. Under some circumstances, such as switching from a tab in which you’ve run a Show command to another tab and then switching back, Notepad++ will show the first and last line; at present I don’t attempt to override that.

Versions of Search++ prior to 0.7.2 failed to coordinate hidden lines properly with Notepad++ at all, so switching tabs would lose all information about what Search++ had hidden.

I also added more flexibility to Tools | Expand visible, which is primarily for showing context around matches after a Show command. You can now open a small tool window that lets you choose how many lines to show before and after in one step, and whether to show them around all visible blocks or only the block(s) containing the cursor or selection. This is a new feature, so observations about its clarity and usability are most welcome. It is described here in the help.

One known problem is that when double-clicking a match or other position in the Search++ results window opens a new tab (that is, the file wasn’t open in Notepad++ already), the document fails to scroll to show the match or position. Double-clicking a second time (now that the document is open) scrolls correctly. I think I understand why this is happening, but I have not yet devised a way to make it work as expected.

Coises

Search++ version 0.7.2 is available

Additional known bugs thus far:

Show only lines with shown text, and the Reset button in the Expand visible dialog, do not restore hidden line markers correctly. That’s a simple omission which will be fixed in the next release.

Some Search++ operations that affect hidden lines do not take into account the possibility that the hidden and shown lines and the markers in the margin that indicate hidden lines can fall out of sync. If the same file is opened in both views, Search++ affects hidden/visible lines only in the view which is active, but the markers are changed in both views.

In Scintilla, markers and fold points are properties of the document, but hidden lines and whether a given fold is expanded or contracted are properties of the view. Because Notepad++ uses markers to keep track of hidden lines and to implement the ability to show them again, there’s a bit of a conflict. In principle, it should be impossible to have lines shown in one view and not in the other, except when the only thing hiding lines is collapsed fold points.

As far as I can tell, Notepad++ doesn’t let you hide or show lines in one view of the document without the same thing happening in the other view, so long as you use only native Notepad++ commands. However, it’s useful to be able to have one view showing the entire document and another showing only lines of interest, and I don’t want to break that.

The extent of problems this might cause is not yet known. For now, expect surprises if you open the same document in both views and use any of the Search++ features that affect hidden lines.

shodanx2

This post is deleted!

guy038

Hello, @coises and All,

Many thanks, @coises, for your new release. Sorry for the late reply — every Friday, since the beginning of fall, I’ve been going on hikes with a group of seniors !

You said :

Correct failure to find a zero-length match at the end of a file, selection or span of marked text when the previous match included last character of the file, selection or span of marked text.

I did verify, for example, that the regexes ^(?-s)((?!test).)*\R|\z, (?-s)^((?!test).)*$\R? and (?-s)^((?!test).)*(\R|\z) correctly detect the last empty line 10. Nice !

You said :

Condense Tools | Synchronize sub-menu.

To this purpose, here is a little test, using my example text, below, pasted in a new tab :


bla
blah
this is the test to do
bla
blah
test
bla
blah

Preamble :

Uncheck, if necessary, the Bookmark lines when marking text (Shift: Configure) option in the Tools menu
Uncheck, if necessary, the Default commands search within selections option in the Settings dialog
Uncheck, if necessary, the Default commands search within marked text option in the Settings dialog
Uncheck, if necessary, the Always unmark all text before Mark command. (Otherwise add to existing marked text). option in the Settings dialog

Now :

1 Mark every test word
2 Mark every blah word
3 Then, manually, bookmark the lines 4 and 7 containing the word test
4 Choose the Synchronize marks and bookmarks option
5 Finally, hit the Shift key and click on the Mark all text in bookmarked lines (Shift:clear first)

=> All the existing marked test is cleared first, then all text, in the two bookmarked lines, is marked, as shown below :

6 Now, use the Remove marks from active document document to clear all the marked text and click on the two blue bookmarks to clear them, as well
7 Redo the steps from 1 to 4
8 Finally, simply click on the Mark all text in bookmarked lines (Shift:clear first)

=> All the existing marked text is preserved, then all text, in the two bookmarked lines, is marked, as shown below :

You said :

Implement Tools | Expand visible configure tool window.

Bravo for your new configurable dialog via the Expand visible 1:1 (Shift:configure) option, in the Tools menu. Every click, possibly repeated, on buttons Expand before, Expand after and Expand act as expected !

The button Reset clears all these context lines and I suppose that the save button ( not tested ) can remember special settings like : show me, by default 3 lines before and two lines after !

You said :

Hidden lines now show unhide margin markers. Hidden lines stay hidden after leaving and returning to a tab (except for the first and last line,…

As an example, I chose to hide all lines containing the the property string, with this exact case, in the ICU.txt file : I had the bottom message Showing 13 matches and, indeed, only 13 lines were visible. However :

I did not see any unhide margin markers ???
While switching to another tab then switching back to the ICU.txt did show me all the property strings but all the lines were visible and not the 13 lines containing the the property string only ???

Best Regards,

guy038

Oh… I have not read your very last post yet. You said :

Show only lines with shown text, and the Reset button in the Expand visible dialog, do not restore hidden line markers correctly.

Personally, I did not notice this bug, even when clicking on the Reset button during my test with the ICU.txt file, described above ?

Coises

@guy038 said:

As an example, I chose to hide all lines containing the the property string, with this exact case, in the ICU.txt file : I had the bottom message Showing 13 matches and, indeed, only 13 lines were visible. However :

I did not see any unhide margin markers ???

While switching to another tab then switching back to the ICU.txt did show me all the property strings but all the lines were visible and not the 13 lines containing the the property string only ???

Thank you for all your tests! This surprised me (I’m assuming you meant Show and not hide all)… until it occurred to me that I might not have tested recently with Always hide all lines and remove Show style from text before Show command not checked. Sure enough, if that setting is not checked and no lines are hidden and you do a Show command, the hide markers in the margin are not established.

It’s a simple omission, similar to the one that causes the Show only lines with shown text bug, and it will also be fixed in the next release. I think the reason you didn’t notice the Show only lines with shown text bug was probably that markers weren’t set in the first place because of this bug, so there was nothing different.

The inside story is that when I started the work for the 0.7.2 release to use markers consistent with Notepad++ for hidden lines, I left the showing and hiding code alone and added a step at the end of commands that can affect hidden lines to remove existing markers and then add markers consistent with the current visibility of each line in the document. Then I gave more thought to how folding blocks and explicitly hidden lines interact, and realized that when the document contains both explicitly hidden lines and collapsed folding blocks, it is not possible to reconstruct the hidden line markers knowing only the current visibility of every line. (E.g., you can have a span of hidden lines within a collapsed folding block. When you expand the block, Notepad++ still keeps the lines you explicitly hid hidden.) So I switched to a method where I update the markers as lines are hidden or shown rather than reconstructing them at the end. The problem with that is that I missed some spots. :-(

Coises

@guy038 said:

I suppose that the save button ( not tested ) can remember special settings like : show me, by default 3 lines before and two lines after !

The Save button makes the Before, After and Only blocks with caret or selection settings apply to future Expand visible commands (without the Shift key or right click). It also makes the settings “stick” if you close the dialog and later open it again. (At present, there is no way to separate these functions. When opened, the dialog always shows the settings that apply to the Expand visible command without Shift or right click, not necessarily the (unsaved) settings when you last closed it.)

Since this dialog is new, it is very much open to change. I do want to keep it small, so it can be left open but moved out of the way when a user expects to use these functions repeatedly in a short period of time.

guy038

Hi, @coises,

First of all, sorry for the typo. I did mean :

As an example, I chose to show all lines containing the the property string, with this exact case, in the ICU.txt file !

You’re perfectly right about the bug. It occurs only when the Always hide all lines and remove Show style from text before Show command option, in the Settings dialog is unchecked

After checking this option in the Setting dialog, I could easily verify, with the ICU.txt file, that the 13 green markers were there, along with the 13 lines containing the the property string

I also noted that, right after you just show these 13 lines, clicking in the margin right below the line 1183 just displays the remaining lines of the ICU.txt file ! I think that behavior is normal because if you then click on the marker of the 1183 line, it then also displays all lines between lines 1164 and 1183.

Moreover, if after showing these 13 lines, in the ICU.txt file, you switch to an other tab, then switch back to the ICU.txt file, this time, it also displays a triangular green marker in the last line 2132 of the file !

Finally, as you said, I could verify that the markers :

Were not restored at all after a click on the Reset button which follows a click on the Expand button
Were not completly restored after a click on the Reset button which follows a click on the Expand before or Expand after button
Were correctly preserved if you immediately click on the Reset button

However, the Show only lines with shown text in the Tools dialog seem to work properly, even after switching tabs : lines to show and markers seem preserved !

Best Regards,

guy038

Coises

Search++ version 0.8 is available:

Fix failure to handle hidden lines markers correctly when executing Show commands with Always hide all lines… not checked and when executing the Show only lines with shown text command on the Tools menu.
Track and restore first line and last line hidden states across tab changes.
Add Spy (temporarily show hidden lines) toggle to the Tools menu. When spy mode is on all lines are visible even though the markers for hidden lines and collapsed folding groups remain; hidden lines can be restored by toggling spy mode off again.
Replace the Reset button in the Expand visible configuration dialog with a Tools button. Make Tools menu keyboard shortcuts work in that dialog.
General reassignment of shortcut keys for greater consistency. Quite a few things have changed, so it is important to check the help, the community thread and/or the Tools menu and the Find and Replace box context menus for the new assignments if you use keyboard shortcuts in Search++. I regret the disruption; hopefully this will be a one-time change, and keyboard shortcuts will stay the same after this.

There are two big changes in this release: the addition of “Spy mode” and some fairly extensive changes to the keyboard shortcuts to yield greater consistency between mnemonics (underlined letters) and shortcuts, some additional capabilities, and hopefully a generally more logical set of assignments. Those changes are detailed below.

There is now a Tools button on the Expand visible configuration dialog instead of the previous Reset button, and Tools command keyboard shortcuts work when focus is in the Expand visible dialog. My rationale for this is that Reset wasn’t very clear, it just did a command from the Tools menu anyway (Show only lines with shown text), and especially with the new Spy toggle available, I’m not at all convinced there’s a reason to give any one command special accessibility.

There is a small change in the way the keyboard shortcuts for Show selected/all text (now Ctrl+O / Ctrl+Shift+O) work. Previously, the unshifted version, like the menu item, would show all lines if all selected text, or the caret if no text was selected, was visible. The menu item still changes to Show all lines, not requiring a shift or a right-click, if none of the selection is hidden, but Ctrl+O will do nothing if none of the selection is hidden, so that Ctrl+Shift+O is required to show all lines. My rationale is that especially when spy mode is active, it might be easy to accidentally show all lines when that is not intended if Ctrl+O does both. When using the menu, you have the item text to clue you in.

As always, comments, critiques, suggestions, problem reports and experiences are most welcome, and thank you for giving this work-in-progress a try.

Spy mode lets you temporarily view all lines in the active document while keeping the markers that define what should be hidden intact. The idea is from this feature request and the subsequent discussion.

I expect this to be most useful after a Show command. If the caret or selection is visible on the screen when you toggle Spy to checked, that part of the text will remain in (approximately) the same place on the screen while all lines become visible. That lets you see additional context for the match. You can use Show selected lines from the Tools menu to change the markers so the selected lines are not marked as hidden; then when you toggle Spy to unchecked, those lines will remain visible.

The Spy setting is per tab and is preserved when you change tabs and change back again. (As of this release, hidden first and last lines are also preserved.) While you cannot have different hidden line markers or fold markers for the same document in different views (that’s a Notepad++/Scintilla limitation), you can have Spy checked in one view and unchecked in the other.

It is possible to use the Notepad++ Hide Lines command or the icon for collapsing a fold block while Spy is checked. In this circumstance some lines will be hidden, but there may be other lines that are marked as hidden or are part of a collapsed fold block that are not hidden. The Spy entry on the Tools menu will then show a bullet instead of a check mark to indicate an indeterminant state. Clicking once will return to full Spy checked state (all lines visible), and clicking a second time will return to normal display. An indeterminant state is not preserved when changing tabs: upon switching back to the tab it will have Spy checked and all lines visible.

Spy is new feature. Expect there to be some glitches. If you have the time and patience, reports of your experience will be much appreciated.

There were a few interconnected rationales for the keyboard shortcut changes, all centered around trying to make things as convenient and coherent as I can for users who prefer to use the keyboard whenever possible. I am sorry for the disruption to those who are already used to some of these shortcuts; hopefully I have it “right” this time, and I won’t have to make such extensive changes again.

I’ll try to list the main changes. They’re all in the help and on the menus, but I can’t guarantee I’ve caught every last one of them here.

General navigation — these work in the main Search++ dialog, the Search in Files dialog, the Search++ results window and the Expand visible configuration dialog:

Ctrl+F toggles keyboard focus between the Search in Files dialog and the main Search++ dialog. If the target dialog isn’t visible, it is opened. Ctrl+Shift+F closes the Search in Files dialog.
Ctrl+R toggles keyboard focus between the Search++ results window and the main Search++ dialog. If the target dialog or window isn’t visible, it is opened. Ctrl+Shift+R closes the Search++ results window.
Ctrl+N puts keyboard focus in the active Notepad++ document. Ctrl+Shift+N closes the main Search++ dialog.
Ctrl+Shift+Q closes all Search++ dialogs and windows and puts keyboard focus in the active Notepad++ document.
Note that all these except Ctrl+N have changed. Also, Ctrl+O and Ctrl+Shift+O, which used to be general navigation commands, are now the Tools commands Show selected lines and Show all lines.

Main Search++ dialog navigation:

Alt+O (the letter “o”) toggles between the Find box and the Replace box.
Alt+1 through Alt+5 (only on the main keyboard, not the numeric keypad) open the drop-down menus on the five search command buttons. These were previously difficult to access by keyboard alone.
The third (“Find All”) command button uses the mnemonic (underlined letter) A, S, K or H when the one-click command action is Find All, Select, Mark or Show. (Recall that you can set any command on the drop-down menu as the one-click command for a button by right clicking or Shift+clicking the command.) The Alt key plus that letter performs the one-click command (as it always did), while the Alt key plus one of the remaining letters performs the default command for the associated action.

Search in Files dialog navigation:

Alt+O (the letter “o”) toggles between the Find box and the Replace box.
Alt+T puts keyboard focus in the table of files at the bottom of the dialog.

Find and Replace box context menus (in the main Search++ dialog and the Search in Files dialog):

Ctrl+G is Exchange Find/Replace (formerly Ctrl+E). This swaps the Find and Replace fields in the dialog in which you are working.
Ctrl+Shift+H is Insert Find (formerly Ctrl+F and called Copy Find). This inserts the contents of the Find box in the main Search dialog at the location of the caret or in place of the selection. If you are working in the Find box in the main Search dialog, it replaces the contents of the Replace box with the contents of the Find box.
Ctrl+Shift+J is Insert Replace (formerly Ctrl+R and called Copy Replace). This inserts the contents of the Replace box in the main Search dialog at the location of the caret or in place of the selection. If you are working in the Replace box in the main Search dialog, it replaces the contents of the Find box with the contents of the Replace box.

Tools menu commands:

Show selected/all lines is now Ctrl+(Shift+)O.
Expand visible is now Ctrl+E, and configure is Ctrl+Shift+E.
Hide all lines is now Ctrl+H.
Remove marks from selected text is now Ctrl+Shift+V.
Select marked text is now Ctrl+Shift+S.
Copy marked text is now Ctrl+P with Ctrl+Shift+P for the configuration dialog.
Clear marks [and bookmarks] from active document (formerly Remove marks…) is now Ctrl+Shift+C.
Clear marks from multiple documents… (formerly Remove marks…) is now Ctrl+Shift+D.
Settings… is now Ctrl+Shift+G.
The mnemonic (underlined letter) for every item on the Tools menu which has a keyboard shortcut is now the same as the letter used in the keyboard shortcut. Keyboard shortcuts for Tools commands work when keyboard focus is in the main Search++ dialog or in the Expand visible configuration dialog. In the Expand visible configuration dialog, Ctrl+Shift+E opens or switches focus to the main Search++ dialog.

guy038

Hello, @coises,

Many thanks for this new release ! The new Spy (temporarily show hidden lines) is interesting as it allows to see all context lines at a glance !

The fact that the Mark, Select, Show and Spy fonctionalities work per tab is really a plus, too !

Now, after UNCHECKING :

In the Settings > Selections section, the Default commands automatically search within selections. option
In the Setings > Marked and shown text section, the Default commands automatically search within marked text. option
In the Settings > Focus section, all the options, as below :

All the following commands keep focus to the Search++ dialog and do the following actions :

Alt + F           Finds the NEXT occurrence of the SEARCH string, in current file

Alt + Shift + F   Finds the PREVIOUS occurrence of the SEARCH string, in current file ( when 'PLAIN' button selected )

Alt + R           Replaces the NEXT occurrence of SEARCH string, in current file

Alt + A           Displays ALL occurrences of the SEARCH string, from current file, in the 'Find Results' panel ( CANCEL with Ctrl + Shift+ R )

Alt + C           Counts ALL occurrences of the SEARCH String, in current file

Alt + E           Replace ALL occurrences of the SEARCH string by the REPLACEMENT string, in current file ( when 'PLAIN' or 'REGEX' button selected )

Alt + H           Shows ALL lines containing an occurrence of the SEARCH string, in current file ( CANCEL operation with Ctrl + Shift + A )

Alt + K           Marks ( and possibly boobmarks ) ALL occurrences of the SEARCH string, in current file  ( CANCEL operation with Ctl + Shift + C )

Alt + S           Select ALL occurrences of the SEARCH string, in current file ( NO CANCEL operation provided, so far ? )

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Alt + D           Toggles 'Dot matches line Breaks' option ( when 'Regex' or 'ICU' button selected )

Alt + G           Toggles 'Free Spacing' option ( when 'Regex' or 'ICU' button selected )

Alt + M           Toggles 'Match case' option

Alt + U           Toogles 'Unicode Word boundaries' option ( when 'ICU' button selected )

Alt + W           Toggles 'Whole word only' option ( when 'PLAIN' button selected )

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Alt + P           Selects 'PLAIN' button

Alt + X           Selects 'REGEX' button

Alt + I           Selects 'ICU' button

Alt + T           Toogles 'TOOLS' button contents

Alt + O           Toogles between the 'FIND' and 'REPLACE' dialogs

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Alt + Shift + 1   Opens the FIND drop-down menu

Alt + Shift + 2   Opens the COUNT drop-down menu

Alt + Shift + 3   Opens the FIND ALL drop-down menu

Alt + Shift + 4   Opens the REPLACE drop-down menu

Alt + Shift + 5   Opens the REPLACE ALL drop-down menu

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Alt + L           Displays the N++ 'Language' menu

Alt + N           Displays the N++ 'Encoding' menu

Alt + V           Displays the N++ 'View'  menu

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

ALT + B   Nothing

ALT + J   Nothing

ALT + Q   Nothing

ALT + Y   Nothing

ALT + Z   Nothing

As you can see, the different drop-down menus are opened with an Alt + Shift + ... shortcut ( and not with an Alt + ... ) ! I suppose, you did something wrong while attributing these 5 shortcuts, didn’t you ?

Best Regards,

guy038

Coises

@guy038 said:

Alt + S Select ALL occurrences of the SEARCH string, in current file ( NO CANCEL operation provided, so far ? )

Since all you need to do to cancel a selection is to click anywhere in the document, I didn’t figure anything more would be needed.

As you can see, the different drop-down menus are opened with an Alt + Shift + ... shortcut ( and not with an Alt + ... ) ! I suppose, you did something wrong while attributing these 5 shortcuts, didn’t you ?

I am guessing that you use one of the French keyboard layouts that requires the Shift key to type digits, correct?

Does this present a problem in actually using the shortcuts, or is it primarily a documentation issue?

Does this correspond to “normal” operation with underlined letters (the usual use of Alt+)? That is, if a dialog has a button labeled Option 1 with the 1 underlined, do have to use Alt+Shift+ to activate it, or does just Alt+{whatever character is under the 1} do it?