Find no longer Finds anything

[AdrianHHH]

This question is very similar to https://notepad-plus-plus.org/community/topic/13235/search-and-replace-not-working-properly where I wrote the following:

Occasionally I leave the “In selection” tick box on the replace window ticked, then I get very confused about why a replace does not do what I want. Unticking the “In selection” box and shouting at my mouse for clicking the wrong things lets the replacement work OK.

[John Bowman]

maybe you have Whole Word Only selected in the find dialog

[Terri Paxton]

:O I think the Whole Word Selected might’ve been it. I find it baffling however and am eyeing the updates suspiciously. I can believe I might accidentally check it on one computer but two? Hopefully, now I can be rid of the curse of wbr code (since Google obviously cares not that every web designer sent embed code via gmail is snarling at them).

[Nerissa Belcher]

After NPP stopped finding things I fixed it by downloading the PythonScript_1.0.8.0.msi and choosing “repair” during the installation. Search worked after the repair.

http://npppythonscript.sourceforge.net/download.shtml

[Andrés Zsögön]

Now that we are on it, the “whole word” option is not that practical anyway, eg, it considers a whole word that which is surrounded by spaces. If another character is found next to it, such as (), [], or {}, it is not a “while word” anymore for Npp.

[Scott Sumner]

@Andrés-Zsögön

“whole word” IS practical.

A “whole word” is not strictly defined as “that which is surrounded by spaces”.

If any of (, ), [, ], {, } is next to what looks like a word, it IS still found when doing a search with “whole word” option enabled, for example, all 12 of the following lines will be found when searched for “abc”:

abc(
abc)
abc[
abc]
abc{
abc}
(abc
)abc
[abc
]abc
{abc
}abc

But…perhaps I am misunderstanding what is meant by some of your statements…

A pretty good discussion of what makes up a “word” and how the search engine deals with it was done by @guy038 here: https://notepad-plus-plus.org/community/topic/13004/bugs-in-normal-search-for-v7-2-2-on-windows-7

[Andrés Zsögön]

@Scott-Sumner

I’m afraid it doesn’t. Kindly search for $abc using the Entire Word option with these:

bla $abc(
bla $abc)
bla $abc[
bla $abc{
bla {$abc} 404_NOT_FOUND
bla ($abc 404_NOT_FOUND
bla )$abc 404_NOT_FOUND
bla [$abc 404_NOT_FOUND
bla ]$abc 404_NOT_FOUND

As you can see, anything with a (, ), [, ], {, } before it won’t be found by Notepad++ 7.3.3 for Windows (X86).

This makes the Entire Word option so untrustworthy that I can never use it, not with PHP at least.

[Scott Sumner]

@Andrés-Zsögön

Well, that case is discussed by @guy038 in the earlier posting I referenced; following the logic presented there indicates that your example will indeed not be matched.

However, there is a way to get your desired behavior. In Settings (menu) -> Preferences -> Delimiter, change the “Word character list” as shown here: http://imgur.com/a/FhKc1

Textually, change the radio button so that “Add your character…” is selected, and add the $ to the text box below it.

[Andrés Zsögön]

@Scott-Sumner

Hey that worked perfectly, thanks. The name of the options is not very serious… a gray label with a warning instead of the explanation between parentheses would be more adequate. Is there some place where I can make suggestions for the GUI, to make it more professional and less… amateur? Thanks.

[Scott Sumner]

@Andrés-Zsögön

Report an issue or make a feature request here: https://github.com/notepad-plus-plus/notepad-plus-plus/issues/

[Gera Ovelcore]

I was having this issue and it seems i checked ‘match whole word only’. un-checking option fixed it.

[Charles Dorsett]

Well, somehow I managed to deselect ‘Wrap around’ - this meant that I could only find instances that were below the cursor, which produced random results. Now it works fine.

[Alan Kilborn]

@Charles-Dorsett said in Find no longer Finds anything:

…which produced random results

I could only find instances that were below the cursor,

It doesn’t sound like you achieved “random results”.
It seems like Notepad++ did what it was told to do, predictably and consistently.

[Daniel Santamaria Rubio]

I had the same issue and I managed to solve it.
You need to have regular expression tick box selected and wrap around tickbox aswell.