Replace 1 + lines?

Scott Sumner

This AutoIt3 solution seems to work to get multiple line data into the Replace-with box. The way to use it, which may not be obvious, is to highlight some multiline text in the Notepad++ editor window and then invoke it using the Alt+F1 binding that the author used, or whatever key combination you want to bind it to. The script also assumes that Ctrl+Insert (^{INS}) is mapped as a copy command, and that Ctrl+H ($s='h' or $s='p' if Russian is your language! :-D) is still mapped as the Replace binding. Overall, a nice job on this script; I will look at some of my own AutoIt3 scripts for dealing with the Find dialog to see if I can improve them based upon the ideas here.

Alan Kilborn

@AZJIO-AZJIO

You seem to be pretty good with AutoIt. Do you (or anyone?) know how to use it to get the red text at the bottom of the window?

Example:

AZJIO AZJIO

I could not get

Sleep(3000)
$sText = ControlGetText(“[ACTIVE]”, ‘’, ‘msctls_statusbar32’)
$hControl = ControlGetHandle(“[ACTIVE]”, ‘’, ‘msctls_statusbar32’)
MsgBox(0, $sText, $hControl)

http://azjio.ucoz.ru/load/vsjo_dlja_autoit3/skompilirovannye_skripty/capturetext/4-1-0-60
If it does not capture the text, then I can not

Alan Kilborn

@AZJIO-AZJIO

I couldn’t get your copy_multiline.au3 script to run reliably. The Find dialog box would be shown but the if Not $hWnd Then Exit line exits the program most of the time for me. :(

AZJIO AZJIO

Simplified version

Send(‘^{INS}’)
ControlSetText(“[CLASS:#32770]”, “”, “Edit2”, ClipGet())

But the search dialog should be open

Alan Kilborn

@AZJIO-AZJIO said:

But the search dialog should be open

I was most interested in the part that does the opening of the search dialog and switching its active tab. I had tried to do something like that in the past and didn’t have good luck. I can’t remember if it was for the same reason I am now having trouble with your original script, or not, but it very well could be. Do you know if there is an alternate way of doing it that might be more reliable?

AZJIO AZJIO

Add before each command Sleep (1000) to see which command has failed

Claudia Frank

If it is still about the status message, then be aware that it is ownerdrawed text,
which means that you need to resolve the pointer returned by the statusbar message used.
Well, I assume ControlGetText returns the message from SB_GETTEXT (never really used autoit).

A python script to get the text would look like this

#!/usr/bin/python
# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-

################################################################################# 
## automate find dialog
import ctypes
from ctypes.wintypes import BOOL, HWND, LPARAM

WNDENUMPROC = ctypes.WINFUNCTYPE(BOOL, HWND, LPARAM)                         

FindWindow = ctypes.windll.user32.FindWindowW
FindWindowEx = ctypes.windll.user32.FindWindowExW
SendMessage = ctypes.windll.user32.SendMessageW
EnumChildWindows = ctypes.windll.user32.EnumChildWindows
GetClassName = ctypes.windll.user32.GetClassNameW
create_unicode_buffer = ctypes.create_unicode_buffer


BM_CLICK = 0x00F5
SBT_OWNERDRAW = 0x1000
WM_USER = 0x400

SB_GETTEXTLENGTHW = WM_USER + 12
SB_GETTEXTW = WM_USER + 13

STATUSBAR_HANDLE = None

def on_press(window_handle, button_text):
    button_handle = FindWindowEx(window_handle, 0, u"Button", button_text)
    SendMessage(button_handle, BM_CLICK, 0, 0)

def get_result_from_statusbar(statusbar_item):
    retcode = SendMessage(STATUSBAR_HANDLE, SB_GETTEXTLENGTHW, statusbar_item, 0)
    length = retcode & 0xFFFF
    type = (retcode >> 16) & 0xFFFF
    _text = ''
    
    if type == SBT_OWNERDRAW:
        retcode = SendMessage(STATUSBAR_HANDLE, SB_GETTEXTW, statusbar_item, 0)
        _text =  'SBT_OWNERDRAW:{}'.format(ctypes.wstring_at(retcode))
    else: # not sure if this gets called at all
        text_buffer = create_unicode_buffer(length)        
        retcode = SendMessage(STATUSBAR_HANDLE, SB_GETTEXTW, statusbar_item, text_buffer)
        _text = 'text_buffer:{}'.format(text_buffer[:length]) 
            
    return _text

    
def EnumCallback(hwnd, lparam):
    global STATUSBAR_HANDLE
    curr_class = create_unicode_buffer(256)
    GetClassName(hwnd, curr_class, 256)
    if curr_class.value.lower() == "msctls_statusbar32":
        STATUSBAR_HANDLE = hwnd
        return False
    return True

notepad.menuCommand(MENUCOMMAND.SEARCH_FIND)

find_hwnd = FindWindow(None, u'Find')
EnumChildWindows(find_hwnd, WNDENUMPROC(EnumCallback), 0)

if STATUSBAR_HANDLE:
    on_press(find_hwnd, u'Coun&t')
    console.write(get_result_from_statusbar(0) + '\n')

The script opens the find dialog, then gets the window handle from that dialog,
enumerates all its child windows (aka controls) and if a statusbar control has been found,
simulates an button press on Count button and writes the statusbar message to the console.

Cheers
Claudia

AZJIO AZJIO

@Alan-Kilborn said:

Do you know if there is an alternate way of doing it that might be more reliable?

Using Au3Info.exe, check CLASS: # 32770

Alan Kilborn

@Claudia-Frank

Once again you are amazing! I haven’t tried what you propose yet but I have no doubt it will be awesome.

Alan Kilborn

@Claudia-Frank

I started working with and extending your script to do some other things on the Find dialog. I can get and set the state of radio buttons and checkboxes–yay! Some final things that I need to do are to get and/or set the text of the Find-what and Replace-with edit boxes (or comboboxes?). Is there a best way to do this? It isn’t as easy as with the other controls because these don’t have a caption. Can you post a short example of how to get text and set text to these edit controls on the Find dialog?

Claudia Frank

@Alan-Kilborn

Hi Alan,

you right, edit box aren’t easy to identify but, as far as I remember, you can rely on the order (z-order) how the controls get identified/returned.

So in this case you could check when the static box (aka label) returns with &Find what and set a
flag and when the edit control appears, check if flag is set and treat it. To retrieve or set the text
you can use the api functions GetWindowText and SetWindowText.

A simple example like this (only the callback part and the definitions of the code)

GetWindowText = ctypes.windll.user32.GetWindowTextW
GetWindowTextLength = ctypes.windll.user32.GetWindowTextLengthW
SetWindowText = ctypes.windll.user32.SetWindowTextW

STATUSBAR_HANDLE = None
FIND_WHAT = None
REPLACE_WITH = None


def EnumCallback(hwnd, lparam):
    global STATUSBAR_HANDLE
    global FIND_WHAT
    global REPLACE_WITH
    
    curr_class = ctypes.create_unicode_buffer(256)
    GetClassName(hwnd, curr_class, 256)
    
    length = GetWindowTextLength(hwnd)
    buff = ctypes.create_unicode_buffer(length + 1)
    GetWindowText(hwnd, buff, length + 1)
    
    if curr_class.value.lower() == 'msctls_statusbar32':
        STATUSBAR_HANDLE = hwnd
        # return False
    elif curr_class.value.lower() == 'static':
        if buff.value == '&Find what :':
            FIND_WHAT = True
        elif buff.value == 'Rep&lace with :':
            REPLACE_WITH = True
    elif curr_class.value.lower() == 'edit':
        if FIND_WHAT:
            SetWindowText(hwnd, u'xyz789')
            FIND_WHAT = False
        elif REPLACE_WITH:
            REPLACE_WITH = False
            SetWindowText(hwnd, u'123abc')
    else:
        console.write('{}({:^7}) : {}'.format(curr_class.value,hwnd, buff.value) + '\n' )
    return True

Cheers
Claudia

Scott Sumner

So the ideas presented here by @Claudia-Frank I think will allow me to stop using AutoIt in favor of Pythonscript for controlling the Find dialog functions. It seems very nice. To bring this thread back to where it began, here’s a P.S. based upon Claudia’s work that puts the current selection (which can include multiple lines) into the Find dialog’s Replace-with box. The part of it I question for general usage is the .decode('utf-8') – it seems to work for me, but I’m not an encoding expert by any means.

Here’s ReplaceWithBoxFromSelection.py :

import ctypes
from ctypes.wintypes import BOOL, HWND, LPARAM

WNDENUMPROC = ctypes.WINFUNCTYPE(BOOL, HWND, LPARAM)

FindWindow = ctypes.windll.user32.FindWindowW
FindWindowEx = ctypes.windll.user32.FindWindowExW
SendMessage = ctypes.windll.user32.SendMessageW
EnumChildWindows = ctypes.windll.user32.EnumChildWindows
GetClassName = ctypes.windll.user32.GetClassNameW
GetWindowText = ctypes.windll.user32.GetWindowTextW
GetWindowTextLength = ctypes.windll.user32.GetWindowTextLengthW
SetWindowText = ctypes.windll.user32.SetWindowTextW
create_unicode_buffer = ctypes.create_unicode_buffer

replace_tab_caption  = u'Replace'
replacewith_caption = u'Rep&lace with :'
replacewith_is_next_ctrl = False
replacewith_handle = None

def EnumCallback(hwnd, lparam):
    global replacewith_is_next_ctrl
    global replacewith_handle
    curr_class = create_unicode_buffer(256)
    GetClassName(hwnd, curr_class, 256)
    length = GetWindowTextLength(hwnd)
    buff = ctypes.create_unicode_buffer(length + 1)
    GetWindowText(hwnd, buff, length + 1)
    if curr_class.value.lower() == 'static':
        if buff.value == replacewith_caption:
            replacewith_is_next_ctrl = True
    elif curr_class.value.lower() == 'edit':
        if replacewith_is_next_ctrl:
            replacewith_handle = hwnd
            return False  # stop enumeration
    return True  # let enumeration continue

def main():
    msg = ''
    if editor.getSelections() == 1 and not editor.getSelectionEmpty():
        sel = editor.getSelText()
        if len(sel) > 2046:
            sel = sel[:2046]
            msg += 'Warning:  Selected text too long for replace-with box; truncating to 2046 characters.  '
        notepad.menuCommand(MENUCOMMAND.SEARCH_REPLACE)
        find_dialog_hwnd = FindWindow(None, replace_tab_caption)
        if find_dialog_hwnd:
            EnumChildWindows(find_dialog_hwnd, WNDENUMPROC(EnumCallback), 0)
            if replacewith_handle:
                if SetWindowText(replacewith_handle, sel.decode('utf-8')) == 0:
                    msg += 'Error:  Problem setting window text'
            else:
                msg += 'Error:  Bad value for replacewith_handle'
        else:
            msg += 'Error:  Bad value for find_dialog_hwnd'
    else:
        msg += 'Warning:  Nothing to copy into replace-with field'
    if len(msg) > 0: notepad.messageBox(msg)

main()

Claudia Frank

@Scott-Sumner

The part of it I question for general usage is the .decode(‘utf-8’)

I assume your way should work, regardless of the encoding used by the user,
if I understand scintilla and pythonscript plugin correctly.
editor.getSelText() always returns a byte string (python str) but, because we defined
unicode version of SetWindowText, this string needs to be converted as you did.
Maybe I’m wrong.

Cheers
Claudia

Scott Sumner

@Claudia-Frank

I did notice something else that was a bit odd (and drove me a little nuts until I figured out what was going on) when I was working on that script. Let’s see if I can describe it. Usually I work with English_customizable.xml loaded, and everything is consistent and as-expected. When working on that script, I switched back to English.xml, thinking that if I share the script here, it should not use my specific and custom Find dialog captions, but rather the generic English ones.

With English configured, I noticed that when Notepad++ starts up, it doesn’t exactly have English.xml set up, it has something close to it, but not exactly! I found that if I go back into the Preferences, and again select English from the dropdown (even though it is already selected), and have the Find dialog up at the same time, I can watch subtle changes occur in the Find dialog’s label/caption fields. For example, and I can watch a space be inserted (or removed) between “Find what” and the colon that follows (same for “Replace with”. I really have no idea why this is happening. Again, this only happens with English.xml, not English_customizable.xml.

The reason it was making me crazy was that I’d work on the script, have it working fine, then later I would notice it was breaking because it couldn’t find the controls. I kept changing the text strings to make it work and then later it would break again.

guy038

Hello, @scott-sumner and @claudia-frank,

Claudia, your automatic counting of any normal selection, multi-lines or not, works fine !

Scott, your ReplaceWithBoxFromSelection.py script is working nice, too !. I’ve just noticed that your script, automatically, copies the current normal and unique selection, BOTH, in the Find what : and in the Replace with: boxes. Is it the normal behaviour or am I wrong about it ?

This topic makes me think about an other possibility ! Let’s suppose that the option Settings > Preferences…> Editing > Multi-Editing Settings is enabled

Now, the goal would be :

To define TWO selected blocks of text, which could, independently, include multiple lines
To Write a Python script which :
- Opens the Find/Replace dialog
- Writes the first user selection, in the Find what: box
- Writes the second user selection, in the Replace with: box

Scott and Claudia, what is your feeling about it ?

Best Regards,

guy038

Claudia Frank

@Scott-Sumner and @guy038

Scott, I discovered something similar but thought it was related to using npp with wine.
If I open the find dialog and then switch from english to english_customizable and back
to english I loose the >> from “find next” button and the underscores (ampersands in text)
for the “count” and “find all in all opened documents” buttons.
I don’t see it as an issue as you normally set this once and done, but I see why it bothered you. ;-)
I have a shortcut to “Run Previous Script” which I use quite often.
What happens from time to time is that I execute another script while editing
the “current” script and then when I use the shortcut I assume that the current script
should be executed, which isn’t the case as another script was executed in between.
First thought I have in such a case is always, damn - what did I miss why isn’t it working anymore? What did I broke?
Checking the source again and again just to find out that haven’t executed the script. :-)
You see - seems to be “normal” programmer behavior ;-)

Guy, haven’t check it yet but I guess it should be easy to implement, yes.
If Scott, or anyone else hasn’t proposed a solution, I will give it a try in 10-12 hours.
Need to leave now.

Cheers
Claudia

Scott Sumner

@guy038 said:

copies the current normal and unique selection, BOTH, in the Find what : and in the Replace with: boxes

Hmmm. Yes, that is what it does but that was actually UNINTENTIONAL! I guess I didn’t notice because for years I have had an AutoIt script which does just that behavior. A lot of the time when doing replacements, I’m just doing a minor adjustment to the text I am finding, so it saves time to have both the Find-what and Replace-with fields initally set to the same data. I just make my minor tweak to the replace-with part and I am off to the races.

In this thread’s script (ReplaceWithBoxFromSelection.py), however, I believe this happens due to the normal invocation of the Replace command (with notepad.menuCommand(MENUCOMMAND.SEARCH_REPLACE))–when a selection is active, Notepad++ on its own puts the selected text in the Find-what box. Perhaps that is less than desirable here in this script. :(

Scott Sumner

@guy038 said:

This topic makes me think about an other possibility

I like your idea and it should be easy, but I will defer to Claudia as I am extremely busy at the moment. :-D

guy038

Hi, @scott-sumner and @claudia-frank

Many thanks, in advance, for this future script ! This short post give me the opportunity to express, once again, all my gratitude towards you, Claudia and Scott, for your numerous scripts, on various topics, which helped us, significantly, so many times :-D

Cheers,

guy038