Find and Add To Selection In 7.7

guy038

As @dinkumoil and, probably, most of you, I’ve just studied the two new Scintilla commands SCI_MULTIPLESELECTADDNEXT and SCI_MULTIPLESELECTADDEACH ! Really impressive ;-))

Install, of course, the last v0.9 (32 bits ) version of LuaScript, on the last v7.7 version of N++
Modify, like me, the startup.lua file, as below :

-- Startup script
-- Changes will take effect once Notepad++ is restarted

npp.AddShortcut("Selection Add Next", "Ctrl+F12", function()
    editor:MultipleSelectAddNext()
end)

npp.AddShortcut("Selection Add Each", "Shift+Ctrl+F12", function()
    editor:MultipleSelectAddEach()
end)

-- And affected the 'ALT + F12' shortcut to the 'Plugins > LuaScript > Execute Current File' option
--                   ---------                   ------------------------------------------

Affect, as noticed, the Alt + F12 shortcut to the menu command Plugins > LuaScript > Execute Current File
Then, paste this simple Lua file, below, in a new tab

--[[  TEST part

TEST
test
T.*T
t.*t
123T.*T456
123 T.*T 456
123t.*t456
123 t.*t 456
123TEST
123test
123 TEST
123 test
TEST456
test456
TEST 456
test 456
123TEST456
123test456
123 TEST 456
123 test 456

]]

--[[  FLAGS definition :

Command :  editor.SearchFlags = SCFIND_WHOLEWORD  ( or = 2 )
command :  editor.SearchFlags = SCFIND_MATCHCASE  ( or = 4 )
command :  editor.SearchFlags = SCFIND_WORDSTART  ( or = 2^20 )
command :  editor.SearchFlags = SCFIND_REGEXP     ( or = 2^21 )

Examples :

editor.SearchFlags = 0                                => Mode NORMAL WITHOUT options 'Match case' and 'Whole word only'
editor.SearchFlags = SCFIND_REGEXP | SCFIND_MATCHCASE => Mode 'REGULAR expression' with option 'Match case'
editor.SearchFlags = 4 | 2                            => Mode NORMAL with options 'Match case' and 'Whole word only'
editor.SearchFlags = SCFIND_WORDSTART                 => Mode NORMAL with option 'Not preceded with a WORD char.'
]]

-- editor.SearchFlags = SCFIND_REGEXP | SCFIND_MATCHCASE
-- editor.SearchFlags = 4 | 2
-- editor.SearchFlags = 0

--[[   TARGET definition :

Command    :  editor:SetTargetRange(Offset start, Offset end) - The Go to... command ( Ctrl +G ), with
                                                                  the 'Offset' option, may help !

or command :  editor:TargetFromSelection()                    - Do a NORMAL MAIN selection, in this SCRIPT file
                                                              - Run 'editor:TargetFromSelection()' on Lua CONSOLE
															  - Then, execute this Lua SCRIPT file

or command :  editor:TargetWholeDocument()                    - Self-explanatory
]]

-- editor:TargetWholeDocument()
-- editor:SetTargetRange(69, 140)  -- TARGET, from START of line 9 to END of line 15


-- And... execute the MAGIC command !

editor:MultipleSelectAddEach()

-- LAST TeSt line

Save it with name Test.lua

As you can see, the only uncommented command is editor:MultipleSelectAddEach()

Now re-start N++ and re-open this Test.lua, if necessary
Unset the Word wrap feature ( View > Word wrap )
Zoom out till the maximum ( Ctrl + Num+ )
Click on the vertical bar to scroll down, in order that the line 8 is on top of the windows text

=> So, you should see, approximatively, from line 8 to line 21 ( with the default Courier New font )

Now, do a normal selection of the string t.*t, on line 10
Finally, run the command Plugins > LuaScript > Execute Current File or hit on Alt + F12 ( my shortcut )

=> You should see that the word test in any case, as well as the forms T.*T and t.*t are selected from line 8 till line 20, only, as well as 13 cursors appear, on the right of each selection !

This means that, by default, if, either, NO flags were previously set and NO target was previously defined, the lua command editor:MultipleSelectAddEach() seems to select all matches of the string t.*t, in regular expression mode, without the Match case and Match whole word only options, in all the visible lines of the current screen !?

Of course, if you uncomment the line editor:TargetWholeDocument() and redo the same actions as above, ending with the Plugins > LuaScript > Execute Current File command, this time, a lot of selections, matching the regex criteria t.*t, have appeared, in the whole document

=> It’s easy to see that the search is performed in a regex way as many lines, outside the test zone, with variable length, have been also selected !

Now :

Comment, again, the editor:TargetWholeDocument() line
Uncomment the line editor:SetTargetRange(69, 140) -- TARGET, from START of line 9 to END of line 15
Zoom out till the maximum ( Ctrl + Num+ )
Select the string t.*t, in line 10
Click on the vertical bar to scroll down till the end of the script
Run the command Plugins > LuaScript > Execute Current File

=> This time, you should see the line 9 on top of the view and, both, the t.*t and test, in any case, selected from line 9 to line 15

Note : for the editor:TargetFromSelection() command, refer to the explanations in comments !

Now :

Comment the line editor:SetTargetRange(69, 140) -- TARGET, from START of line 9 to END of line 15
Uncomment the editor:TargetWholeDocument() line
Uncomment the editor.SearchFlags = 0 line
Select the string t.*t, in line 10
Run the command Plugins > LuaScript > Execute Current File

=> This time, the ranges, matching the string t.*t, in any case, are selected, only, ( from lines 5 to 10 ) Logic, as the search is perfomed in a normal insensitive way !

Then :

Move the cursor at beginning of line 17, without selecting anything
Run the command Plugins > LuaScript > Execute Current File

=> The word TEST is now selected

Run, again, the same command Plugins > LuaScript > Execute Current File

=> As expected, this time, all the words TEST, in any case, are selected, included the last line, with word TeSt

Now :

Comment the editor.SearchFlags = 0 line
Uncomment the editor.SearchFlags = 4 | 2 ...........
Double-click on the word test, in line 22
Run the command Plugins > LuaScript > Execute Current File

=> Only the true words test, in lower-case, are selected ( in lines 4, 14, 18 and 22 )

Finally :

Comment the editor.SearchFlags = 4 | 2 ...........
**Uncomment the editor.SearchFlags = SCFIND_REGEXP | SCFIND_MATCHCASE
Select all line 5 contents ( T.*T )
Run the command Plugins > LuaScript > Execute Current File

=> As expected, the longest ranges of text of lines, beginning and ending with the upper-case letter T, are selected, even embedded in other ranges of characters !

Best Regards,

guy038

P.S. : A last interesting test :

First, create this tiny lua script, below, which you’ll name Test_2.lua :

editor.SearchFlags = 0

editor:TargetWholeDocument()

print ("Parameters SET !")

Then, create a dummy file, containing, 100 times, the sample text, below :

This a test of MULTI-selections
test of MULTI-selections
1234567890This a test of MULTI-selections
t.*t										This a test of MULTI-selections
                                                        This a test of MULTI-selections
This atestof MULTI-selections
This a TeSt of MULTI-selections 1234567890
This a test
This a test of MULTI-selections
test

=> So, you get a 1,000 lines text, each containing the word Test, in various cases

Save it in your current directory
Move back to the beginning of this test file ( Ctrl + Home )
Execute the menu command Plugins > LuaScript > Show console
In the opened lua console, write the command winfile.dofile("Test_2.lua") and valid with the Enter key

=> The message Parameters SET ! confirms the good execution of the script

Then double-click on the word test, in line 1 of current file
Finally, run the menu command Plugins > LuaScript > Selection Add Each

Waaaaouh ! Immediately, 1,000 words Test are selected, at once ! And, after hitting the Right arrow key, 1,000 cursors are visible and available for adding/deleting characters ;-)))

This is multi-selection !!!

Alan Kilborn

@guy038 said:

This is multi-selection !!!

Yes. But maybe I am not understanding the fascination. As the OP mentioned in the first posting in this thread, there’s been “workaround” ways (see the link in that first posting) to achieve this type of multiselection for a long time…and all of the above in THIS thread is still workaround.

What is really needed to make this complete is a good interface within Notepad++ itself (no scripting plugins). Then, when someone posts to the Community “I can match the text I need by doing a regex-find, but how can I copy that text to a new document?”, we can finally give them a good answer. And by good I mean one that doesn’t start out with “Install a scripting plugin…”. Not that there’s anything wrong with scripting plugins, but it is just too cumbersome for someone that has a single need.

Ekopalypse

@dinkumoil - I guess your nppexec script can be reduced to this

sci_sendmsg SCI_SETSEARCHFLAGS SCFIND_WHOLEWORD
sci_sendmsg 2690  // SCI_TARGETWHOLEDOCUMENT

sci_sendmsg SCI_GETSELECTIONEMPTY
if $(MSG_RESULT) == 1 then
  sci_sendmsg 2688  // SCI_MULTIPLESELECTADDNEXT
 
sci_sendmsg 2689  // SCI_MULTIPLESELECTADDEACH

What do you think?

dinkumoil

@Ekopalypse said:

What do you think?

Except the missing endif ;) - nice catch, it works!

Seems like SCI_MULTIPLESELECTADDEACH needs an active selection and SCI_MULTIPLESELECTADDNEXT doesn’t.

EDIT: Seems like even the endif is not necessary, I apologize. ;)

Ekopalypse

@dinkumoil

aahhhhh - I constantly forget about using it. :-)
Yes, it works without but as the syntax defines it, it should be used, imho.
Who knows what a future update will do.

guy038

Hi, @alan-kilborn and All,

I admit that my enthusiasm is a bit excessive ! Just because I’m rather an old guy, which knew MS-DOS 5.0, WinWord 6 and Excel 5 and, even, some older goodies. So, I’m a little overwhelmed to see all these new powerful features ;-))

By the way, I’m no longer surprised to create rectangular selections, over, let say, 50,000 lines , with N++, for years now ! Quite similar, except that all the cursors are aligned ;-))

Cheers,

guy038

cipher-1024

I thought this was a three post thread and then it was done! NPP Community delivers! I wound up putting @dail 's LuaScript into the startup script for the Lua plugin and it’s working great.

Out of curiosity I tried installing NppExec on the 7.7 minimalist install and trying out @dinkumoil 's script but it would only select the current word and never go into multiedit mode. (7.7 32bit, NppExec 0.6RC3). There are no errors in the console. I don’t know if the minimalist version and my older, installed version are conflicting in some way, but I couldn’t get the script to work.

@Alan-Kilborn , thanks for the python script, unfortunately I’m still on 1.0.8 so I haven’t tried it out yet. But once I’m back to being current, I will.

My job is being inconvenient and making me do stuff, so I need to sit tight on upgrading for a bit until I have time to iron out any old plugin issues that I may run into after the upgrading. Thank you one and all. This is a great community.

dinkumoil

@cipher-1024 said:

trying out @dinkumoil 's script but it would only select the current word and never go into multiedit mode.

I guess you only tried the first or second version of the script. The final one and the shortened version of @Ekopalypse some postings above should work.

Alan Kilborn

@cipher-1024 said:

I tried installing NppExec on the 7.7 minimalist install…and trying out the script…but it would only select the current word and never go into multiedit mode

Multi-editing is disabled in a clean install or a portable install:

Imgur

Did you go into the preferences and enable it like this?:

Imgur

Alternatively, this can be added at the top of the NppExec script, to turn multi-selection ability ON:

sci_sendmsg 2563 1

Here’s where the 2563 comes from, in the Scintilla interface file:

# Set whether multiple selections can be made
set void SetMultipleSelection=2563(bool multipleSelection,)

Alan Kilborn

…and I guess for the same reason the Pythonscript presented earlier could benefit from the addition near the top of:

editor.setMultipleSelection(True) # in case not enabled in the Preferences

cipher-1024

@Alan-Kilborn , you got it in one. Who would have thought you’d have to enable multi-edit to multi-edit… NppExec script is working on my 7.7 test install. Thanks again.

AndreCunha

Besides enabling Multi-Editing (as explained by @Alan-Kilborn in his comment), I just had to call the functions directly, just like Scintilla documentation specifies:

SCI_MULTIPLESELECTADDNEXT adds the next occurrence of the main selection within the target to the set of selections as main. If the current selection is empty then select word around caret.
SCI_MULTIPLESELECTADDEACH is similar to SCI_MULTIPLESELECTADDNEXT but adds multiple occurrences instead of just one.

For me, it was unnecessary to call SCI_TARGETWHOLEDOCUMENT, so, for selecting all instances of the word at once, you could just call SCI_MULTIPLESELECTADDNEXT followed by SCI_MULTIPLESELECTADDEACH:

// selects all instances of the selected word (or the word around the caret)
sci_sendmsg 2688 // SCI_MULTIPLESELECTADDNEXT
sci_sendmsg 2689 // SCI_MULTIPLESELECTADDEACH

…which has the same effect of simply calling SCI_MULTIPLESELECTADDEACH twice:

// selects all instances of the selected word (or the word around the caret)
sci_sendmsg 2689 // SCI_MULTIPLESELECTADDEACH
sci_sendmsg 2689 // SCI_MULTIPLESELECTADDEACH

Or, instead of blindly calling it twice, you could check if something is already selected with SCI_GETSELECTIONEMPTY (as used on other comments) and then call it only once:

// selects all instances of the selected word (or the word around the caret)
sci_sendmsg SCI_GETSELECTIONEMPTY
if $(MSG_RESULT) == 1 then
  sci_sendmsg 2688 // SCI_MULTIPLESELECTADDNEXT
endif

sci_sendmsg 2689 // SCI_MULTIPLESELECTADDEACH

PS: It would be really nice to have both commands (SCI_MULTIPLESELECTADDNEXT and SCI_MULTIPLESELECTADDEACH) available for hotkeys in “Settings” > “Shortcut Mapper” > “Scintilla commands”.