Search++: A work in progress

Alan Kilborn

I haven’t checked it out yet, but going on the feature description, it sounds as if you’ve made Notepad++'s native search functionality essentially obsolete.

Coises

@Alan-Kilborn said in Search++: A work in progress:

@Coises

I haven’t checked it out yet, but going on the feature description, it sounds as if you’ve made Notepad++'s native search functionality essentially obsolete.

I grant that it is an ambitious project… far too ambitious to suggest as changes to Notepad++. (Apart from all the other changes, just the difference in the way search is implemented, which comes from Columns++, is almost certainly too large and risky a change to propose to the base program.) If it is successful, I hope it can supplant native search in nearly all situations for those who like its user interface.

I’m sure some people are going to take one look at the UI and go… WTF? I have an admitted bias towards designing toolboxes for power users over leading casual users by the hand. I try to be intuitive, but I’ll take functionality over obviousness if it’s an either/or choice. That’s not going to work for everybody… not everyone has the time and interest to read documentation to figure out how to use a search dialog.

I’m sure glitches and omissions in the feature set will turn up. If I’m lucky, I’ll be able to address them without radical redesign.

It’s still missing search in open documents and search in files in a directory… until and unless I can add those, it will be lacking crucial capabilities of native search. I think that and the search results in dark mode (which shouldn’t be all that difficult, I just haven’t worked it out yet) are the only blockers, aside from gaining a history of stability and reliability, to adopting it as a “daily driver” search for those who would choose to do so.

Alan Kilborn

@Coises said:

bias towards designing toolboxes for power users over leading casual users by the hand

I consider this a good thing. :-)

I’m sure some people are going to take one look at the UI and go… WTF?

Like this?
https://github.com/notepad-plus-plus/notepad-plus-plus/issues/9627
:-)

Coises

@Alan-Kilborn said in Search++: A work in progress:

Like this?
https://github.com/notepad-plus-plus/notepad-plus-plus/issues/9627
:-)

Now my head hurts.

Perhaps I should have included screenshots. Docked (default):

Horizontal (non-docking):

guy038

Hello, @coises and All,

I’m presently testing your new Search++ plugin : really awesome ;-))

I’ll share my first impressions with you in a few hours. Many thanks for this new valuable plugin !

Best Regards,

guy038

Michael Vincent

@Coises said in Search++: A work in progress:

I present Search++ as a work in progress:

At first I thought you were resurrecting the old SearchPlus plugin. Ironically, you had to “search” online for it since it wasn’t included in Plugin Manager (Manager, not Admin at the time).

In any case, your ++ version seems to have way more capabilities already and it’s just “a work in progress”.

Cheers.

guy038

Hi, @coises and All,

First impressions :

Regarding the menus : in order to harmonize all the sub-menus :

I suppose that the Find sub-menus could be expressed as below :

Find Forward                         or  Find                  
Find Forward in Selection            or  Find in Selection     
Find Forward in Marked Text          or  Find in Marked Text   
Find Forward in Whole Document       or  Find in Whole Document
----------------------------------------------------------------
Find Backward
Find Backward in Selection
Find Backward in Marked Text
Find Backward in Whole Document

Similarly, the Replace dialog could be expressed as below :

Replace and Find Forward                     or  Replace and Find                   
Replace and Find Forward in Selection        or  Replace and Find in Selection
Replace and Find Forward in Marked Text      or  Replace and Find in Marked Text
Replace and Find Forward in Whole Document   or  Replace and Find in Whole Document
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Replace and Find Backward
Replace and Find Backward in Selection
Replace and Find Backward in Marked Text
Replace and Find Backward in Whole Document
-------------------------------------------------------
Find or Replace Forward                      or  Find or Replace                   
Find or Replace Forward in Selection         or  Find or Replace in Selection
Find or Replace Forward in Marked Text       or  Find or Replace in Marked Text
Find or Replace Forward in Whole Document    or  Find or Replace in Whole Document
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Find or Replace Backward
Find or Replace Backward in Selection
Find or Replace Backward in Marked Text
Find or Replace Backward in Whole Document

Finally, I think that the Count and Replace All menus should adopt the same presentation as the Find All / Mark / Select / Show sub-menus, i.e. :

Count All
Count Before
Count After
--------------------------------
Count All in Selection
--------------------------------
Count All in Marked Text
Count Before in MArked Text
Count After in Marked Text
--------------------------------
Count All in Whole Document
Count BeFore in Whole Document
Count After in Whole Document

And

Replace All
Replace All Before
Replace All After
----------------------------------------
Replace All in Selection
----------------------------------------
Replace All in Marked Text
Replace All Before in MArked Text
Replace All After in Marked Text
----------------------------------------
Replace All in Whole Document
Replace All Before in Whole Document
Replace All After in Whole Document

Regarding the Search++ results panel :

I’m a bit annoyed to not be able to clear this panel at any time and that I need to close and re-open a N++ session to that purpose ! Personally, an option in the Tools menu, to clear the Search++ Results panel would be great !

Regarding the search direction :

I do appreciate to temporarily reverse the search direction, with native N++ search, by hitting or releasing the Shift key ! Would it be possible to add this functionality to Search++ plugin ?

Regarding the button’s labels :
First, I would say that the possibility to change the default value of a button by hitting the Shift key while clicking on a specific sub-menu, is very interesting !

After testing all the cases, I noticed that :

The Backward direction is noted with the ← arrow, in the Find and Replace sub-menus
The Forward direction is noted with the → arrow, in the Find and Replace sub-menus
The Before indication is noted with the ↑ arrow, in the Count, Find All / Mark / Select / Show and Replace All sub-menus
The After indication is noted with the ↓ arrow, in the Count, Find All / Mark / Select / Show and Replace All sub-menus
The All/Everywhere indication is noted with the ↕ arrow, in the Count, Find All / Mark / Select / Show and Replace All sub-menus

However, the indications for Selection, Marked text and Whole document, at beginning of buttons, are rather difficult to visualize : May be, a different and distinctive shape and/or color would be welcome ! I put the 3 cases in a single picture and they look as below :

400912e6-5887-4161-8170-929b31cf0b74-Capture d'écran 2026-03-27 215714.png

The Find button is preceded by the whole document mark
The Count button is preceded by the Marked Text mark
The Find All button is preceded by the Selection mark

I’ve begun to study the purpose of each sub-menu ( not so obvious ! ) and I’ll probably ask you about some weird behaviours in a next post

Best Regards,

guy038

Coises

@guy038 said in Search++: A work in progress:

I’ve begun to study the purpose of each sub-menu ( not so obvious ! )

This section of the help might help.

I think it indeed might be a little more confusing than it needs to be, but I haven’t found the magic formula to simplify it yet.

I omitted “All” from the commands other than Find All and Replace All because they can’t be step-wise… you can’t Count the next match. So in a logical sense, I’m thinking that “Find” and ”Find All” are two different things (not that “Find All” is “Find” with “All” added as a modifier). But it is potentially confusing.

Backward and Before sound awfully similar, as do Forward and After… but Backward and Forward are for single step searches while Before and After are for multiple-result searches. It is not as intuitive as I wish it were.

You are right, clear is missing from the results list and it should be there. I’ll probably put it on the right-click menu for the search results, with something as a keyboard shortcut. To go with that, unless there’s some reason it doesn’t work as I would hope, I’ll probably want to enable Undo/Redo so that if you inadvertently clear the results, you can recover them.

(Oh, I should mention that there is a version 0.2 that fixes a couple reported issues and a couple more I found while fixing those.)

Coises

I said in Search++: A work in progress:

I omitted “All” from the commands other than Find All and Replace All because they can’t be step-wise… you can’t Count the next match. So in a logical sense, I’m thinking that “Find” and ”Find All” are two different things (not that “Find All” is “Find” with “All” added as a modifier). But it is potentially confusing.

@guy038 and anyone else reading:

Would it be more clear, less clear or equally impenetrable if I changed “Find All” to “List”?

When you think of it, “Find All” is not the result of doing “Find” multiple times. It’s an entirely different operation: listing matches in the results window. On the other hand, it’s the phrase that’s familiar.

The other verbs on that button are all single words not used anywhere else — Mark, Select and Show — so “List” would have a certain symmetry.

I’m sort of talking myself into changing it, but I wonder if others think that would just add to the mystery?

“Replace All” at least really is the result of doing the same thing as “Replace,” but as many times as possible, so that’s at least consistent.

Should there be an option to add a list of replacements done by “Replace All” to the search results list? If so, should that be a button alternative (that’s what I would think) or a setting?

I hate the “Replace and Find” vs “Find or Replace” naming, but I have not been able to think of a clear and concise way to express what each does. (If it is not obvious to anyone reading, they are the comparable to Notepad++ Replace with “Replace: Don’t move to the following occurrence” unchecked or checked.) Both do a Find unless a Find was already done just before. (In a similar way, though not internally quite the same, as Columns++, and differently from Notepad++, this is checked by monitoring whether the selection is changed, not by repeating the Find. That’s what makes it possible for \K to work in stepwise Find/Replace.)

So they are really “Find if you didn’t just find, otherwise replace and then find” and “find if you didn’t just find, otherwise replace (and stay put so I can see what just happened).”

Coises

@guy038 said in Search++: A work in progress:

I do appreciate to temporarily reverse the search direction, with native N++ search, by hitting or releasing the Shift key ! Would it be possible to add this functionality to Search++ plugin ?

Yes, that makes sense for the step-wise Find and Replace buttons in the plain text search. I don’t think there’s any reason I can’t make it work.