Wish Find/Replace to support multiple modules

Erel

B4X founder
Staff member
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Longtime User
I don't remember that this change and a few others were requested by anyone in this forum.
Of course no one requested that the Find / Replace will be limited to a single module.

The find/replace dialog is part of the third party library that the IDE uses. It doesn't support multiple modules. I suggested this feature myself in their forum:
SS-2015-06-12_13.35.06.png


As the main search feature does support searching in multiple modules I decided at this point not to modify their source code and add this feature (which will probably happen at some point in the future).

Major features requested since long like the ability to fully support custom views with their properties are still missing.
Many features requested before were implemented in the new version. As I wrote in another thread, the designer is implemented in such a way that will make this feature much more feasible, this wasn't the case in the previous designer.

BTW, many parameters are considered before I decide to implement a feature. The time the feature was requested (if is was requested at all) is not one of those parameters.
 

joneden

Active Member
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Longtime User
+1

Is anyone using an external search and replace tool with any success until this is added?

Edit: I tried Text crawler and that works. Slightly tricky when using shared libraries as all apps need to have the updates done but it handles it.
 
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JohnC

Expert
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Longtime User
+1 for global find/replace - its a real productivity killer having to go into each module and repeat the process
 

JohnC

Expert
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Longtime User
Any update from the vendor on adding this feature?
 

JohnC

Expert
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Longtime User
Hey Erel,

I contacted the vendor (Actipro) just to see if they had any ETA of adding this support, and they said they have no idea at this time, but suggested that I (the user of there IDE component) could implement it myself.

So, since you already wrote a routine that can search across all modules (quick search), I'm hoping it wouldn't be to difficult to modify the find/replace routing to also span across all documents/modules. What do you think?
 

JohnC

Expert
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Longtime User
Erel,

After two years, it appears obvious that adding this feature is not a priority to Actipro because they say it can be implemented by the user (you).

So, since this feature has been +1'd many times in this thread, and since we have been wishing for this feature for almost 2 years, and since the IDE author is not going to implement it, I hope all these "parameters" help you decide to finally implement this much need productivity booster soon :)

Right now I am wasting time because I need to rename some global variables I have (by using the "Process_Globals" as it is designed to be used), and I am forced to do a quick search, then switch to doing a find/replace on the first found module, then switch back to quick search and visually scan the results list and figure out the next module to display (because the quick search list includes many occurrences in the same file), then jump to find/replace, then jump to quick find, etc.
 

JohnC

Expert
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Longtime User
Looking forward to it being implemented in B4A!
 

JohnC

Expert
Licensed User
Longtime User
I see that you implemented the "Replace all" in the "quick search" and "find all references" window.

But, I just ran into a situation where a traditional find/replace dialog would have been helpful instead of the above workarounds.

I need to replace just some of the occurrences in a project and not all of them. So I can't use your "replace" because it will perform the action in all modules.

It would really be handy if the pop-up "Find / Replace" dialog could be modified to perform like it does in many other IDE's by supporting the "Look In:" choice of "entire project" (not just "document" and "selection"). This way I can jump from match to match and only select "replace" for the occurrences that I actually want to replace.
 
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