Find & replace
The find bar for the file you are in, the Search panel for a whole project, and which one to reach for.
| Tool | Key | Searches |
|---|---|---|
| Find bar | Ctrl+F | the current file, highlighting matches as you type |
| Search panel | Ctrl+Shift+F | the whole project on disk, all open files, or just the current one |
This topic is still to be written. It will cover: the find bar, with
Ctrl+H adding the replace row, live highlighting and the match count, F3 and
Shift+F3 stepping with wrap-around, and the match-case and whole-word
toggles; two-step Replace, and Replace All as a single undo step; the Search
panel and its three scopes; regex patterns with backreferences; replacing across
a scope; and escalating from the find bar into the panel with your search text
and options intact.
Until then, the Find and replace and Project search entries in README.md summarise both tools.
One rule nothing on screen tells you
Searching the whole project on disk skips files bigger than about 2 MB and files that look binary — the same test the editor makes before it opens one, with a smaller limit, because a search that walks a whole tree can afford to pass over what it cannot usefully show.
Those files are skipped silently, so a word that lives only inside a very large log will not be found. The other two scopes search files you already have open, whatever their size.
Further reading
- The editor — why Replace All is one undo step.
- Keyboard shortcuts — the find and search chords.
- Right-click menus — the editing menu the find bar's and the Search panel's fields carry.