[Geany] find and replace

[John Gabriele]

On 8/4/06, John Gabriele <jmg3000 at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 8/4/06, Nick Treleaven <nick.treleaven at btinternet.com> wrote:
> > On 04/08/06 06:52:51, John Gabriele wrote:
> > [snip]
> > >
> > > With regard to the "Replace control characters", I see that this
> > > means: if you put one of these 2-character patterns in your replace
> > > string (like \t), you'll actually get the control character when the
> > > replace happens (instead of the two separate '\' and 't' characters).
> > > It may be an error that this option is in the "Find" dialog, correct?
> >
> > No, what if you want to find lines with a certain indentation? Also it
> > can be used to find Unicode characters by their code.
>
> Ah. Ok. I was confused because the overloading of the word "replace"
> (in connection with "find and replace"). In both the "Find" and
> "Replace" dialogs, it might make it more clear to change this
> checkboxe's name from "Replace control characters" to "Interpret
> control characters", since the editor is "interpreting" what you
> really mean when you type \t or \uXXXX. [snip]

You know, it just occurs to me now (since I don't think I've ever
explicitly used unicode) that this feature is probably much more
widely used for the unicode than for the ascii control chars (the only
ascii one I can think of that I might come across is \t, and for that
I always think "regex"). So, the checkbox item could say "Interpret
unicode" or else maybe the possibly-too-verbose "Interpret unicode and
control characters".

Hmm... Wait a sec. Have you ever considered using that checkbox
explicitly and only for unicode interpretation, and leaving the ascii
control codes only to be specified as escapes in regexes?

My guess is that it's conceivable that you might one day either allow
extended regexes (another checkbox in the Find and Replace dialogs?),
or maybe even migrate entirely to a different regex engine. Dunno how
regexes and unicode chars are connected wrt the regex code though...

---John