3 Important Ones

[eurokous]

1) Count Occurrences
2) Block Select pushing
3) Merge of Find and Replace


1) Put a button in the Find dialogue for counting the number of occurrences of the string in the field. That would be such a huge help.

2) When block selecting, if I hit the tab key, don't replace everything I have selected with a single tab character as the starting position of the cursor. Push the text to the right every time a tab is hit. If a single column is selected, and the "a" key is pressed, insert an "a" in every single selected cell and every character that is typed. This would be a revolutionary addition!

3) Just merge the find and replace functionality. Do it like Ultra Edit does it where you can toggle back and forth from the dialogue.

I've recommended TextPad to our company and they're going to buy 10 licenses.

Hope that helps buy some groceries.

Thanks,

euro

[WayneCa]

Yet another old post, but 2008 is more recent than 2001.

I am responding because I would like to see the first item included in the find dialog. Counting hundreds of occurrences manually takes far too much time, and is prone to mistakes.

One of the purposes I use TP for is designing puzzles for Sokoban game engines. These puzzles are text-based and are comprised of a specific set of characters:

# = wall block
<space>, - or _ = floor cell
@ = pusher, + = pusher on goal cell
$ = box, * = box on goal cell, and . = goal cell

The count of boxes and goal cells must match, which means the $ and . counts must be the same. There can be hundreds (if not thousands) of these in a large puzzle, and I need to make sure the counts match. It would speed things up greatly if I could use a function to count them.

[ak47wong]

It's a bit clumsy, but there is a workaround that may help. If you use the Replace command to replace all occurrences of a character, the status bar will show the number of replacements performed, thus giving you a count of how many times the character was found. You can then undo the replace operation.

[WayneCa]

Thanks, ak47wong. I have been using this method, and yes it does work, but as you say, it is clumsy. What I would really like is a 3rd button beside the context search (something like a "C" for count) that counts the occurrences of whatever you type into the search field. This would eliminate having to open any dialog, and there is plenty of room on the toolbar to add the button.

Edit: I referred to it as context search. I believe the correct term is incremental find.

[kengrubb]

Another method is to use Find In Files

- Bring up the file you wish to search in TP
- Search
- Find In Files
- Click Defaults button (which changes In Folder to the folder where the file you want to search is located)
- Click the ... button next to In Files to browse to your file
- Select File Counts Only
- Find