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What are the things that can be achieved only in Wildedit and not in Textpad?

From WildEdit's help:

WildEdit® is an interactive tool for power users to make the same changes to a set of text files in a folder hierarchy, filtered by wildcards. You simply specify a search pattern, optionally using a regular expression, and a replacement format, then let it run.

It has a powerful and versatile regex engine (Boost: http://www.boost.org/libs/regex/).

But it is not designed for viewing files or for directly manipulating the text in them. You couldn't write a program or a letter using it.

TextPad is a text editor, designed primarily for viewing files, one at a time, and for directly manipulating the text in them.

It has a rather weak regex engine.

I use both TextPad and WildEdit, and I'm quite happy with both of them.

It is possible, in some instances, to do in TextPad what one might otherwise do in WildEdit.

Let's assume you have 4 files, all in the same folder, for which you need to change all instances of "Fred" to "Barney". From TextPad, Close All, Open the 4 files, Search, Replace, enter "Fred" in "Find what:", enter "Barney" in "Replace with:", All documents, Replace All, Close, File, Save All, Close.

Done.

However, let's assume you had not 4, but 4,000 such files you needed to update. You could still do it with TextPad, but how long would it take you? Suppose the files were spread over 150 different directories and subdirectories? And there were other files in those directories and subdirectories which also contained the string "Fred" which you did not want to modify?

I think WildEdit can prove it's merits quickly, depending upon a person's needs, and it won't take 4,000 files to prove itself.

TextPad is to Swiss Army Knife as WildEdit is to Sledge-O-Matic.

I don't use WildEdit every day, but when I need it, I NEED IT!