Quick Replace In Selection README

Quick Replace In Selection let you search and replace all occurrences by a regular expression (regex) (or literal string#1), within the current selection or the whole document.

It also support predefined rules to be used, and those rules allow multiple replacements in order at a time.

Note: By default, all matches are case sensitive #2, and ^, $ match text selection boundaries instead of line boundaries #3.

Commands & Demo

Quick Replace In Selection

Quick Replace In Selection (Use Rule)... (Shortcut: Ctrl-K Ctrl-H)

Quick Replace Selections To...

Replace every selection with the inputted replacement, which has the same syntax as "Quick Replace In Selection". Usually the replacement contains $& to be useful.

Quick Replace In Selection (Repeat Last)

Repeat the last replace action which use either input expressions, or a rule.

Features

This extension use the regular expression that JavaScript support for search and replace. In addition, a $& in the "Replace to" input box or "replace" values in the rules mean the whole match.

The "Replace to" input box support extra escape sequence \n, \r, \t, \\ as in regex. Other unrecognized sequences are preserved.

E.g. ".+ replace to [$&]" would mean replace any non-empty string (excluding newline characters), in the selected text(s), to be wrapped by [].

For more information on regular expression, you may checkout:

• https://medium.com/factory-mind/regex-tutorial-a-simple-cheatsheet-by-examples-649dc1c3f285

Major Use Case

Sometimes you might want to replace some character(s) to another within current text selection (e.g. to delimit the text into lines).

However, VS Code's builtin Replace may have these inconveniences:

• too many steps: need to open dialog, enable the "Find in selection" option, some Tab keys or clicks, and need to press/trigger "Replace All"
• it changes the last Find Target memory

This extension solves them all.

Requirements

None.

Extension Settings

This extension contributes the following settings:

• quickReplaceInSelection.rules: define the rules to be used by the command Quick Replace In Selection (Use Rule)...

  E.g. to define a rule which replaces newlines to \n, add this to your settings file:

  "quickReplaceInSelection.rules": {
      "Test Rule's Name": {
          "find": ["\n"],
          "replace": ["\\n"]
      }
  }
  

  Remark: Next to "find": & "replace": above, can specify "flags" to add regular expression's modifiers.
    E.g. specify "flags": "i" for case insensitive match, or "flags": "m" to change ^, $ to match line boundaries instead.

Hints:

• For how to define rules in the configuration, you could look at the default rules as examples. (Ctrl-Shift-P to open command palette, type "Open Default Settings (JSON)" & Enter, and search for quickReplaceInSelection.rules)
• You could make use of the default rules Escape literal string for PCRE/extended regular expression (optional) and then Json stringify and to put your regular expression in the "find" settings of quickReplaceInSelection.rules.
• An experimental feature: to only replace the first match (instead of all matches) in each selection, put a trailing -g in the "flags" of the rule, or a leading "?-g " in regex input box.

Default Rules

Some default rules are listed here:

• Encode html entities (minimal)
• Escape literal string for PCRE/extended regular expression
• Join lines by comma
• Json stringify
• Quote as C-string
• Single-quote lines and join by comma
• Split CSV/TSV into lines
• Trim lines

Keyboard Shortcuts

• You could also define custom keyboard shortcuts for each rule, e.g.:

  {
      "key": "alt+j",
      "command": "quickReplaceInSelection.replaceInSelectionByRule",
      "when": "editorTextFocus",
      "args": {
          "ruleName": "Json stringify"
      }
  },
  {
      "key": "shift+alt+7",
      "command": "quickReplaceInSelection.replaceInSelection",
      "when": "editorTextFocus",
      "args": {
          "find": "&",
          "replace": "\\n"
      }
  }
  

  • If "replace" is not specified, it will prompt a picker to choose from.

Known Issues

None.

Release Notes

See CHANGELOG.md

License

MIT - See LICENSE

Footnotes

#1 - to search & replace with a literal string, add a leading "*" in the regex input box. This also disable backslash escape and $& in the "Replace to" input box. (this feature is not available to rules)
#2 - to do the opposite, type a leading "?i " before the regex in the input box (not a part of regex), or use "flags" in rules.
#3 - to do the opposite, type a leading "+" (preferred) or "?m " before the regex in the input box (not a part of regex), or use "flags" in rules.