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I want to add a line counter to a textfield for a sort of text editor. Looking around, I've seen that a lot of questions on this topic are either unanswered, or do not answer in a satisfactory manner. Something like this How to add prefix widget on every new line in textfield in flutter? asks fundamentally the same question I am, however the only answer there is to create a new widget for each line.
This is one method that could be used, where I add new textfields in a list and build them in a row with their respective line number. However, this means I cannot have those textfields function on more than one line, and I will need to add more textfields each time a user wants to add enough text to make it overflow. The biggest flaw I see with this, though, is that it makes it harder (if not impossible?) to easily select and edit text as you would expect from a text editor, such as using the built in systems for a textfield.
Now, for my solution I am using https://pub.dev/packages/extended_text_field as a way to gain some functionality that I don't really want to take the time to figure out how to do on my own (embedded onClick callbacks for text), so it would be ideal if I could continue to use that without having to fork or even have to figure out how to write my own version.
The primary issue I'm running into is not necessarily getting the number of lines, which can be found using some solutions from How can I add line numbers to TextField on Flutter?, but rather how and where to show those line numbers.
As above, it's not really ideal to pair some number alongside a textfield and create a new textfield for each expected line. What would be ideal, however, is something like , where each line number is prefixed to the line built by the text field. For example, like this: . Something like the solution proposed in Add a prefix to every line in a multiline Text Input in Flutter? would not work especially well, because the solution there is to literally add string values to the textfield, which would require systems to clean the text, in addition to causing an unexpected ability to actually change the numbers (or other line prefix) by the user.
So -- is there any way to implement a line prefix for each line in a textfield? Would it be possible to override an InputDecoration (which allows creating the individual line prefix, but nothing more) to create a line prefix for each line drawn by the textfield? If not, exactly what would be needed to create this? I am familiar with flutter, but I am not quite as familiar with the lower level API's.
I have a text field which I need to style for example with bold or italics parts.
I tried overridding the TextEditingController's buildTextSpan and formatting the text using annotation ranges with custom styles but the edge cases were too much and I really couldn't get it to work.
So, thought about using a formatter where before every change in format I'll add a custom character, like this:
This text is |bBOLD and this is |iITALICS. Would get me this:
This text is BOLD and this is ITALICS. So I override the buildTextSpan to build the TextSpan from a parse function where I split the text by the special characters and check the initial letter of each text for formatting info.
This works well except for the fact that when I press the right arrow to go the next character after the "This text is ", the cursor will stay fixed as it thinks there are two characters but being only for formatting, they aren't there on the render.
Is there any way I could tell the textfield to ignore certain characters when selecting, moving selection or typing?
I think this would work!
static const kCharToBEIgnored = 0x2C;
// Here 0x2C means ',' comma
// For complete list visit https://api.flutter.dev/flutter/charcode/charcode-library.html
String get text {
return String.fromCharCodes(
_value.text.codeUnits.where((ch) => ch != kCharToBEIgnored),
);
}
Multiline regular expression search doesn't work in VS Code version 1.27.2 .
Theoretically aaa(\n|.)*bbb should find string starting from aaa and ending bbb but it doesn't work.
The solution mentioned here Multi-line regular expressions in Visual Studio Code doesn't work as well.
Multiline search is added in v1.29 released in November 2018. See multi-line search.
VS Code now supports multiline search! Same as in the editor, a regex
search executes in multiline mode only if it contains a \n literal.
The Search view shows a hint next to each multiline match, with the
number of additional match lines.
This feature is possible thanks to the work done in the ripgrep tool
to implement multiline search.
Multiline search is coming to the Find Widget with v1.38. See multiline find "pre-release" notes.
Multi Line search in Find Widget
The Find Widget now supports multiple line text search and replace. By
pressing Ctrl+Enter, you can insert new lines into the input box.
.
Odd that it is Ctrl+Enter in the Find Widget but Shift+Enter in the Search Panel (see Deepu's answer below). Shift+Enter has other functionality when the Find Widget is focused.
yes, you could use regex for mutliple line search in VScode.
To find a multi-line text block starting from aaa and ending with the first bbb (lazy qualifier)
aaa(.|\n)+?bbb
To find a multi-line text block starting from aaa and ending with the last bbb. (greedy qualifier)
aaa(.|\n)+bbb
I have been looking for a quick way to do this, and I have come to the following:
start_text.*?(.|[\n])*?end_text
with start_text and end_text being the bounds of your multiline search.
breaking down the regex ".?(.|[\n])?":
".?" will match any characters from your start text to the end of the line. The "?" is there to ensure that if your end_text is on the same line the . wont just keep going to the end of the line regardless (greedy vs lazy matching)
"(.|[\n])" means either a character\whitespace or a new line
"*?" specifies to match 0 or more of the expression in the parentheses without being greedy.
Examples:
<meta.*?(.|[\n])*?/> will match from the beginning of all meta tags to the end of the respective tags
<script.*?(.|[\n])*?</script> will match from the beginning of all script tags to the respective closing tags
Warning:
Using .*?(.|[\n])*? with improperly or partially filled in start_text or end_text might crash VS Code. I suggest either writing the whole expression out (which doesn't cause a problem) or writing the start and end text before pasting in the regex. In any case, when I tried to delete parts of the starting and ending text VS Code froze and forced me to reload the file. That being said, I honestly could not find something that worked better in VS Code.
Without using regex.
Multi-line search is now possible in vs code version 1.30 and above without using regex.
Type Shift+Enter in the search box to insert a newline, and the search box will grow to show your full multiline query. You can also copy and paste a multiline selection from the editor into the search box.
You can find and replace in multiple lines by using this simple regex : StringStart\r\nStringEnd
For example
public string MethodA(int x)
{
var user;
}
public string MethodB(string y)
{
var user;
}
public string MethodC(int x)
{
var user;
}
public string MethodD(float x)
{
var user;
}
If you want to replace the name of user variable with customer along with method parameter name to user but only for the int ones.
Then the regex to find will be : int x)\r\nEnterBlankSpacesHereToReachTheString{\r\nEnterBlankSpacesHereToReachTheStringvar user
and regex to replace will be : int user)\r\nEnterBlankSpacesHereToReachTheString{\r\nEnterBlankSpacesHereToReachTheStringvar customer
See for reference
I had a similar issue, this works better for me:
aaa[.\n\r\t\S\s]*bbb
This includes carriage return (\r), new line (\n), tab (\t), any whitespece (\s) and any non whitespace (\S). There seems to be some redundancy putting "." and "\S" together, but it doesn't work without both in my case.
No regex way: you can copy multiline text and paste it in "Find in files" form:
result of "Replace all":
(.|\n)+? or [\s\S\r]* or [.\n\r\t\S\s]* may be understandable when viewed in isolation, but in an already complex regex expression, they can add that extra layer of complexity that makes the whole thing unmanageable.
On Windows, for files on the local disk, I find the best solution is to switch to using Notepad++. Not only does it handle multi-line out of the box, it also has a pleasant interface for multi-file search and replace, handles macros gracefully, and is quite light-weight. You can switch back to VScode as soon you have finished your regex changes. Personally, I deleted Notepad++ when I found VScode, but reinstalled it later when I found some of what Notepad++ had to offer was missing in VScode. Both are free to use! I'm sure there's an equivalent on the Mac.
If you are willing to search JavaScript, TypeScript or JSON files I can recommend my VScode extension
It allows for formatting agnostic text search and structural code search
You can find it on codeque.co or at VSCode Marketplace
Your query could look like this
aaa$$mbbb
where $$m means optional multiline set of any characters
Make sure to use text mode for this query
CodeQue can make much more than that!
The reason on this behavior is very simple.
Multiple line search isn't implemented yet.
see: Support multi-line search for Global search
I am trying to simulate Word's displaying of non-printing characters. There is no problem with all of them but anchors and I didn't found any info related to them. Is anchor special character placed in text or is it parameter of floating object and just displayed as special character?
Thank you for answer
The anchor, unlike most non-printing characters, can never print. It's merely a visual aid to inform the user with which paragraph or character a graphic with text flow formatting is associated. It's not possible to detect an anchor directly in the document text using Word's API (object model). It's bound to the graphic and would require analyzing the properties of the Shape object.
It could be determined by analyzing the document's WordOpenXML, although the term "anchor" is not used. The information could be deduced from the location and settings of the nodes that define where and how the graphic appears.
Is anchor special character placed in text or is it parameter of floating object and just displayed as special character?
I'm going to try to answer the "is it in text" question.
If, while debugging, you try to get a textual character for an anchor from a range's text, it won't be there. There won't even be a 0-width non-visible character there, like when you move a text cursor to the right past a non-printable character, but it doesn't actually move because there's something there (this may be editor-dependent, I have Notepad++ in mind).
So no, it's not in text.
But, at the same time, it will interfere with searches. E.g. If you put the word "text" on a line, put a text box on that line to create an anchor, and then search for "^13text" (with wildcards enabled, ^13 means the end-of-paragraph mark), it won't find it.
So yes, it must be in text because it interferes with searches.
So this might be a contradiction, but let's keep going. If it's in text, where is it? If you place the text cursor on the previous line, hold shift, and move it once to the right, the text box will be highlighted.
So it must be at the start.
But, there is also evidence that contradicts this. If you have a field at the start of the line with text on it, you can move it once to the right as before, and then once to the left, and though you have part of the line highlighted, the text box won't be part of the selection.
So, I really have no idea whether it's text or not, or where it is if so, but hopefully this helps someone else.
I have a Word document with fields of the reference variety, which occur in the form "[field].[field]"--in other words, there's a period between the two fields. I want to globally replace this with a space.
Word offers the ^d special character to search for fields, but for some reason the query "^d.^d" does not find anything. However, ".^d" does. Now comes the problem, however--what do I specify as the replacement text in order to retain the field code? If using regular expressions, I could use a "Find What Expression" such as \1, but with regexp ("wild card") mode the ^d is not permitted.
I guess I could write a macro...
I would like to add to Bibadia's solution.
An example of an index entry field; we want to change a name we misspelled.
Make sure hidden formatting is displayed (toggle with SHIFT+CTRL+F8).
Make sure wildcards option is not selected. To search for fields, use the opening and closing field braces code (optionally use ^w for spaces, as Bibadia suggested):^19 XE "Deo, John" ^21
Replace won't recognize field braces character, but will allow to insert the clipboard's content. ;). To do that, insert in text the correct entry. CTRL+F9 to insert field and type:XE "Doe, John"
Select the field above and copy
Use ^c in the replace box
Hit Replace All
Ta-da!
It's usually better to go the macro route when finding fields because, as you say, the find algorithm that Word uses doesn't work the way you might hope with fields.
But if you know exactly what the fields contain, you can specify a search pattern that will probably work (however not in wildcard mode).
For example, if you want to look for figure number field pairs such as
{ STYLEREF 1 \s }.{ SEQ Figure \* ARABIC \s 1 }
(which would typically be the same set of fields everywhere in the document)
If you only really need to look for the following:
{ STYLEREF 1 \s }.<any field>
you could ensure that field codes are displayed and search for
^d STYLEREF 1 \s ^21.^d
or
^19 STYLEREF 1 \s ^21.^19
If you need to be more precise, you can spell out the second field as well.
"^d" only works for finding the field beginning, not the field end.
It's a shame that ^w wants to find at least 1 whitespace character because otherwise it would be more robust to look for
^19^wSTYLEREF^w1^w\s^w^21.^19
Perhaps someone else knows how to work around that without using wildcards?
Torzaburo,
I suggest that you do this using a macro. You can start by recording the macro, and later refining your processing steps within the macro.
First turn on the hidden characters by navigating to Home > Paragraph > toggle the show/hide Paragraph symbol. Also, select all and toggle the field codes on (right-click and select "Toggle Field Codes".
Open a new blank Word doc in addition to the one you have open. You will use this later. Start the macro recording and find the field using the "^d" (field code) as you said.
When the field is found, copy only the field text within the brackets, and not the full field reference. While the macro is still recording, ALT + TAB to the new blank document and paste the field code in as plain text.
At this point, do the necessary find & replace processing to the field codes. Highlight the processed field codes, copy, ALT + TAB back to the original document, and paste back between the { } brackets.
Stop the macro recording. Add any further custom processing to the macro VBA.
Select-All and re-toggle the field codes. Update the field codes.
You don't need a macro. Just toggle all field codes on by using Alt+F9. Then do a find and replace for what you want to change. Once the replacement is complete, use Alt+F9 again to toggle the field codes back off.
Disclaimer: I didn't originate this solution, but it's clean and elegant and I thought it should be included here:
(Adapted from Search & Replace Field Codes in Word):
Create or find a single instance of the field you want to convert text to
Toggle Field Codes visible (AltF9)
Copy the code for the field you want to use to the Clipboard (highlight and CtrlC)
Open the Replace dialog box (CtrlH), insert the text you want to replace in the Find What box and then enter ^c in the Replace With box.
This will replace your text with the contents of the Clipboard, turning it into the field code you copied in step 3. It also copies formatting information (font, color, etc.), to control how the field will appear when hidden. (Caveat: I've tested this with Word 2003 under Windows 7 only.)
Coming in late on this, probably way too late for Beth (sorry Beth). And this may not be quite what Beth was looking for. But for anyone interested ...
It sounds like Beth may have created captions throughout the document using INSERT CAPTION (hence the presence of field codes). This means these captions will have been (automatically) created in CAPTION style.
To globally replace the separator "." with " " (space) in such captions, take two steps:
[1] Go to REFERENCES | INSERT CAPTION, then click on NUMBERING and replace the SEPARATOR "." with "EM-DASH". This will replace all separators in captions for the selected label in the CAPTION Window. If you have other labels in use in the document (e.g. FIGURE), select the other labels one by one and repeat this process.
[2] Do a find/replace searching for special character "em-dash" (^+) in style CAPTION, replacing with " ". Click REPLACE ALL.
Voila!
NOTE: This presumes that em-dash does not appear in the caption text anywhere. If it does, then you'll need to do a pre- and post- "fiddle" to ensure these em-dashes are not touched by the global replace above.
The "pre-fiddle" is to do a global find/replace across captions, replacing the em-dash ("^+") with some other string (e.g. "EM-DASH") that doesn't ever occur in any caption's text. Then you do the separator change as described above. Finally, the "post-fiddle" is to restore the em-dashes that were in the captions, by doing a global replace of the string "EM-DASH" with the actual em-dash character "^+".