How to put cursor on every other line (on alternate lines) - visual-studio-code

How can I put cursor on every other line (on alternate lines).
For example, I want to put cursor on line 1,3,5,7....
How can I do that?
I know I can do that by AltClick. But there are too many lines and an easier way will be very helpful.

You can do this with a regex:
Find: ^(.*\n){1}.*$
With focus on the find input, hit Alt+Enter. It will select all those matches - every two lines. Or if focus is in the editor, hit Ctrl+Shift+L - it'll do the same thing.
Home to put cursor at beginning of those selections. (If you have spaces or tabs at the beginning of a line, just hit Home until you are at the beginning.)
UpArrow or DownArrow to move those cursors where you want.
Obviously this scales pretty easily:
Find: ^(.*\n){2}.*$ for every third line, ^(.*\n){3}.*$ for every fourth line, etc.

You can use the extension Select By and use the command Place cursor based on line number, uses boolean expression (selectby.lineNr)
In the expression box of the command type
(n-1)%2==0
If you want to limit the number of cursors add an extra criterion
(n-1)%2==0 && n<100
If you place the cursor on line 1 you can use
c+2k
Read the extension page for other possibilities
You can set key binding for often use expressions.
Edit
Feature suggestion by #blueray
In v1.8.0 I have added inselection.
If you want to limit the cursors to the current selection(s) you can use the expression
c+2k && inselection

Related

VSCode select next occurrence of variable

In VSCode on Mac, I can use the keyboard shortcut Cmd + D to select the next occurrence of my currently highlighted text.
For example, if I highlight the variable order on line 1 in the below code, hitting Cmd + D causes order_form on line 2 to be partially highlighted, and hitting Cmd + D again causes order to be highlighted on line 3.
1. order = "Some string"
2. order_form = create_form()
3. return "Here is your order: " + order
However, I just want to select the actual variable order on lines 1 and 3 (i.e. excluding the text that is part of the variable order_form)
What keyboard shortcut can I use to just highlight the actual variables named order on lines 1 and 3?
The Ctrl+D functionality uses the current Find widget settings "behind the scenes" - whether that Find widget is visible or not.
So you would get the behaviour you want if the Whole Word option was enabled in that Find widget first before you began Ctrl+D'ing.
Alternatively, as the demo below shows when you place your cursor on the word you want order you can then hit Alt+W which will toggle the Whole Word option on and off. Note the little box that opens in the top right of the editor that shows only the Find options.
Then all your find next occurrences with Ctrl+D will find only what you want with that Whole Word option still enabled.
If you want to skip any of those occurrences, you can use the command
Add Selection To Previous Find Match
editor.action.addSelectionToPreviousFindMatch
(which you would have to make your own keybinding for). Just trigger that command to skip the next possible match - so follow this order:
Ctrl+D on the first order
Alt+W to enable whole word matching
trigger the command Add Selection To Previous Find Match
Ctrl+D to select the next order
It sounds like a bit of a hassle but they are common commands to know - to skip the next match and to toggle Whole Word matching.
[That little box that opens with the Find options is a little glitchey in that it seems to sometimes also enable the case sensitivity option as well - which isn't a problem in your example.]

How to select whole line in VSCode

I am using VSCode on a Mac.
Does anyone know how to select the entire line that the cursor is on? I know about Command+I, but that only selects what appears to be the whole line, which is not always the whole line if I have word wrap enabled.
I am looking for something like Sublime Text's "Expand Selection to Line" command.
All you need to do is put the cursor anywhere on the line, do not make any selection at all and then do the desired command (Cut, copy, or paste).
When no text selected, VS Code will automatically select the entire line.
just triple click the end of the line it will select the entire line
Triple click at any point on the line
Click once on number of the line
Press Command + L
An alternative to what people have posted is, when your cursor is at the start/end of the line, you can hit shift + end/home respectively.
I find this useful for wrapping a line in curly braces/quotes/etc. whereas the other answers include spaces in the select so whatever you're wrapping it in will be wrapped around that whitespace.
Install the MetaGo extension and use the "metaGo: selectLineDown" command, which will come installed already overriding the "expandLineSelection" command.
This extension has many additional commands that you'll likely find useful as well, including moving up/down over code blocks, centering the active line, and going to any character on the screen.
Now, when I press Command+I, the whole line is selected. I am guessing this was caused by an update to VS Code, but I am not sure.
Ctrl + L on Windows or Command + L on Mac to select the whole line in VS Code.
You can use your mouse to select the whole line by triple-clicking on the line but the better way is to click on the line number to select the whole line or multiple lines.
Tripple click at any point on the line
In case you're wondering why Cmd+L is not working, there might be a chance that there are duplicate shortcuts. You can find out by opening Keyboard Shortcuts in VSC and remove the one that's not needed.
I know its old but for anyone seeking, you can press Alt + arrow up/down to duplicate your cursor to other lines and then without selecting anything copy and paste multiple lines.

Turn multiline selection into multi cursor selection in VSCode

It happens from time to time that I need to edit 100+ lines in a text file all at once.
I know I can use ⌘ Cmd+↑/↓ to select multiple lines but depending on the size of the file that takes a while.
In Atom and Sublime, I can just do a ⌘ Cmd + a to select everything, hit another shortcut (forgot the actual shortcut) and end up with a cursor for every line.
Have not found this in VSCode.
Ctrl-a to select all. (or whatever muli-line selection you want)
Shift-alt-I will put cursors at end of each selected line.
And then if you want those cursors at the beginning of each line you need to trigger the command "cursorLineStart" which is unbound by default. Give it a keybinding and all those end-of-line cursors will jump to the beginning of each line.
With v1.43 and Column Selection Mode this can be quite easy, see Column selection like Visual Studio and How to put the cursor at the end of all selected lines in Visual Studio Code?
FWIW cursorLineStart is not the opposite of Shift-Alt-I. In looking at the commends, Shift-Alt-I is "Add cursors to line ends", but there is not a "Add cursors to line begins" option.
However, the easy trick for that is:
Select your text block
Shift-Alt-I to put a cursor at the end of each line
Command-LeftArrow will move those cursors to the beginning of the lines
Its an extra step but it works. When I get time I will play around with building a custom command to do all this in one action.

Swapping 2 columns with Emacs

I have 2 columns, separated by comma. How can I swap those columns with Emacs?
I have the following:
column 1,column2
x1,x2
y1,y2
f1,f2
and I want it like this:
column2,column 1
x2,x1
y2,y1
f2,f1
Use M-x query-replace-regexp and then:
\(.+\),\(.+\)
as replace regexp and
\2,\1
for replacement.
In Emacs, you need to escape grouping parentheses with \. So, above regexp would be usually written as
(.+),(.+)
which means that you want everything before comma in first group and everything after comma in second group.
\2,\1
means: write second group, then comma, then first group.
While you can apply techniques given by other people, you can also use the org-mode tables.
Once you convert the data into org-mode table, it is very easy to swap the columns by simple keystrokes. You can have M-x org-mode, select the region then do M-x org-table-convert-region, and then M- on the right most column. I am not sure, how to export the data as CSV, but that should be very easy for you with replace-regexp. This can be helpful: http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/org/Tables.html#Tables
Similar to the answer given by #darioo, type the following into the top of your buffer:
(query-replace-regexp "\\(.*?\\),\\(.*\\)" "\\2,\\1")
Then, put your cursor at the end of this line and press ctrl-x, ctrl-e.
You will have an interactive search-and-replace for which you press the space bar to make the change, and press ctrl-g to quit. If you press ! (exclamation mark) then the search will cease being interactive and take place on all matching text.
If you want to reverse the changes then press M-x (usually ESC followed by x) and type undo and press enter.
Emacs has a rectangular selection mode, see for example: http://emacs-fu.blogspot.com/2008/12/working-with-rectangular-selections.html
Even better, if you enable cua-mode, entering Ctrl-Enter will put you in rectangle selection mode that is very easy to use.
http://trey-jackson.blogspot.com/2008/10/emacs-tip-26-cua-mode-specifically.html
Use a macro !
Go to the first line of the buffer
Start recording a macro (F3)
Move to the beginning of the line (^a)
Search for comma (^s ,)
Transpose (M-t)
Move cursor down one line
Stop recording macro (F4)
Select the rest of the lines and:
M-x apply-macro-to-region-lines
UPDATE: This doesn't work properly if you have multiple words in a column. Looking for a more general solution...

Multiline sentence in emacs

If I have a multiline sentence in Emacs it naturally overflows onto the the following lines. Now, if my cursor is at the beginning of such a sentence and I press the DOWN ARROW key, the cursor is placed at the beginning of the next sentence (which might be at 4-5 lines down), rather than on the next line itself (which other editors do). Same is the behavior of the END and HOME keys.
Is there a way in which I can change this behavior and get the cursor on the next line instead of the next sentence?
I haven't yet tried it myself, but I think what you are asking for is the default behavior for emacs 23. What version are you running?
You might want to check out the page Move By Visible Lines page on the emacswiki.
You might want to try auto-fill-mode or longlines-mode. To get either use M-X then type the command you want. Toggle them off the same way.
If that doesn't work you may want to examine the binding that is being applied to your down arrow. Type C-h k then hit the down arrow key.
It sounds as though the text is wrapping, so by definition (a line being a group of characters separated by a carriage return), it is moving down to the next line.
I agree it is a pain, however a lot of other editors also have this behaviour.
One way is to turn off wrapping:
M-x toggle-truncate-lines
You wont be able to see all of the text in the editor, however it will move down to the next line.