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.
What are the keyboard shortcuts for creating multiple cursors in VS Code?
Press Alt and click. This works on Windows and Linux*, and it should work on Mac, too.
More multi-cursor features are now available in Visual Studio Code 0.2:
Multi cursor improvements
Ctrl+D (Cmd+D on Mac) selects next occurrence of word under cursor or of the current selection
Ctrl+K Ctrl+D moves last added cursor to next occurrence of word under cursor or of the current selection
The commands use matchCase by default. If the find widget is open, then the find widget settings (matchCase / matchWholeWord) will be used for determining the next occurrence
Ctrl+U (Cmd+U on Mac) undoes the last cursor action, so if you added a cursor too many or made a mistake, you can press Ctrl+U (Cmd+U on Mac) to go back to the previous cursor state.
Adding cursor up or down (Ctrl+Alt+Up / Ctrl+Alt+Down) (Cmd+Alt+Up / Cmd+Alt+Down on Mac) now reveals the last added cursor to make it easier to work with multiple cursors on more than 1 viewport height at a time (i.e. select 300 lines and only 80 fit in the viewport).
This makes it a lot easier to introduce multiple cursors
* Linux drag-window conflict:
Some distros (e.g. Ubuntu) assign window dragging to Alt+LeftMouse, which will conflict with VSCode.
So, recent versions of VSCode let you toggle between Alt+LeftMouse and Ctrl+LeftMouse under the Selection menu, as detailed in another answer.
Alternately, you could change your OS key bindings using gsettings as mentioned in another answer.
Multi-word (and multi-line) cursors/selection in VS Code
Multi-word:
Windows / OS X:
Ctrl+Shift+L / ⌘+Shift+L selects all instances of the current highlighted word
Ctrl+D / ⌘+D selects the next instance... and the one after that... etc.
Multi-line:
For multi-line selection, Ctrl+Alt+Down / ⌘+Alt+Shift+Down will extend your selection or cursor position to the next line. Ctrl+Right / ⌘+Right will move to the end of each line, no matter how long. To escape the multi-line selection, hit Esc.
See the VS Code keybindings (OS sensitive)
May 2017
As of version 1.13
Add multiple cursors with Ctrl / Cmd + Click
VSCode developers have introduced a new setting, editor.multiCursorModifier, to change the modifier key for applying multiple cursors to Cmd + Click on macOS and Ctrl + Click on Windows and Linux. This lets users coming from other editors such as Sublime Text or Atom continue to use the keyboard modifier they are familiar with.
The setting can be set to:
ctrl/Cmd - Maps to Ctrl on Windows and Cmd on macOS.
alt - The existing default Alt.
There's also a new menu item Use Ctrl + Click for Multi-Cursor in the Selection menu to quickly toggle this setting.
The Go To Definition and Open Link gestures will also respect this setting and adapt such that they do not conflict. For example, when the setting is ctrl/Cmd, multiple cursors can be added with Ctrl / Cmd + Click, and opening links or going to definition can be invoked with Alt +Click.
With fixing Issue #2106, it is now possible to also remove a cursor by using the same gesture on top of an existing selection.
I had problem with ALT key, fix is to change alt+click as a Gnome hotkey which clobbers multi-cursor select in VSCode, to super+click by running:
gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.wm.preferences mouse-button-modifier "<Super>"
Source: http://2buntu.com/articles/1529/visual-studio-code-comes-to-linux/
Try Ctrl+Alt+Shift+⬇ / ⬆, without mouse, or hold "alt" and click on all the lines you want.
Note: Tested on Windows.
Cmd+Option+Shift⬇ / ⬆ works for me on newest VSCode 1.29.1 and newest OSX High Sierra 10.13.6, Macbook Pro.
This adds a vertical line up/down on screen, like Option+Click/Vertical Drag does in Sublime Text.
To add multiple cursors at any points in your file, including multiple ones on the same line, do Cmd (or Option)+Click anywhere you want, shown in this video. You may also search for text (Cmd+F) that repeats multiple times, then press Option+Return to add cursors at end of EACH word.
On XFCE, go to Applications -> Settings -> Settings editor - > xfwm4 -> easy_click(disable value)
Now you can Insert Cursor with Alt + Click
I've also disabled L/R Workspace (ctrl + alt + L/R) settings in Settings -> Window manager -> Keyboard
As of Visual Studio Code version 0.10.9, you can now do a Create Multiple Cursors from Selected Lines by selecting multiple lines, and pressing Shift+Alt+I
Note: This is similar to Sublime Text's Ctrl+Shift+L functionality.
Source: https://code.visualstudio.com/updates/vJanuary#_thank-you
Relevant PR: https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode/pull/1479
On Ubuntu, in order to enable multi-cursor clicking you will need to re-assign Alt+click first, by running the command below. This is because by default Ubuntu uses the shortcut itself and has it takes precedence.
> gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.wm.preferences mouse-button-modifier "<Super>"
There is no binding for exactly what you want.
The only thing that comes close is Ctrl+F2 which will select all of them at once.
You can bind it to Ctrl+D doing the following:
Click on File > Preferences > Keyboard Shortcuts
You should see a pane full of the current bindings and on the right a list of custom bindings
In the current bindings, search for Ctrl+F2 and copy that whole line and paste it into the right pane.
You might have to remove the comma at the end and then change Ctrl+F2 to Ctrl+D and then save the file.
It should look something like this:
// Place your key bindings in this file to overwrite the defaults
[
{ "key": "ctrl+d", "command": "editor.action.changeAll",
"when": "editorTextFocus" }
]
Ctrl+Alt+⬇ / ⬆ add cursors above and below the current line. Still nowhere near as good as sublime or brackets though. I can't see anything equivalent to Ctrl+D in sublime in the keyboard shortcuts file.
https://code.visualstudio.com/Updates
New version (Visual Studio 0.3.0) support more multi cursor feature.
Multi-cursor
Here's multi-cursor improvements that we've made.
⌘D selects the word at the cursor, or the next occurrence of the current selection.
⌘K ⌘D moves the last added cursor to next occurrence of the current selection.
The two actions pick up the matchCase and matchWholeWord settings of the find widget.
⌘U undoes the last cursor action, so if you added one cursor too many or made a mistake, press ⌘U to return to the previous cursor state.
Insert cursor above (⌥⌘↑) and insert cursor below (⌥⌘↓) now reveals the last added cursor, making it easier to work with multi-cursors spanning more than one screen height (i.e., working with 300 lines while only 80 fit in the screen).
And short cut of select multi cursor change into cmd + d(it's same as Sublime Text. lol)
We can expect that next version supports more convenient feature about multi cursor ;)
Alt+Click. It works in Windows.
Details: Visual Studio Code Documentation
In my XFCE (version 4.12), it's in Settings -> Window Manager Tweaks -> Accessibility.
There's a dropdown field Key used to grab and move windows:, set this to None.
Alt + Click works now in VS Code to add more cursor.
In Visual Studio without mouse: Alt+Shift+{ Arrow }.
You can do the following per the Selection menu:
Press/hold Alt+Ctrl+Up Arrow/Alt+Ctrl+Down Arrow as required to create sufficient cursors, then Ctrl+D can be used to expand the selections.
Same issue on Ubuntu-MATE, but here you resolve it by:
gsettings set org.mate.Marco.general mouse-button-modifier "<Super>"
Alt + Command + Shift will add a cursor to the next instance of what you've selected. E.g. a variable or function name
For xfce users, just go to settings>window manager tweaks>accessibility there change the key used to grab and move windows: to super as demonstrated in the image below.
Now you can use super instead of alt. Wallah!! Go make multiple cursors by alt + click.
First go to "Keyboard Shortcuts", you can get there by hitting Cmd+k then Cmd+s, or for Windows Ctrl+k then Ctrl+s.
Once you're there, search for "Add Cursor Above" and "Add Cursor Below". You can even assign them your own key-bindings.
On windows:
CTRL+Click if you are using vscode
CTRL+Alt+Click if you are using visual studio
For Ubuntu Users
ALT + SHIFT + ⬇ / ⬆
Alt + Click works in OSX. Code Version 1.14.2
Recently, I switched from Visual Studio to Eclipse. Now I am missing the shortcut for navigating to the last cursor position in Eclipse. In Visual Studio, the same can be done with the help of the Ctrl + - shortcut.
How do I do this in Eclipse?
Go to Preferences / General / Keys. You'll be able to see or edit the bindings for:
Backward History: default is Alt←
Forward History: default is Alt→
You may also use those shortcuts (and see the key bindings) in the toolbar:
There is Altleft arrow and Altright arrow to navigate to previous/next cursor positions, and CtrlQ to go to the last edited position.
I'm adding an answer, because I'm not allowed to comment yet. Though the dystroy's answer contains information about useful shortcuts, I'm not satisfied with it, because the mentioned Alt+left shortcut doesn't always navigate to the last cursor position (e.g. in the same file). I'm not sure how it works in Visual Studio, but in IntelliJ a similar shortcut always moved the cursor to the last cursor position, even in the same file. I would like to have such functionality also in Eclipse. For example: I move the cursor using the keyboard's down arrow key successively on lines 10, 20, 30. Now I am on line 30 and when I press Alt+left I would like the cursor to go to the line 20. After pressing Alt+left again I would like the cursor to go to line 10.
In Eclipse, when the cursor was in file A and I opened file B and moved the cursor down a few lines in file B, then Alt+left will move the cursor to the file A, instead of moving it to a previous cursor position in file B.
I created a separate question for this problem:
How to navigate to the last cursor position in Eclipse if it is in the same file and was not edited?
In Mac (OSX), the commands are ⌘[ and ⌘]. They are very convenient navigation commands when coding.
This question already has answers here:
Closed 10 years ago.
Possible Duplicate:
How do you retrieve the selected text in MATLAB?
I want to implement and add some features to the function "Evaluate Selections", where you can highlight code and then "Evaluate Selections" by right click your mouse (or F9).
In the editor environment, this is how it is done:
editorObject = matlab.desktop.editor.getActive;
eval([editorObject.SelectedText ';']);
How can I implement this from the command line window, or the help window?
EDIT:
Maybe I didn't express my question clearly.
Imagining that we already have this function called eva_select(), I can use function this way:
I wrap the function as the Shortcuts button.
Use mouse to select a variable at command line window, maybe I entered before, say var_a
Then I click that Shortcuts button, the text which I selected before will be executed. This is exactly as press F9 key or choose right mouse menu -- "Evaluate Selections".
But if we really have that function, we can do more! We can modified eva_select() to eva_select_size(), in this way, we can select a variable, say var_a at command line window or help window, click eva_select_size() shortcuts button, then, we will get size(var_a) at command line window!
EDIT:
Thanks, I can retrieve the text in the command window, but I can't do the same thing in the help window, is it possible to do that?
The command window, like other GUI components in the MATLAB desktop, is Java-based. Therefore it can be accessed programmatically, but it is completely undocumented and its use is not officially supported.
Exploring around, here is a solution that seems to work in both R2012a and R2012b. It involves obtaining a handle to the underlying JTextArea of the command window, which is used to get the selected text (to evaluate size of selected variable name)
Create a shortcut with the following code:
x = com.mathworks.mde.cmdwin.XCmdWndView.getInstance();
s = char(x.getSelectedText());
if isvarname(s) && exist(s,'var')
eval( sprintf('size(%s)',s) );
end
Next highlight a variable name in the command window and execute the shortcut. The size will be immediately printed as shown in the screenshot below:
It is not very nice as it is an external solution, but this is how it could work:
Assuming you are in the command window and want to evaluate size(var_a) by selecting it, you can probably do this with a keyboard macro. Defind the appropriate function of var_a
f(x) = eval('size(' x ')'
%This could be done in the macro, but nicer to do it here for easy editing.
Then make sure your macro does this:
Copy 'var_a'
Turn it into 'f(var_a)'
Paste the result
Hit enter
Like i said, it's not pretty, but it should do the trick.
I have a command in the command line of Matlab which is longer than just one line but when recalling it by pressing arrow-up, I just can go through every single line of the multiline-code... Is there a way to recall the complete last execution, no matter if just single or multiline?!
thanks!
In the Command History window, highlight the relevant lines and press F9 (or right-click and select Evaluate Selection if your shortcuts differ from mine).
The simplest solution is to right click the particular line in the command history window and select Copy or Evaluate Selection :)
If you'd like to copy a significant portion of your history, then you can output the contents of your history file (which is stored in history.m in the preferences directory) to the command window and copy from there.
type([prefdir '/history.m'])
%-- 20/6/11 3:17 PM --%
clc
outputVariable=someVeryLongFunctionNameThatMakesNoSense(inputVar1,'inputString1',inputVar2)
type([prefdir '/history.m'])
The above command and the screenshot were on a Mac. As always, be careful with the / on Windows. I can never remember which way it leans...