I have many source code files which are idented with 8 space characters, I want to convert these to 4 character indents. What is the best way of doing this? A technique using eclipse would be preferable.
Select the project(s), then press Ctrl+H to open the Search dialog (or click the Search > File menu).
Make sure the File Search tab is selected at the top.
Enter 8 spaces into the Containing text: field
Select your File name pattern (probably *.java or just *)
Select the scope (probably Selected Resources)
Press the *Replace... button.
As I said in the comments above, however, using spaces for indentation is a fool's game; tabs are the proper abstraction for indentation so that you don't have this problem.
Related
I tried to select the word that want to replace for multiple times and it did not. Finally I had to close the eclipse and start it.**
Rename (Alt+Shift+R) is a refactoring option. E.g. this could be used to rename a class or a method without renaming classes/methods with the same name but in different packages/classes if it was selected.
To search replace words in Eclipse within a single file, the replace option is there in the Find/Replace dialog that shows when you press Ctrl+F.
To search replace across files, go to Search/Search (Ctrl+H), and look for the File Search tab at the top (you normally need to scroll the tabs to the left to see it). This will let you search across a range of files, and then replace those matches.
I tried to get Eclipse to convert all of the tabs in my project to spaces like this:
Java Editor:
Click Window » Preferences
Expand Java » Code Style
Click Formatter
Click the Edit button
Click the Indentation tab
Under General Settings, set Tab policy to: Spaces only
Click OK ad nauseum to apply the changes.
And now my code is formatted without any indentations within if and for blocks, like this:
private void addAppointment(Resource resource) {
if (resource != null) {
Appt appt1 = new Appt();
appt1.setTime(new Date());
resource.setAppointment(appt1);
}
}
I really don't want to have to manually fix this in the hundreds of files in the project, how can I format to indent within if and for blocks in the whole project?
I should also say that the "Statements within blocks" checkbox in the active Formatter profile is checked. The preview it shows has a for block with an indented body, so I have no idea why that isn't being applied to my project.
#gnac provides some good options, in addition to:
Similarly you can use ctrl+shift+f (Source->Format) on each class to format it on the fly
You can select the project(s) and do Source menu -> Format to format everything in that project in one go. (No keyboard shortcut for it AFAIK.)
So once you set your formatting options you have a couple of options. You can set the preferences to format your files when saving.
Preferences->Java->Editor->Save Actions
However, if you have a lot of files this will be a pain as well. Similarly you can use ctrl+shift+f (Source->Format) on each class to format it on the fly, again having to do it on each file individually.
Inside Eclipse you can use Search->Find, enter "\t" in the text box and select the "Regular Expression" check box and then click the "Replace..." button. When the search is done, it will ask you what to replace it with. Enter 4 spaces into the "With" text field. Click Preview to see what it will do, or OK to make the changes.
I would use a find and sed to find all of the java files in a directory and replace the tabs, although this is outside of eclipse
find -iname ".java" -exec sed -i.orig 's/\t/ /g' {} +
If you're not on Linux you could use cygwin to do the same on Windows.
I cannot figure out how to do this for the life of me apart from doing a find-replace on 4 spaces and converting to tabs (Version 0.10.2). I can't think of an editor/IDE that doesn't have a specific feature to do this. Does VSCode?
Since fix of: https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode/issues/1228 the editor supports it out of the box. Simply go for:
F1,
indentationToSpaces or indentationToTabs (depending on your need)
Enter.
Another way to do it is click the current indentation (Tab/Spaces:n) on the footer which will open your indentation options where you can select what you want to do.
If you are trying to convert non-leading tabs to spaces (or vice versa) you can use a regex search and replace.
Press CTRL + H
Click the .* button to search using regular expressions.
To search for tabs enter [\t] in Find box.
Enter spaces in Replace box and perform your replace.
Search box in regex mode:
To round out these answers, I will add my take for converting each tab to n spaces.
Highlight a tab character
Use CTRL + F2 select all occurrences
Press SPACE n times
This is the easiest way to do this (going beyond only converting leading tabs).
Note that this does not convert consecutive tabs to k spaces. It converts each tab. For consecutive tabs please see my comment on jrupe's answer. You will need VS Code find and replace with regular expressions to accomplish that.
Select Replace: CTRL-H
Enter Horizontal Tab in Find box: hold ATL and type 009 on the keypad.
Enter a space(or more spaces) into the Replace box: press space bar
Press Enter to begin replacing Tabs with Space(s).
Press F1 and then type into textbox convert indentation to spaces or whatever you want ones
On Visual Studio, Ctrl+K+F did the trick for me.
Fast forward to 2020/2021, there are some extensions that will give us that conversion. I have just needed that functionality (hence I found this article), and searching for extensions I found:
geocode.spacecadet - providing both TAB->SPC and SPC->TAB, but not updated since 2017, with 1.3k installs, 3.5 review
takumii.tabspace - TAB->SPC, from 2020, 1.5k installs, no reviews
pygc.spacetab - SPC->TAB, from... wait, literally yesterday! (or today depending on your TZ), 2 installs, no reviews
There is a problem with the formatting of certain .docx files. I click to show the hidden formatting marks. There are degree symbols ("non-breaking spaces") in between many of the words, instead of a regular space.
To solve the problem: I copy and paste the degree symbol, and then I use the "find and replace" function to replace the degree symbols with a regular space.
How do I prevent this problem from occurring in the first place?
Or, how can I automatically convert these symbols to a regular space.
Non-breaking spaces are used to keep words from breaking across lines.
As Cindy stated above, the simplest way to remove them manually is to record a macro and execute this from a Ribbon button or the Quick Access Toolbar.
According to this link (and this link it refers to), nonbreaking spaces are inserted automatically if your proofing language is set to French and you type certain characters. To prevent this from happening, you have to either use a different proofing language or disable the "Replace straight quotes with smart quotes" option. To do this, see below (and I'm quoting the previous link):
To change the proofing language, select the text and click Language on
the Review tab. In addition to choosing another language, it's a good
idea to uncheck the option to automatically detect the language.
To change the quotes replacement, click File > Options > Proofing >
AutoCorrect Options, choose the AutoFormat As You Type tab of the
dialog (not just AutoFormat), and uncheck the first option.
Good file comparison tools were already discussed to the pain, but my problem is more exotic. Is there any visual text comparison tool (like WinMerge) that would allow me easily do visual comparison on two sections within the same file?
I have multiple configurations within vcproj file and need to maintain them. It is a pain to do this manually -- splitting windows, scrolling character-by character. On top of that xml is very verbose and takes lots of screen real-estate. I cannot believe there is no tool to do automatic file section comparison, since this sounds like a very common problem.
Please, do not offer me to use property pages, I do not want more complexity, I want less. Splitting manually into files and then comparing them is also too medieval (I am doing this now anyways).
I use Beyond Compare (not free, but I think a shareware version is available). You can select the same file for left and right sides, then right-click the beginning of your section on each side and select "Align Manually". This would allow you to compare two sections of the same file relatively easily.
Overall, I highly recommend the product. I haven't tried version 3, which is what they currently have on their Web site, but version 2 is a fabulous tool. A+
Emacs Ediff.
I use UltraEdit for most of my text editing and they have a product called UltraCompare that does a visual compare.
Update by Mofi
UltraCompare Professional supports also a comparison of text snippets in addition to entire files.
After starting UltraCompare, select Text Compare in menu Mode if not already selected. Select in text editor the first text block which should be compared, press Ctrl+C, switch back to UC and paste with Ctrl+V the block into left text area pane. Switch again to text editor, select the other block in same file, press Ctrl+C, switch back to UC, click into right pane and paste the block with Ctrl+V. The two blocks are immediately compared and the differences are displayed.
Such a text snippet comparison for two blocks in same file can be started also directly from within UltraEdit. Select the first block in file, press Ctrl+C, Ctrl+N, Ctrl+V and Ctrl+A to copy, paste and reselect this block in a new file. Select the second block in file. Execute command Compare from menu File in UltraEdit with option Compare selected text automatically being enabled and click on button Compare. UC Professional is started with just the 2 selected blocks for comparison.
You can use Meld to do this
Open up meld without specifying file names
Meld with prompt which type of comparison you want. Choose file comparison
Meld will present the the icon to select the file names. Below that it will prompt for a Blank comparison. Choose that.
In the file comparison window, paste the sections of the file you want to compare.