Newlines in search and replace

AaronNGray · Post by **AaronNGray** » Sat Dec 22, 2007 8:48 pm

This is also a missing feature that makes some edits very tiresomeor next to impossible. I use a different editor to do these types of edits.

Aaron

Post by **jussij** » Sun Dec 23, 2007 2:03 am

Unfortunately Zeus does not have the ability to search for and replace the end of line character

This is a limitation of the Zeus design more than anything

Cheers Jussi

Post by **jussij** » Mon Mar 31, 2008 11:52 pm

This feature has now been added to Zeus

To get this feature just download the latest Zeus patch found here: http://www.zeusedit.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1790

Cheers Jussi

AaronNGray · Post by **AaronNGray** » Tue Apr 01, 2008 5:09 pm

Great, thanks alot Jussi, this is great news, I will give it a proper testing later today.

Aaron

AaronNGray · Post by **AaronNGray** » Tue Apr 01, 2008 5:30 pm

Jussi,

Heres some tests :-

\n\n -> \n
\n -> \n\n

work fine.

\n+ -> \n seems to be non greedy where really it should be greedy

\n* -> \n does not work correctly it seems to be eating other characters

Thanks,

Aaron

Post by **jussij** » Tue Apr 01, 2008 11:53 pm

Because Zeus holds each line in a separate line buffer and does not actually store the \n line feed character, when a \n search is requested it creates a special search line buffer made up of a number of concatenated lines separated by line feeds.

To determine how many lines need to be concatenated it counts the number of \n characters specified in the search string.

So for example, because the \n+ search string contains one \n, then only two lines will be concatenated, and hence on two lines will be found.

As for the \n* search, I am not sure what is going on there, since the regexp engine seams to be always return any single character rather than zero or more line feeds

This looks like a bug in the regexp engine itself, since the a* search seems to return a similarly broken result

Cheers Jussi

AaronNGray · Post by **AaronNGray** » Wed Apr 02, 2008 1:46 pm

Jussi,

I was using the text :-

~~~~
test

test

test

test

~~~~

which \n+ -> \n should really turn into :-

test
test
test
test

rather than having to run the replace operation n times.

Aaron

Post by **jussij** » Wed Apr 02, 2008 10:27 pm

Hi Aaron,

I do understand your bug report, but because of the reasons describe above, there are limitations to what Zeus can do

So while it is not working as expected, it is working to design

Having said this, the situation can be improved by increasing the minimum size of the search line buffer, but the search will still be limited by design, meaning there will always be a situation where the search and replace does not work as expected.

Cheers Jussi

Post by **jussij** » Sat Aug 16, 2008 5:07 am

The latest version should do a better job of handling the \n+ case

The latest patch can be found here: http://www.zeusedit.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=3976

Cheers Jussi