Finding and Replacing Text in the Editor

The Edit main menu and the editor right-click menu contain two choices for finding text (Find and Find with Dialog) and one choice for replacing text (Replace).

• Find displays a Quick Find field where you can type text to look for, and use the Up and Down keys (and F3 and Shift-F3, by default) to find the next or previous occurrence. Use the Escape key to close the field.
• Find with Dialog shows a dialog where you can enter what to look for, either as text, a regular expression or using wildcards. You can also limit the search to the current selection and use other options for a more precise search. You can use Find Next and Find Previous to navigate to other matches, by default mapped to the F3 and Shift-F3 keys.
  • When using a regular expression or wildcards, the button next to the expression opens a helper menu with common symbols.
• Replace shows a dialog identical to Find with Dialog but with an additional field for entering the replacement text.
  • When using a regular expression , the button next to the expression opens a helper menu with common symbols.
  • When you use a regular expression with group expressions in the Find what field, you can reference the captured text in the Replace with field using the dollar sign ($) plus the group number (e.g. $1 for the first group).

Regular Expression Example:

Text in editor:

SELECT
    firstname,
    lastname
FROM 
    person;

Find what:

^(\s+)(\w+)(,?)$

Replace with:

$1person.$2$3

Deselect Match whole word, select Entire scope and Use Regular Expression.

When you click Find and choose All in the following dialog, you get the following result:

Resulting text:

SELECT
    person.firstname,
    person.lastname
FROM 
    person;