4. Search tool

[Tip]

The text selection, if any, is automatically used to initialize the Search field of the Search tool. As a consequence, in some cases, you don't need to use the Search tool at all. For example, selecting some text in the document and then directly pressing Ctrl+G (SearchFind Next) is the quickest way to find the next occurrence of the selected text in the document.

Procedure for performing a text search:

  1. Type text to be searched in Search field or choose it from the menu of the combobox.

  2. Change the search options as needed (see below).

  3. Type Enter in the Search field or click on the Start button.

  4. During the search session

    • click Skip on to skip found text,

    • OR click on Skip Element to skip the element containing the found text.

  5. The search session can be stopped by

    • clicking on Stop,

    • OR typing Esc (this also gives back the keyboard focus to the document view),

    • OR by simply clicking anywhere in the document view.

Procedure for performing a text search/replace:

  1. Type text to be searched in Search field or choose it from combo box menu.

  2. Check the Replace toggle

  3. Type replacement text in Replace field or choose it from combo box menu.

  4. Change the search options as needed (see below).

  5. Type Enter in the Search or Replace fields or click on the Start button.

  6. During the search/replace session

    • click Skip on to skip found text,

    • OR click on Skip Element to skip the element containing the found text.

    • OR click Replace on to replace found text.

    • OR click Replace All on to replace all occurrences of searched text.

  7. The search/replace session can be stopped by

    • clicking on Stop,

    • OR typing Esc (this also gives the keyboard focus back to the document view),

    • OR by simply clicking anywhere in the document view.

Search options:

Ignore case

The search is case-insensitive. Example: "foo" matches both "foo" and "Foo".

[Tip]

When "Ignore case" has been checked, "Regular expression" has not been checked and both the searched string and the replacement string contain only lower-case letters or the hyphen character ('-'), the replacement string actually used is capitalized exactly like the found string it will replace.

Example: if you specify "editor" as the search string and "modeller" as the replacement string, the Search tool will replace "editor" by "modeller", "Editor" by "Modeller" and "EDITOR" by "MODELLER".

Counterexample: if you specify "IBM" as the search string and "Lenovo" as the replacement string, the Search tool will replace "IBM", "Ibm" and "ibm" by "Lenovo".

Whole word

The found string must be a word, that is, the found string must be surrounded by white spaces. Example: "foo" matches "foo" but not "foobar".

Regular expression

The searched string must be a valid regular expression. A regular expression is specified in a syntax similar to that used by Perl. See also http://docs.oracle.com/javase/6/docs/api/java/util/regex/Pattern.html.

In such case, $1, $2, ..., $9 may be used in the replacement string to refer to the substrings matching the parenthesized groups of the regular expression.

$0 is replaced by the string matching the regular expression in its entirety. "$$" may be used to quote character '$'.

Examples:

  • "f(o+)" matching "foo", replaced by "g$1", gives "goo".

  • "f(o+)" matching "foo", replaced by "$0bar", gives "foobar".

  • "f(o+)" matching "foo", replaced by "g$$1", gives "g$1".

Smart text boundaries

Searching string "Hello world!" in an XML document is not as obvious as it seems: for example, is "Hello world!" with word "Hello" contained in an emphasis element followed by text node " world!" supposed to be found by XXE?

  • If this toggle is checked, the answer is yes. "Hello world!" is found within "<em>Hello</em> world!" but not within "<p>Hello </p><p>world!</p>".

    This mode uses the schema used to validate current document to recognize logically contiguous text across different types of elements.

  • If this toggle is not checked, the answer is no. Each text node is separated from other text nodes whatever the type of the element containing it.

This option is turned off by default, as it is rarely needed and also because it may cause the Search tool to fail in finding some strings for certain document types.

Direction
Up

Search from the current caret position to the beginning of the document.

Down

Search from the current caret position to the end of the document.

Highlight all

During the text search and/or replace operation (that is, temporarily), highlight all text spans matching the search criteria.

Wrap search

Restart the search from the beginning of the document when the end of the document has been reached. (If Direction is Down, restart the search from the end of the document when the beginning of the document has been reached.)