Looking for Feedback on Ctrl+F3 (Edit.FindNextSelected)

Published 06 December 05 01:46 PM | VSEditor 

I'm investigating the MSDN Product Feedback Center issue where Find Next Selected should not use regular expressions or wildcards(http://lab.msdn.microsoft.com/ProductFeedback/viewFeedback.aspx?feedbackid=18ff6379-d9e2-4baa-9c61-3a99889c6ba1).

The intention of the command is to take the text that is currently selected and find the next occurance of that text.  Our current design has this tied to the options in the Quick Find/Replace dialog.  This means that it will respect the Look in scope, Match case, Match Whole Word, Search Hidden Text and the options to Use Regular Expressions/Wildcards.  The problem is that this command does not make sense to use with regular expressions or wildcards. 

We are considering making a change to this command such that it will always search the Current Document, with Match case, Searching Hidden Text but never match whole word, nor use Regular Expressions or Wildcards. 

Since this is a commonly used command, I'd love to get more feedback from users before making this change.  Please let us know what you think!

Thanks,
Sean Laberee

Bonus:  For those of you who want to try out the new behaviour, I've written the following macros to demonstrate what it would be like!

    Sub FindNextSelected()

        DTE.Find.MatchCase = True

        Dim sel As TextSelection = DTE.ActiveDocument.Selection

        DTE.Find.FindWhat = sel.Text

        DTE.Find.Target = vsFindTarget.vsFindTargetCurrentDocument

        DTE.Find.MatchCase = True

        DTE.Find.MatchWholeWord = False

        DTE.Find.Backwards = False

        DTE.Find.MatchInHiddenText = True

        DTE.Find.PatternSyntax = vsFindPatternSyntax.vsFindPatternSyntaxLiteral

        DTE.Find.Action = vsFindAction.vsFindActionFind

        If (DTE.Find.Execute() = vsFindResult.vsFindResultNotFound) Then

            Throw New System.Exception("vsFindResultNotFound")

        End If

    End Sub

    Sub FindPreviousSelected()

        DTE.Find.MatchCase = True

        Dim sel As TextSelection = DTE.ActiveDocument.Selection

        DTE.Find.FindWhat = sel.Text

        DTE.Find.Target = vsFindTarget.vsFindTargetCurrentDocument

        DTE.Find.MatchCase = True

        DTE.Find.MatchWholeWord = False

        DTE.Find.Backwards = True

        DTE.Find.MatchInHiddenText = True

        DTE.Find.PatternSyntax = vsFindPatternSyntax.vsFindPatternSyntaxLiteral

        DTE.Find.Action = vsFindAction.vsFindActionFind

        If (DTE.Find.Execute() = vsFindResult.vsFindResultNotFound) Then

            Throw New System.Exception("vsFindResultNotFound")

        End If

    End Sub

 

Comments

# pleblond said on December 6, 2005 5:11 PM:
I fully agree with the proposed change. The current behavior is confusing.

Thank you for giving us a chance to give
our views.
# Xentrax said on December 8, 2005 1:59 PM:
I think that using RegExe/Wildcards can not be anyhow useful for "Find Selected", so this option should be ignored.

On the other hand, I would inherit all other options from Find dialog, or there would not be any way to control Find Selected behaviour.

It would be very intuitive for me.
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