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How can I selectively replace text across multiple files?

I want to either jump from occurance to occurance and decide for each if I want to replace or not or even have all occurances as a list with checkboxes and select which one to replace or not.

I'm using Windows 8.1 and don't mind weather I can achieve this with built-in functionality, scripts or a third-party tool.

Notepad++ (6.5.1), VS Code (1.3.1), Atom (1.8.0) and Sublime Text (3114) seem to only support selectively replacing across the current file or replacing all occurances at once across multiple files while UltraEdit (23.20.0.34) seems to only offer deciding file-wise (asking with alerts file by file).

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3 Answers 3

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Possible solution I found

Find And Replace's core functionality seems to be just that.
It also gives a list with checkboxes.
Unfortunately this feature's documentation doesn't provide any screenshots.

Disclaimer

FAR is open source software hosted on sourceforge and released under GPL3 license.

According to the homepage's Application tab System Requirements are:

FAR requires Java 1.6 (or later) in your path. Run
:> java -version
on your command line to verify you have it. FAR comes with suitable launchers for Windows, Mac OS X and other X's for best integration into your OS.

I'm not giving any recommendation as I cannot even as I only tried it out and did not yet work with it enough.
I'm providing information on a way I found to achieve the functionality I was looking for.
Of course I appreciate posts about any other possible solutions as I don't expect there to be a lot.

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  • This one is useless. Just instantly replaces all matching strings in files. Not even an option to save.
    – Tuntable
    Aug 4, 2016 at 9:14
  • Instantly replacing does save. Is an option to review the changes what you're looking for? What I missed and makes this not a solution for the problem I had is that it only works file-wise just as TextCrawler.
    – sqln00b
    Aug 4, 2016 at 11:42
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Possible solution I found

Since release 0.4.1 Brackets supports reviewing and filtering matches in a list with checkboxes before replacing across files

Disclaimer

Brackets is being described a modern, open source text editor that understands web design on its homepage.
It is founded by Adobe, released under MIT licence and based on web technology.

System Requirements are:

  • Mac OSX 10.6.8 or newer
  • Windows Vista, 7, or 8/8.1 (x32 and x64) (installer requires administrator access)
  • Linux Ubuntu 12.04 or newer (x32 and x64)
  • Debian Linux 8 or newer
  • At least 2 GB of RAM for Live Development

Further information is given on the homepage, the github page, its wiki and the product's Wikipedia article: Brackets (text editor).

I'm not giving any recommendation as I cannot even as I only tried it out and did not yet work with it enough.
I'm providing information on a way I found to achieve the functionality I was looking for.
Of course I appreciate posts about any other possible solutions as I don't expect there to be a lot.

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  • Please read How do I recommend software for some tips as to how you should go about recommending software. You should provide at least a link, some additional information about the software itself, and how it can be used to solve the problem in the question.
    – DavidPostill
    Jul 29, 2016 at 19:10
  • Didn't you just tell me product recommendations are off-topic here? I can't recommend what I just found out about, I'm just providing information on where I found the functionality wanted in the (my) question.
    – sqln00b
    Jul 30, 2016 at 8:09
  • You are not allowed to specifically ask for software in a question. You are allowed to answer a question with a software recommendation that answers the OPs issue/problem.
    – DavidPostill
    Jul 30, 2016 at 8:44
  • Utterly useless for this as far as I can tell. Seems to have very primitive search/replace. It is nice of you to post solutions, but please only do so if you have some reason to do so. If the only reason you are recommending something is because you have heard of it then that useless, time wasting info. There are dozens if not hundreds of text editor like tools out there.
    – Tuntable
    Aug 4, 2016 at 9:46
  • How does not providing fancy additional functionality render a solution useless? It does provide what was needed. It is nice of you to post comments, but please only do so if you have some reason to do so. If the only reason you are commenting something is because you have heard of it or want to troll then that is a useless time wasting comment. There are dozens of trees and birds out there.
    – sqln00b
    Aug 4, 2016 at 11:47
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TextCrawler is another tool that does not allow selective replace. It does seem to be a pretty good search and replacer, with some sort of scripting, but nothing much over notepad++. I'm giving up

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  • It actually does give you a list with checkboxes you can seperately choose to check or not to check (see screenshots on homepage but only file-wise. I already wrote about that in a comment to my question five days ago.
    – sqln00b
    Aug 4, 2016 at 11:44

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