Search dialog is opened by default when you start Wildfilew.vdm (unless you change this from Options dialog). Use it to search for a string or pattern within multiple files (or just from current file, if you leave the files field empty). You can search items one by one, as with the normal search operation, or you can create a list of all the search results (see below).
These fields and options are available in the Search dialog in addition to the common options:
Search dialog, 'Simple Dialogs' version.
![]() | - Simple string search, no codes |
![]() | - Use Vedit pattern matching codes |
![]() | - Use Regular Expressions, minimal length |
![]() | - Use Regular Expressions, maximal length |
![]() | - When occurrence found, go to edit mode. Press Visual Exit to continue search. |
![]() | - Create list of search results with filenames and line numbers. |
![]() | - Create list of lines containing searched string. No filenames or line numbers included. |
![]() | - List names of files that contain the search string. |
How the search results are presented depends on your selection in the "Display matched lines as" option.
If you select "Visual / edit", the search stops on first item found and the searched string is highlighted, as in the normal search. You can edit the file as you will, and then continue search by pressing VISUAL EXIT (Ctrl-E in the default keyboard configuration). To cancel the search at any time, press VISUAL ESCAPE (Ctrl-F10). Help window displayed at the bottom of screen reminds you about these keys.
If you select "List with filenames", Wildfilew.vdm creates file search.tmp for the search results. The file is opened in an edit window. The file displays full pathname of each file where the search string was found, followed by all the lines where the string was found.
Double-click on the line in this listing. This opens the corresponding file and moves cursor to the line where the string was found.
You can save search.tmp with different filename if you want to keep the search results for later use.
If you select "List filenames only", only the filenames are listed. This will enhance the speed in case there are many instances of the searched string in each file (Wildfile skips the rest of the file as soon as the first instance is found). You can open any of the listed files by double-clicking on the filename.
If you select "Extract w/o filenames", only the text lines are listed, i.e. wildfilew.vdm acts as a filter. In this case, you can not use double-click to open the file.
Note: Wildfilew.vdm creates a double-click event macro if you do not have one already loaded. If you do already have a double-click event macro loaded, it is not overwritten. If you want to replace your old event macro with the one created by Wildfilew.vdm, you must manually empty text register 116 before running Wildfilew.