Search dialog:

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

Search dialog, 'Simple Dialogs' version.

Search:
String or pattern to be searched.
- If a block is highlighted, it is used as initial search string.
- If no block highlighted, this field may be initially empty or it may contain previous string used by Wildfilew, or previous string used in any search (current search string). This can be selected from the options dialog.
- If you leave this field empty, previous search string is used.
Case sensitive
- check this box for case sensitive search (upper case and lower case characters are considered different characters).
Word
- check this to search whole words only.
Skip comments
- check this to ignore search strings that occur inside comments. Currently only recognizes C and C++ comments (although this works with many other languages, too, for example Java and Vedit macros.)
Search mode:
Simple - Simple string search, no codes
Pattern - Use Vedit pattern matching codes
Regular Expressions    - Use Regular Expressions, minimal length
Reg Exp (Max) - Use Regular Expressions, maximal length
Display matched lines as:
Visual / edit - When occurrence found, go to edit mode. Press Visual Exit to continue search.
List with filenames - Create list of search results with filenames and line numbers.
Extract w/o filenames - Create list of lines containing searched string. No filenames or line numbers included.
List filenames only; - List names of files that contain the search string.
- Click this button to go to Search & Replace dialog box. Any options you have entered so far will be retained.
- Expand dialog into Full Dialog. For additional options available in full dialog, see Additional fields in Full Dialog.

Search results

How the search results are presented depends on your selection in the "Display matched lines as" option.

Visual / edit:

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.

List with filenames:

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.

List filenames only

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.

Extract w/o filenames

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.

Related topics:

Replace dialog
Fields common to all main dialogs
Additional fields in Full Dialog
Wildfile - Multi file processing