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atom / find-and-replace

Find and replace in a single buffer and in the project
MIT License
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Find/replace not working with PHP vars (whole word) #436

Open Sogl opened 9 years ago

Sogl commented 9 years ago

Hi!

I use Atom 1.0 on Windows 7 x64.

Whole word option is enabled. If I try to replace some variables in PHP with $, replace doesn't work. Works only without $. Also find don't working with $.

More info here: https://github.com/atom/atom/issues/7724

kubetz commented 9 years ago

Thank you :+1: !

I am able to reproduce this behavior on Windows 8. Investigating currently what is going on.

kubetz commented 9 years ago

Okey, this unfortunately is a standard behavior for regular expressions (TIL).

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regular_expression

\b Matches a zero-width boundary between a word-class character (see next) and either a non-word class character or an edge. \w Matches an alphanumeric character, including ""; same as [A-Za-z0-9] in ASCI ...

So the $ character is breaking the search. This is the behavior I got also from using Chrome's DevTools console and also interactive sites (e.g. http://regexpal.com/)

Sogl commented 9 years ago

But I have turned off the Regex option.

kubetz commented 9 years ago

Sorry, I didn't explain it well. When you enable whole word option it will escape your string, add \b at the beginning and end of the string you are searching and use regexp matching for it .. that is the reason why is it not working.

I am going to try some editors to see if this is standard behavior there too or using \b is an approach that is not feasible.

Sogl commented 9 years ago

My example (on screenshots) also doesn't work for you?

kubetz commented 9 years ago

Nope, it doesn't and the reasons are clear. Whole word search is using regular expressions and \b internally and that doesn't work well with PHP variables.

I tried Sublime Text 3 (EDIT: and also in Ace) the behavior is the same as for Atom. You cannot search for whole words that contain $: sublime

Hovewer in Notepad++ it works: npp

Sogl commented 9 years ago

Hm, Notepad++ works fine :smile:

kubetz commented 9 years ago

Question for Atom developers (or anyone else):

What do you think about showing an error message when someone enables whole word option and the text contains \W character(s)?

This makes it however "interesting" when regexp option is turned on. Notepad++ is solving that by disabling the whole word option when regexp is selected.

npp

zmorris commented 3 years ago

Since this issue is almost 6 years old and PHP is the language everyone loves to hate, I think we can safely assume it will not be fixed. Here is the workaround I use in the search pane:

Enable the .* regex option. Disable the whole word option.

\$variable\b

image

Basically surround the search in \ and add b on the end. It works well enough I guess.

I love the extensibility of Atom, but am hitting such daily friction with inexplicable lags and critical (but non-core) packages breaking that it's become a problem. Package Cop helps, but unfortunately has such a poor user interface that I can't always isolate misbehaving packages in a reasonable amount of time. I'm sensing enough of this errata reaching critical mass that it may be time to jump ship to VS Code. I've felt that way for several years but still stubbornly cling to Atom because I believe in the dream of web everywhere and building software modularly. It's just hard when all of the billions of dollars go to giant corporations that don't need it while the open source community depends on overworked developers to fight through burnout and contribute, reminiscent of the shanty town beneath the skyscrapers in Dubai.