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microsoft / vscode

Visual Studio Code
https://code.visualstudio.com
MIT License
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Find & Replace - Extremely limiting and frustrating functionality. #209216

Open Apocalypse612 opened 5 months ago

Apocalypse612 commented 5 months ago

In all the apps that I've ever used, I can honestly say I believe that VSCode's find & replace is one of the worst implementations of this feature that I have ever seen. I couldn't find my specific problems in the 10+ pages of people reporting bugs/issues with the F&R function of VSCode in this GitHub, so allow me to explain my issues systematically:

1) Why on earth does the "Find in Selection" feature not follow the highlighted selection in real-time? This is absurd. If I don't reset this command manually every time I want to use it, it ends up working throughout my entire document and breaking everything.

2) CTRL + F should "toggle" find a window on/off, and not simply turn it on. Why do I have to press a different key to disable it? This is non-intuitive.

3) The replace window should open by default with CTRL + F. Why do I have to manually use my mouse and unfurl the downward arrow to re-enable this feature every time I go to execute the shortcut?

4) "Find in Selection" should remain ON until I turn it off. If I close the find window and reopen it, it will NOT remember my previous selection, and I have to painstakingly turn it back on every time. The development team is inconsistent with this, as features such as "RegEx" remain active and persist through opening / closing the find window to remember my previous state.

In closing, having to hit ~3 different keyboard shortcuts every time I go to use a find / replace function of the same variety is a major problem.

rebornix commented 5 months ago

Thanks for your feedback. Regarding Find in Selection, I think we need to rethink how this should work in Monaco/VS Code, it stays so since the introduction of this feature.

sinewave-2097 commented 5 months ago

I read some previous comments from devs regarding the find/replace dialog box, including one that said they didn't want to move it because "that's what other apps do". I get wanting to be different, but think of your users. Let's get something flexible and easy to use. I want to be able to increase the size of the dialog box and have it be a change that sticks. The icons are so tiny as to be almost completely unreadable on a modern monitor. Need an option to include text instead of tiny, tiny icons. BBEdit and jEdit (RIP) do it well. Everyone has different needs, so please give us the option of displaying find/replace outside of the included default.

ermshiperete commented 5 months ago
  1. The replace window should open by default with CTRL + F. Why do I have to manually use my mouse and unfurl the downward arrow to re-enable this feature every time I go to execute the shortcut?

Replace is a different command (which happens to be accessible by pressing the down arrow in the find window, in addition to other ways to get there). You can press CTRL+H to get the replace window. This even works if the Find window is already open.