On 2 Jul 2013, at 11:58, Donald I Macdonald wrote:
However I still feel (though I accept I may be in the minority) it is a backward step in usability. Even if the old "replace" button would appear when a modifier key was pressed (as "replace in selection" used to work in TextMate 1) that would satisfy me. This is not a complaint exactly, just my two cents as to what works for me.
Your original letter mentioned that you would use the Replace for testing what the result would be, and thus Replace and Find wouldn’t work, because focus would move to the next match.
This made me think that perhaps instead of your two-step process with a potential undo, would it be useful if Find Next (⌘G) would show a tool tip with a replacement preview? Probably only when the search was for a regular expression with captures.
Btw: the functionality of TextMate 1’s replace button still exist but is unbound. You can add a custom key binding to the ‘replace:’ action. I’ll look into adding menu item and/or button for it in upcoming build.
As a side issue I noticed that the replace function occasionally matched a regex, but then replaced it with the unmodified string in the replace box, complete with back-references as literal characters. A simple ctrl-z and a repeat of the search fixed the problem both times.
When you do a regular expression search, it adds the captures (from the search) to the replace clipboard, so if the replace clipboard has been changed since the search and subsequent replace, it would insert the replacement string without expanding the captures.
If you can figure out what triggers it, that would be useful. It could be something like switching to another program, or maybe bringing up find dialog and making changes.