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VS.NET 2005 Express: find / replace accept only single line strings

I filed it here, so you can vote on it smileywink. Early in the whidbey alpha program proposed screenshots were posted of the new search/replace dialogs. I then mentioned it would be great (because I ran into this limitation a couple of times) if the find/replace dialog would accept multi-line search and replace strings, so you could search for 2 lines for example and / or replace with a multi-line string. A lot of people in the whidbey alpha group agreed.

To my surprise however, I saw in the VC# Express product that the find/replace dialog is single line only. There is no way to search for multi-line strings or replace something with a multi-line string. Perhaps this is a limitation of the Express product line, as I don't have the latest whidbey full installed so I can't test it there. If it is, forgive me, if it isn't (so whidbey full version has this same limitation), please make the search/replace dialog accept multi-line strings. A lot of the editors out there can do this already, as it is very handy to have smileyregular.

(note: I know with regular expressions it is possible, but I don't see how converting a search string and replace string into a regexp is 'productive', while a multi-line search/replace box is (like Homesite already has for years for example)

3 Comments

  • agreed ... a way to implement this would to accept escape codes like \n \t, rather than a multiline box. this is how ultraedit does it. solve this problem, and I won't need ultraedit any longer!

  • *sigh* I miss homesite :(

  • Hi Frans,



    I have been working with .net pretty much since it was in beta, and one thing that has always frustrated me is the IDE. It was very hard to come from using IDE's like IntelliJ, jBuilder & Eclipse to VS.NET.



    VS.NET has NEVER had the sort of features that a hard core coder wants, like refactoring, code generation, very advanced auto-complete, full syntax coloring, auto code formatting etc.



    I never use any of the vsiual tools because I find that complex applications must be hand designed & written (apart from actually drawing the forms).



    There are a lot of good tools in VS.NET, but they have always lacked basic coding features that Java IDE's have had for years.



    Lachlan

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