How to Select Non-Contiguous Text

[Bill Kochman]

Greetings again,

Maybe I am just missing something, but I can’t for the life of me figure out how to select non-contiguous text for the purposes of changing its capitalisation.

I have searched online for an answer, as well as looked through the BBEdit 11 PDF manual, but the answer has evaded me.

All I have found is how to choose a column of text — that is, a set of vertical rows — by holding down the Option key.

I am working on a set of just over 6,000 HTML documents, so being able to select non-contiguous text while I work would in the end save me a substantial amount of time, and be of great benefit to me.

BTW, this is something which I have to do manually — as opposed to doing repeated multi-file operations of find and replace — because the target text data is so varied, and in different positions in each document.

Thank you.

Kind regarding,

Bill Kochman

[Christopher Stone]

On Feb 04, 2017, at 16:04, Bill Kochman <wordwe...@gmail.com> wrote:

Maybe I am just missing something, but I can’t for the life of me figure out how to select non-contiguous text for the purposes of changing its capitalisation.

---

Hey Bill,

As far as I know BBEdit does not support non-contiguous text-selection and never has.

--

Best Regards,

Chris

[Bill Kochman]

Hello Chris,

In reading online info dating back as far back as fourteen years ago, I likewise arrived at the assumption that this feature might not yet be available in BBEdit.

Yet, at the same time, considering what a fantastic coding genius Rich is — up there with a number of other mythical app developers whose names are included in someone’s hall of greatness somewhere in some far place out there — I find myself compelled to hold to the belief that he will discover a way and coding method to overcome the challenge of text data which is actually physically dispersed across one’s hard drive in zeroes and ones, and not truly linear and neatly lined up in sentences, as we see it with our physical eyes.

Thus, speaking in faith, I say “might not yet be available.”

I rest my case, with eager anticipation of hearing soon of an amazing coding breakthrough. :)

Oh great one, slay those demons!

Bill

[Oliver Boermans]

Hi Bill,

What you are looking for is “Rectangular Selections”. 

Search for it in the user manual.

I use them every day 

<3

Cheers

Ollie

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[Oliver Boermans]

Oops sorry, I see I replied without reading thoroughly.

BBEdit’s answer to this task is search and replace.

Try this thread

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/bbedit/search$20AND$20replace$20AND$20keyboard%7Csort:relevance/bbedit/reWifyGwqLQ/xxaS9pPFDAAJ

[Bill Kochman]

Ollie, if you are referring to using the Option key, as I mentioned in my OP, that will not work in this case, because the text to be changed is not vertically lined up within the rectangle that is created when one uses the Option key. It is at different locations within the rectangle, so that if I implement my changes, words that should remain untouched, will be changed as well . . . unless I am missing something in the BBEdit documentation. I think that Chris understands what I am attempting to do.

Bill

[Bill Kochman]

Ollie, I don’t think that method will work either.

Basically, I am trying to change the titles and positions of words in over 6,000 HTML documents. In other words, this is NOT a standard set of the same exact words which are found in every single document.

Unless I am working on changing the data in a series — in which case the titles would match, except for the part number -- each title is quite unique. So again, global find and replace will not work in this instance. I actually use global find and replace quite heavily in my work every single day.

However, in this case, the data to be changed is non-contiguously spread across one to four lines of text in each HTML document, and there are non-changeable words between the words that need to be altered. If a non-contiguous text selection option was available in BBEdit, I could very quickly change each document.

Bill

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[Christopher Stone]

On Feb 04, 2017, at 16:38, Bill Kochman <wordwe...@gmail.com> wrote:

… considering what a fantastic coding genius Rich is … I find myself compelled to hold to the belief that he will discover a way …

---

Hey Bill,

:)

Many programming editors (perhaps most of the good ones now) support non-contiguous editing.

That really facilitates refactoring variable names and function calls and such, so I really hope you're right.

--

Best Regards,

Chris

[Bill Kochman]

And so, Chris, we wait patiently with abated breath until that genius stirs himself, gathers his wits -- maybe has his espresso in his thatched hut -- and attacks that demon head on! :)

Bill

[Oliver Boermans]

Bill, I see what you are looking for is somewhat more complicated!

For non-contiguous text selection to work in the desired manner it would still be necessary for the machine to create some flavour of grep pattern based on your selection. So it follows, until such time that this genius creation exists, it ought to be possible to manually write a pattern that does the job for you now.

How is your grep foo? Have you been down that path?

Cheers

Ollie

[Bill Kochman]

Ollie, I use basic grep patterns every single day on a large volume of files. However, I must humbly admit that a simple Padawan Learner am I. :)

["Néstor E. Aguilera"]

Hi Bill,

In the Finder you can select several objects simultaneously by holding down the command key. This also works in OpenOffice (and surely in MS Word), but that doesn't seem to work in the current version of BBEdit.

I guess I don't quite understand the problem, as I didn't see an example, but would it be possible to replace one part at a time? For instance if you have

- this is all very confusing

and you want to change it to

- this may be very interesting

you could do first

- this may be very confusing

and then

- this may be very interesting

But perhaps the number of contiguous parts varies or some other complication arises.

Best,

Nestor