find and replace

[BKSalman]

I'm not too good with regex, but is there a way to find and replace using the search("/")?

[A-Walrus]

In Helix the usual way to find and replace is to first select with s then replace with c

edit: originally said r instead of c (r replaces with character, with c you can type whatever you want)

[dessalines]

Anyway to make this case sensitive?

[robrecord]

I'd like to search and replace, keeping part of the original selected string. e.g. in vim : %s/foo\(.*)bar/\t\1 > that should change any fooblablablabar into [tab]blablabla > I am able to find fooblablablabar using '%s' foo(.*)bar how can I introduce $1 or \1 after typing 'c' ? thanks

Currently, it would seem that instead of using c, you would edit the selection in such a way as to dance around the part you don't want to change with clever use of movement keys. You could also subselect using s, or sub-deselect a part of the selection with alt-K (remove_selections) and edit the rest, if your edit will be symmetrical. Or you can just pipe whatever selection to sed with | (shell_pipe).

For your example, you could do:

• % to select all
• s to select with regex: foo.*bar then <enter>
• s to select with regex: (foo|bar) then <enter>. This selects foo or bar within the selection.
• d to delete selection.

[robrecord]

Anyway to make this case sensitive?

Yes,

• if you have used any capital letters in the query, or
• if you prefixed your query with (?-i)

See #11981

[dessalines]

Sweet, thx.

[michihupf]

did you find a way to define and use regex groups for replacement?

[rickswe]

The only problem is there's no feedback like in vim with gc. You basically have to trust the
multiple cursors or "you" the user to input properly. Not sure if the muliple cursors was the
best approach to this. Probably a better solution would have been to make a dedicated
command or function but why reinvent the wheel when multiple cursors are already
part of it? ...

:%s/Foo/Bar/gc

[blitzarx1]

And what about find and replace in all project files?

[kirawi]

There was an abandoned PR for this: #4381

However, if you are using an LSP you can use space-r

[rickswe]

A vimgrep clone would be great but I think right now there are more important things that need attention in helix. For now sed will do the trick.

[stesj4]

I want to find and replace, but not with multi cursor. In my document I don't want replace all hits. Now I search and find, exit multi cursor and use the n key to jump and edit them individually. No replace

[rossmeier]

Found a great way to do this today:

• Search using /
• On first occurrence, press c and replace with what you want to replace
• A: press n to go to next occurrence
• If you want to replace this occurrence, press . to replace with last inserted (i.e. what you replaced the last thing with)
• goto A

[stesj4]

Thank you very much, just what I was looking for 😊

[lihsai0]

Found a great way to do this today:

• Search using /
• On first occurrence, press c and replace with what you want to replace
• A: press n to go to next occurrence
• If you want to replace this occurrence, press . to replace with last inserted (i.e. what you replaced the last thing with)
• goto A

@rossmeier In vim, a better way to do it is search first, then cgn, and here just use only one key . to replace & find next. I'm finding how to do this in helix, but have no idea. T^T

[gyreas]

Found a great way to do this today:

• Search using /
• On first occurrence, press c and replace with what you want to replace
• A: press n to go to next occurrence
• If you want to replace this occurrence, press . to replace with last inserted (i.e. what you replaced the last thing with)
• goto A

I literally came to add this trick. Seems you called dips on it :D

[seungjin]

Multicursor way works fine but had a trouble when I have multiple same thing to replace on single lines.
For example, like to replace all \t to 4 spaces with

\tHello
\t\t Hello World
\t\t\t Bye

Simply I do :

%
:pipe sed 's/\t/   /g'

[langdine]

I can't understand why Helix doesn't support a substitute command. Having to pipe text to another process just to perform such a simple replacement feels unnecessary. Pipe to "sd" have a nice work.

[michihupf]

it's one of the main reasons I switched back to nvim last week. I see that most people might be fine using multiple cursors, but for more complex replacements this just sucks. I might revisit helix later sometime if they someday fix this