I really like advance find and replace in kate editor. You can optionally use regex and operate on multiple files.
Very importantly it has a robust preview changes ability. it is comfortable to use even with lots of hits, lots of files. So you do not need to apply a bunch of changes and hope you considered every permutation as with a cli tool like sed.
One thing that would really improve my life would be a tool like this which allows you to save search queries and options.
Don't work for me:
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Kate has a popup for history in the fields which is somewhat helpful but limited. When trying out different queries you don't have a way to remember which one actually worked so going by the history just ends in repeating the same errors over and over. Also it doesn't match the "find" and "replace" fields nor does it associate them with the other options like directory, etc.
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Keeping notes in a text file is of course possible but cumbersome. I would like the computer to do work like that for me.
For single file searches regex101.com (non floss) and regexr.com (GPLv3) are great in-browser tools for learning and you can save the search. But to operate locally on many files, it doesn't work.
Does anyone know any tools that do anything like this? Can find various utilities which operate on file names but I am looking for file content. Certainly this exists ya?
(Post image is screenshot from Kate website of Kate on windows.)
I think this would be a perfect project for writing a kate plugin! https://develop.kde.org/docs/apps/kate/plugin/
Until then, even though you have eliminated sed from your list, I suggest trying sed + grep to check your changes before modifying anything.
Well the odds of me learning C++ anytime soon are pretty low. But if someone else thought it was useful enough to spend time on, I guess starting with the existing plugin which is pictured above would probably be expedient...
That or a stand alone application.
I'm sure this must exist....
How do you use sed and grep to check?
I've been trying to use
sedmore but having everything in a single command makes it hard to think about when there is complexity. I know it's dumb but having a "find" box, a "replace" box, and toggles for options that are visually distinct from one another really helps me. Especially when it comes to re-using a line later on, I have a hard time following my own code if there are a lot of escapes or fancy regex components. The only reason I've been able to learn anything at all is because of the websites like regex101 and regexr that make everything colorful. Really what I want is a desktop version of those but it's probably too much to ask for.I've only done this a handful of times, so I'm probably missing a better way to do it, but:
1 grep with -r to find the thing I want to change in all the files
2 Google how to use sed again 😹
3 write a sed command to make the necessary change in just one file
4 Google bash loop syntax again 🙃
5 use a bash loop to pass all the files into my sed command, but have sed print the result to stdout, not change the files, and pipe that output into my grep command that shows what I want to change
6 sometimes no output means it works, sometimes the grep regex is general enough that I can see the change. Either way if it works run the bash loop with sed again but make sed modify the files in place.
It truly is a pain until I get the bash and sed syntax loaded in my brain again
Edit: I forgot the most important part: putting the check and modify steps into a script so that you have it again when you need it 😅