Robert Inventor

This is a common task in programming and maybe other areas as well. For instance, I imagine it may be of use at times for authors of books.

Maybe you have several things you want to replace, all the way through a document. First of all, if there are only three things to replace, well you can do that easily, because TFE has three search and replace fields, and you can search and replace all three items simultaneously.

With one click on the R. All button, you get to:

Those changes will be made all the way through the document, in one go. You can also make them simultaneously in all your documents in a folder and all its sub folders too, since any of these search and replace features can also be used with the option to search and replace all the files in a folder.

I should also mention the "synchronise case" option, as you will probably want it switched on in this situation. Here it is in action:

Before:

Now click on R. all to replace day by night, and night by day:

Notice how the Night (replacement for Day) is capitalised in the first sentence, and not capitalised in the second. This happened automatically. The reason is because synchronise case was switched on. So in the search to replace day by night, then Day gets replaced by Night everywhere, and day by night. Similarly DAY (if you have it anywhere) gets replaced by NIGHT.

To find this feature in Text Echo - go to Main | Main with Replace - to show the three search and replace fields. To configure your search and replace, e.g. to switch the synchronise case option on / off, go to Find | Show Find & Replace window (Ctrl + H)

Something else to notice, is that you can't do this sort of swapping of words so easily if you have just a single search and replace field. Try doing it in Word say, and you will soon see what I mean. You would have to resort to intermediate steps - replace day by xyz everywhere in your document say, then night by day, then xyz by night. That would work (assuming xyz isn't in the document - obviously use something else if you are a mathematician say and may have an xyz in there somewhere).

But with TFE you can swap two words in your document like this, one with another throughout the document, just with a single search and replace, all in one go.

Now - what if you want to replace dozens, or even hundreds of different words or phrases all the way through your document, or many documents?

Perhaps you are an author, and have decided to change the names of all your main characters in an entire novel. Or you are a coder, and want to change the names of dozens of variables all the way through your code. I often wish to do it for programming - and in fact added this feature as a tool for my own use originally.

This is a also easy to do in Text Echo.

Here is a test sentence before:

So - perhaps you have decided to change the names of everyone in this short "story". Here is the replace list - which you edit using the Edit button:

Just click the R. All button and this is what you get:

So anyway - you just have to make a list of all the things you want changed. You do that using lines that begin with + for the things you want replaced, followed by lines beginning with = for the things you want them replaced by. Lines beginning with an ! are comments

The list can be as long as you like, and there is nothing to stop you doing a simultaneous replace of hundreds of things at once if you like (as is sometimes needed for coding).

Again you can use this to swap words as well. If after that search and replace, you decide that Sandy should be called Dave and Dave Sandy, with the names just swapped over, then just do another search and replace using

+Sandy
=Dave
+Dave
=Sandy

To find this feature in Text Echo - go to Main | Main with Replace - and if you have the third search and replace field hidden, you see a Show List button - click on that to get to the situation shown above.

You can change which file is used for the multiple search and replace list - to do that go to Find | Show Find & Replace window (Ctrl + H).

So for instance, if you often want to do the same list of replacements, you can save the replace list in a separate file with a memorable name - and then you can easily bring it up in the future again, whenever you want to do that particular multiple search and replace.

As before you can do this multiple search and replace all the documents in a folder and all its sub-folders - so long as it is in rich text, or text format - or any format that uses plain Ascii text, such as html code or c-code etc. It can also use the synchronise case option if desired, and can use the wild words and characters too.

Currently, you can't do this search and replace with Word documents. You would need to save them in Rich Text format first - which, depending on the document, may mean that you lose the layout of the text, and images. Or you can use the editable clipboard viewer in TFE, and search and replace the text in the clipboard - the clipboard viewer also shows the text in Rich text format, but e.g. you could do the search and replace of a component text field within a larger Word document in this way, so preserving the layout.

Note: Unicode characters can't currently be used for the search and replace.

Freeware / Shareware status: This feature is free.

You may however want to use it with one of the shareware features such as to do a search and replace of all the files in a folder, or text that you enter into a web form.

To read more about Text Echo, go on to:

Make Web Site Forwarding Mirror

To get the program, download and install Text Echo

Download Text Echo

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