szermatt / visual-replace

A nicer interface for query-replace on Emacs

visual-replace

visual-replace provides a nicer interface to query-replace and string-replace on Emacs. It lets you see what is going to be modified as you edit the query.

The prompt of visual-replace includes both the text to be replaced and the replacement, to make it easier to craft possibly complex regular expression search and replace.

The prompt also displays the mode of replacement:

• text → replacement executes string-replace
• text →? replacement executes query-replace
• text →.* replacement executes replace-regexp
• text →?.* replacement executes query-replace-regexp

More flags can be toggled, to control:

• the scope of the replacement, region or whole buffer
• whether search and replace applies on whole words only
• with or without case-fold-search
• with or without replace-lex-whitespace

If you leave visual-replace without confirming, with C-g, you can continue where you left off next time by going up in the history, with C-p.

While visual-replace is active, it scrolls the window to keep at least one example of matches visible. You can also press up and down to go through the matches. (C-p and C-n remain available to navigate through history.)

Installation

visual-replace requires Emacs 26.1.

To replace query-replace' with visual-replace' globally, do:

(require 'visual-replace)
(visual-replace-global-mode 1)

With use-package and with a custom key binding:

(use-package visual-replace
   :defer t
   :bind (("C-c r" . visual-replace)
          :map isearch-mode-map
          ("C-c r" . visual-replace-from-isearch)))

Usage

Launch `visual-replace' with the keybinding you chose when installing, "M-%" by default.

In that mode:

• "TAB" navigates between the text to replace and the replacement string
• "RET" switches to the replacement string, the first time, then executes the replacement
• "M-% r" toggles regexp mode on and off
• "M-% l" toggles query mode one and off
• "M-% SPC" toggles query mode one and off
• "M-% w" toggle limiting search to whole words
• "M-% c" toggle case-fold
• "M-% s" toggle lax whitespace

If you started visual-replace with another keybinding, replace M-X with that keybinding. Modify visual-replace-mode-map and visual-replace-secondary-mode-map to customize the keybindings.

visual-replace-from-isearch switches from an active isearch session to visual-replace.

visual-replace-thing-at-point starts a visual replace session with the symbol at point, or a specified thing as understood by thing-at-point.

visual-replace-selected starts with the text within the current active region.

Testing

Install eldev and run tests with:

eldev test

License

This project is licensed under the GPLv2 - see the license file for details