Text Search Methods (Windows CE 5.0)
The text editor supports two common searching methods: full string searching and incremental searching.
- With full string searching, the entire search string is specified before the search begins. You can you can search for text in a single source file or in multiple files.
- With incremental searching, the search is performed as you type the string. Because incremental search finds the match while you are typing, you rarely need to type the complete search string.
If you are looking for a string that occurs multiple times in your file, you can use shortcut keys to invoke the Find Next and Find Previous commands. The key combination you use depends on what you have selected. Incremental search stops when you press the ESC key.
With the advanced find and replace capabilities of the text editor, you can search for literal strings or use regular expressions to find words or characters.
You can use regular expressions, including tagged regular expressions, with both the Find and Replace commands.
Each occurrence of a tagged expression is numbered according to its order in the FindWhat text box, and its replacement expression is \n, where 0 corresponds to the first tagged expression, 1 to the second, and so on. There can be up to 10 tagged expressions.
Regular expressions are not supported with incremental searching.
The following table shows the type of full string searches that can be performed with the Find and Replace commands.
| Type of search | Description |
|---|---|
| Whole word match | Matches all occurrences of a string not preceded or followed by an alphanumeric character or an underscore (_). |
| Case match | Searches for text that matches the capitalization of the string. |
| Regular expression | Uses a special character sequence to search for text. If you select the RegularExpression check box in the Find dialog box, you can build a search string using the RegularExpressions list. |
You can switch between these types of searches using toolbar buttons. You can also switch between searching the active file only or all open files.
You can set bookmarks at every occurrence of the string or expression. You can then use the BookmarkNext command to move to each bookmark in your file.
See Also
Finding a String | Viewing the Edit Toolbar | Using the Find Command Without Using the Find Dialog Box | Finding a String Using Incremental Search | Finding a String in Multiple Source Files | Selecting Additional Folders to Search | Removing a Folder from the Search List | Displaying the Output from the Last Multiple-File Search Done During the Current Session | Replacing Text | Finding Text Using Regular Expressions
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