Find and Replace

CotEditor has a powerful find and replacement feature that also can use regular expression.

Find/Replacement Histories

You can re-use previous find/replacement strings by selecting them from the lope/pen icon in the field.

Options

OptionDescription
Regular ExpressionSearch with regular expression.
Ignore CaseIgnore character case on search.
In SelectionSearch text only from selection.

Advanced Find Options

You can customize find behavior from the advanced find options panel. The advanced find options panel will be opened when you click the gear button in the find panel.

OptionDescription
Wrap search aroundFind from the the beginning of the document if there is no match after the cursor.
Select next match after replaceSelect next match after “Replace” automatically.
Auto-close progress dialogAutomatically close progress dialog that is shown when “Find All” or “Replace All” performed after progress is finished.

Textual Search

Options for search when the regular expression is disabled.

OptionDescriptionDefault
Match only whole wordRestrict search results to the whole words.Off
Distinguish characters strictlyExact character-by-character equivalence.Off
Ignore diacritical marksSearch ignores diacritical marks (e.g., ö = o).Off
Ignore width differencesSearch ignores width differences in character forms (e.g., a = a).Off

Regular Expression Search

Options for search when the regular expression is enabled.

OptionDescriptionDefault
Dot matches line separatorsAllow . to match any character, including newline characters (singleline).Off
Anchors match linesAllow ^ and $ to match the start and end of lines (multiline).On
Use Unicode word boundariesUse Unicode TR#29 to specify word boundariesOff
Unescape replacement stringUnescape meta characters with backslash in replacement string.On

See also