Hello,

I am a new PhpED user and a former Macromedia HomeSite user. For the most part I love the application. The fact that many of the background processes are threaded is great. However there are some things that I have noticed that would be extremely helpful. I will describe three of them.

Search and Replace:
This feature is very lacking. Multiple line search and replaces is definitely a mandatory feature and I cannot believe a tool of this caliber has been alive this long without it. Please review the screenshot that I have provided below. It shows the awesome power of HomeSite's Find and Replace functionality. Please incorporate this feature so that I dont have to keep both IDEs open when I work.


Find:
I hate the fact that when I search for a word I can't easily go through all searches by hitting the ENTER key (HomeSite method). I have to hit Ctrl+F and ENTER to search for the next location... this is annoying, tedious, slow etc..

FTP/SFTP New File:
Again, I like the threaded approach to the Explorer window, but when I am SFTPed into a connection I am very surprised that I can create a new folder within the explorer but I cannot create a new file. This is a huge annoyance... there is the workaround of creating a new file and then saving it in the SFTP location, but that is a waste of 10-15 secs everytime I create a file.

I have been programming for 12 years in the windows and unix environment, I think PhpED has the potential of becoming (hands down) the best PHP IDE around. Once these quirks are overcome I will have no doubts.

thank you for your time,
Shane Bailey
SHOUThosting.com

As an ex-HomeSite and current Dreamweaver user, I feel obliged to add my two cents

I have not searched and replaced this way before, but can see the occasional usefulness of such a feature.

One can use F3 to go to the next found item and Shift+F3 to go back. Took a day to get used to this behaviour, and now I am quite happy with it

I think the philosophy of PhpED (well it's the way I work at least) is to do your development on a "local" version of your source and then upload to a remote server. (In this context, "local" can be files on your computer, your network or even a Samba share on a remote server.) If one want new files or folders on the remote server that do not exist in the local project, then I guess it does not really form part of the PhpED project, and one should then create them in some other way outside of PhpED.

almost all of the Windows applications I have ever used (regedit, IE, Firefox, Word, etc) use F3 to go to the next item that matches a search string. I'd say having the Enter key go to the next item breaks this common method, so I would have to vote no for this feature request.

As for the multi-line search, cant say that I have ever had a need to do that... It's rare that I ever have code on multi lines all at column 1. It is usually indented, so I would assume that any search criteria (and the replace) would need to match that as well. I'm not so sure I would use this if implemented...


On this one, I disagree. I often times finding myself needing to create "one-off" (testing or some type of unusual maintenance) files that arent really part of a project. I find myself doing the same thing that shouthosting mentioned: uploading a file outside of PhpEd, then using PhpEd to rename/edit the file. So I would like to see the ability to create a new file on a remote server. It should be fairly easy to implement. Have the IDE create a temp file that is marked to upload to the remote host when saved.

Thank you for the responses. I have used HomeSite for what seems like a lifetime. Using F3 for the next match is just fine, so we can remove that request.

However the multiline replace functionality is huge, at least for me. For example, I do a lot of data parsing, loading and overall manipulation. Data is usually delimited by a pipe, comma or tab character. To easily see the record of data I do a replace on this character with a newline. This helps look at the recordset and to compare it to the record specifications. You can do this to a GETSTRING of a URL as well so that you can easily see the data passed in. Me being a programmer I could create a php/perl/asp/vbs file to do the parsing for me, but HomeSite makes it so easy to do that it seems like a lot of overhead to have to use an outside solution for something that seems so easy.

Cant you do all of that with the current Search&Replace using the regular expression option? As for the query of a GET, I'd think using the debugger would be easier. that or doing a print_r or var_dump on the $_GET global....

as far as I can tell you cannot replace any string with a newline can you?

As for using programming to do the same, its of course a possibility, but would take much longer to accomplish the same thing.

well, originally my answer was going to be but when I actually tried it, it finds the delimiter but replaces it with a non-printable character instead of a new line. Also tried using \r and \n\r but that didnt work either.

I actually use RegExBuddy for all my regex stuff, and my idea works perfectly there, but doesnt work in PhpEd. Bug? Or am I missing something?

The help file says
but it definitely doesnt appear to be working that way.

Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes! Just review my past messages, and you'll see that I, too, think that PhpED most definitely needs a major overhaul of its search and replace, starting with proper multi-line expressions (which I use constantly while coding - makes writing certain types of new code a five minute procedure instead of a tedious hour procedure). After that, move on to expanding the dialog so that we don't have to work in miniscule little fields, kill the move-all-over behavior it has as you step through searches, move the recent expressions list to a separate control, add support for favorite patterns, and... - there is so much that can be done to improve it.

HomeSite looks like a great starting point to aim at, but my personal favorite is Bare Bones' BBEdit. From subtle things like syntax coloring for the PCRE expressions and a Don't Find button that lets you easily set up complex searches in stages, to complex file filters and a proper results browser, not to mention full scriptability of all these features, this software started out with a wonderful design 14 years ago and has since been refined to a level of near-perfection. It's extremely powerful while being very simple to use.

For those interested, here's the site:

[url]products/bbedit/index.shtml[/url]

If you have access to a Mac, download the trial version and give it a shot. Otherwise, here's the PDF manual:

http://valdez.barebones.com/pub/manual/BBEdit_85_User_Manual.pdf

You can at least read about it and see some screen shots; just head to Chapter 7. (And if you're new to grep, read on to Chapter 8, which is a wonderful introduction useful with any PCRE-using app.)

See also here:

[url]products/bbedit/benefitsexercise.shtml#search[/url]

Which discusses some of the recent improvements in search.

If NuSphere could get PhpED even moving in the same direction as BBEdit, that'd be a wonderful thing.

I'm 100% with you here.

My current workaround is: Create an empty.txt on your desktop and drag it into the PHPEd FTP Explorer.
PHPEd will ask you if you want to copy the file, once you click YES you created a new, empty file.

Same works with folders and is currently the fastest way to create new files / folders.


best,
frame