&Anders.Lund; &Anders.Lund.mail;

# Advanced Editing Tools

## Comment/Uncomment

The Comment and Uncomment commands, available from the Tools menu allow you to add or remove comment markers to the selection, or the current line if no text is selected, if comments are supported by the format of the text you are editing.

The rules for how commenting is done are defined in the syntax definitions, so if syntax highlighting is not used, commenting/uncommenting is not possible.

Some formats define single line comment markers, some multiline markers and some both. If multiline markers are not available, commenting out a selection that does not fully include its last line is not possible.

If a single line marker is available, commenting single lines is preferred where applicable, as this helps to avoid problems with nested comments.

When removing comment markers, no uncommented text should be selected. When removing multiline comment markers from a selection, any whitespace outside the comment markers is ignored.

To place comment markers, use the Tools Comment menu item or the related keyboard shortcut sequence, default is &Ctrl;D.

To remove comment markers, use the Tools Uncomment menu item or the related keyboard shortcut, default is &Ctrl;&Shift;D.

## The Editor Component Command Line

Kates editor component has an internal command line, allowing you to perform various actions from a minimal GUI. The command line is a text entry in the bottom of the editor area, to show it select View Switch to Command Line or use the shortcut (default is F7). The editor provides a set of commands as documented below, and additional commands can be provided by plugins.

To execute a command, press the return key. The command line will indicate wether it succeded and possibly display a message. If you entered the command line by pressing F7 it will automatically hide after a few seconds. To clear the message and enter a new command, press F7 again.

The command line has a built-in help system, issue the command `help` to get started. To see a list of all available commands issue `help list`, to view help for a specific command, do `help command`.

The command line has a built in history, so you can reuse commands already typed. To navigate the history, use the Up and Down keys. When showing historical commands, the argument part of the command will be selected, allowing you to easily overwrite the arguments.

### Standard Command Line Commands

#### Commands for Configuring the Editor

These command are provided by the editor component, and allows you to configure the active document and view only. This is handy if you want to use a setting different from the default settings, for example for indentation.

##### Argument types

BOOLEAN

  This is used with commands that turns things on or off. Legal values are `on`, `off`, `true`, `false`, `1` or `0`

INTEGER

  An integer number

STRING

  A string

    set-tab-widthINTEGER width

  Sets the tab width to the number `width`

    set-indent-widthINTEGER width

  Sets the indentation width to the number `width`. Used only if you are indenting with spaces.

    set-word-wrap-columnINTEGER width

  Sets the line width for hard wrapping to `width`. This is used if you are having your text wrapped automatically.

    set-icon-borderenable

  Sets the visibility of the icon border.

    set-folding-markersBOOLEAN enable

  Sets the visibility of the folding markers pane.

    set-line-numbersBOOLEAN enable

  Sets the visibility of the line numbers pane.

    set-replace-tabsBOOLEAN enable

  If enabled, tabs are replaced with spaces as you type.

    set-remove-trailing-spaceBOOLEAN enable

  If enabled, trailing whitespace are removed whenever the cursor leaves a line.

    set-show-tabsBOOLEAN enable

  If enabled, TAB characters and trailing whitespace will be visualized by a small dot.

    set-indent-spacesBOOLEAN enable

  If enabled, the editor will indent with `indent-width` spaces for each indentation level, rather than with one TAB character.

    set-mixed-indentBOOLEAN enable

  If enabled, kate will use a mix of TAB and spaces for indentation. Each indentation level will be `indent-width` wide, and more indentation levels will be optimized to use as many TAB characters as possible.

  When executed, this command will additionally set space indentation enabled, and if the indent width is unspecified it will be set to half of the `tab-width` for the document at the time of execution.

    set-word-wrapBOOLEAN enable

  Enables dynamic word wrap according to `enable`

    set-replace-tabs-saveBOOLEAN enable

  When enabled, tabs will be replaced with whitespace whenever the document is saved.

    set-remove-trailing-space-saveBOOLEAN enable

  When enabled, trailing space will be removed from each line whenever the document is saved.

    set-indent-modename

  Sets the autoindentation mode to `name`. If `name` is not known, the mode is set to 'none'. Valid modes are 'cstyle', 'csands', 'xml', 'python', 'varindent' and 'none'.

    set-highlighthighlight

  Sets the syntax highlighting system for the document. The argument must be a valid highlight name, as seen in the Tools Highlighting menu. This command provides an autocompletion list for it's argument.

#### Commands for editing

These commands modifies the current document.

    indent

  Indents the selected lines or the current line.

    unindent

  Unindents the selected lines or current line.

    cleanindent

  Cleans up the indentation of the selected lines or current line according to the indentation settings in the document.

    comment

  Inserts comment markers to make the selection or selected lines or current line a comment according to the text format as defined by the syntax highlight definition for the document.

    uncomment

  Removes comment markers from the selection or selected lines or current line according to the text format as defined by the syntax highlight definition for the document.

    kill-line

  Deletes the current line.

    replacepatternreplacement

  Replaces text matching `pattern` with `replacement`. If you want to include whitespace in the `pattern`, you must quote both the `pattern` and `replacement` with single or double quotes. If the arguments are unquoted, the first word is used as `pattern` and the rest for `replacement`. If `replacement` is empty, each occurrence of `pattern` is removed.

  You can set flags to configure the search by adding a colon, followed by one or more letters each representing a configuration, giving the form `replace:options pattern replacement`. Available options are:

  `b`

    Search backwards.

  `c`

    Search from cursor position.

  `e`

    Search in the selection only.

  `r`

    Do regular expression search. If set, you may use `\N` where N is a number to represent captures in the replacement string.

  `s`

    Do case sensitive search.

  `p`

    Prompt for permission to replace the next occurence.

  `w`

    Match whole words only.

    dateformat

  Inserts a date/time string as defined by the specified `format`, or the format yyyy-MM-dd hh:mm:ss if none is specified. The following translations are done when interpreting `format`:

  `d` | The day as number without a leading zero (1-31).
  `dd` | The day as number with a leading zero (01-31).
  `ddd` | The abbreviated localized day name (e.g. 'Mon'..'Sun').
  `dddd` | The long localized day name (e.g. 'Monday'..'Sunday').
  `M` | The month as number without a leading zero (1-12).
  `MM` | The month as number with a leading zero (01-12).
  `MMM` | The abbreviated localized month name (e.g. 'Jan'..'Dec').
  `yy` | the year as two digit number (00-99).
  `yyyy` | The year as four digit number (1752-8000).
  `h` | The hour without a leading zero (0..23 or 1..12 if AM/PM display).
  `hh` | The hour with a leading zero (00..23 or 01..12 if AM/PM display).
  `m` | The minute without a leading zero (0..59).
  `mm` | The minute with a leading zero (00..59).
  `s` | The second without a leading zero (0..59).
  `ss` | The second with a leading zero (00..59).
  `z` | The milliseconds without leading zeroes (0..999).
  `zzz` | The milliseconds with leading zeroes (000..999).
  `AP` | Use AM/PM display. AP will be replaced by either "AM" or "PM".
  `ap` | Use am/pm display. ap will be replaced by either "am" or "pm".

    charidentifier

  This command allows you to insert literal characters by their numerical identifier, in decimal, octal or hexadecimal form. To use it launch the Editing Command dialog and type `char: [number]` in the entry box, then hit OK.

  ##### `char` examples

  Input: `char:234`

  Output: `ê`

  Input: `char:0x1234`

  Output: `ሴ`

`s///[ig]` `%s///[ig]`

  This command does a sed-like search/replace operation on the current line, or on the whole file (`%s///`).

  In short, the text is searched for text matching the search pattern, the regular expression between the first and the second slash, and when a match is found, the matching part of the text is replaced with the expression between the middle and last part of the string. Parentheses in the search pattern create back references, that is the command remembers which part of the match matched in the parentheses; these strings can be reused in the replace pattern, referred to as `\1` for the first set of parentheses, `\2` for the second and so on.

  To search for a literal `(` or `)`, you need to escape it using a backslash character: `\(\)`

  If you put an `i` at the end of the expression, the matching will be case insensitive. If you put a `g` at the end, all occurrences of the pattern will be replaced, otherwise only the first occurrence is replaced.

  ##### Replacing text in the current line

  Your friendly compiler just stopped, telling you that the class `myClass` mentioned in line 3902 in your source file is not defined.

  "Buckle!" you think, it is of course `MyClass`. You go to line 3902, and instead of trying to find the word in the text, you launch the Editing Command Dialog, enter `s/myclass/MyClass/i`, hit the OK button, save the file and compile – successfully without the error.

  ##### Replacing text in the whole file

  Imagine that you have a file, in which you mention a Miss Jensen several times, when someone comes in and tells you that she just got married to Mr Jones. You want, of course, to replace each and every occurrence of Miss Jensen with Ms Jones.

  Enter the command line and issue the command `%s/Miss Jensen/Ms Jones/` and hit return, you are done.

  ##### A More Advanced Example

  This example makes use of back references as well as a character class (if you do not know what that is, please refer to the related documentation mentioned below).

  Suppose you have the following line:

      void MyClass::DoStringOps( String      &foo, String &bar String *p, int  &a, int &b )

  Now you realize that this is not nice code, and decide that you want to use the `const` keyword for all address of arguments, those characterized by the & operator in front of the argument name. You would also like to simplify the white space, so that there is only 1 whitespace character between each word.

  Launch the Editing Command Dialog, and enter: `s/\s+(\w+)\s+(&)/ const \1 \2/g` and hit the OK button. The `g` at the end of the expression makes the regular expression recompile for each match to save the backreferences.

  Output:

  `void MyClass::DoStringOps( const String &foo, const String &bar String *p, const int &a, const int &b )`

  Mission completed! Now, what happened? Well, we looked for some white space (`\s+`) followed by one or more alphabetic characters (`\w+`) followed by some more whitespace (`\s+`) followed by an ampersand, and in the process saved the alphabetic chunk and the ampersand for reuse in the replace operation. Then we replaced the matching part of our line with one whitespace followed by const followed by one whitespace followed by our saved alphabetical chunk (`\1`) followed by one whitespace followed by our saved ampersand (`\2`)

  Now in some cases the alphabetical chunk was String, in some int, so using the character class `\w` and the `+` quantifier proved a valuable asset.

#### Commands for navigation

    gotoINT line

  This command navigates to the specified line.

    findpattern

  This command navigates to the first occurrence of `pattern` according to the configuration. Following occurrences can be found using Edit Find Next (the default shortcut is F3).

  The find command can be configured by appending a colon followed by one or more options, the form is `find:options pattern`. The following options are supported:

  `b`

    Search backwards.

  `c`

    Search from cursor position.

  `e`

    Search in the selection only.

  `r`

    Do regular expression search. If set, you may use `\N` where N is a number to represent captures in the replacement string.

  `s`

    Do case sensitive search.

  `w`

    Match whole words only.

    ifindpattern

  This command provides as-you-type searching. You can configure the behavior or the search by appending a colon followed by one or more options, like this: `ifind:options pattern`. Allowed options are

  `b`

    Search backwards.

  `r`

    Do regular expression search.

  `s`

    Do case sensitive search.

  `c`

    Search from cursor position.