Find/Replace Overlay: highlight regex matches toggle

[nlisker]

When writing a regex in the Find field, it's useful to see the matches in the selected region (or the whole file if no region is selected) in real-time, much like ctrl+F works in browsers. This avoids repeatedly clicking on Find to see if the regex works as intended. Because for large files this can be costly, it should be enabled via a toggle. Matched regions can be indicated with a background highlight, just like Toggle Mark Occurrences works.

This is also relevant for the "old" Find/Replace dialog.

[HeikoKlare]

I agree that this would be quite helpful to test regular expressions.

The proposal has some overlap with:

• [find/replace overlay] Add Editor-Annotations whereever a search-result was found #1909

That one proposes to mark occurrences of a search string inside the document while typing. When this is also applied to regex searches (as it should be by default) and if it is also limited to the selected region (in case such a region is defined), it should cover this proposal completely, if I understand it correctly.

Note that we merged a PR last week, which also partly covers this proposal:

• FindReplaceOverlay: use search-as-you-type in regex mode #1911 #2655

Search-as-you-type is now also applied in regex mode, so you can already use this to test a regex, but it will only give you a single match and not all matches in the selected region. But is of course also restricted to the selected region.

[jukzi]

+1

[nlisker]

@HeikoKlare I updated to the latest build and I can see the change, it's certainly better. Apart from finding only the first search result, I found it odd that the highlight is actually a selection, so if I leave the Find/Replace focus my typing replaces the selection. I would have thought a "passive" highlight like Mark Occurrences would be more apt. Is there a reason to use selection?