Find/replace improvements

Issue Report Checklist

• Searched the issues page for similar reports
• Reproduced the issue after updating with conda update spyder (or pip, if not using Anaconda)
• Tried basic troubleshooting (if a bug/error)
  • Restarted Spyder
  • Reset preferences with spyder --reset
  • Reinstalled the latest version of Anaconda
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• Completed the Problem Description, Steps to Reproduce and Version sections below

Problem Description

When selecting a single line (for later “Replace selection”) and typing the search term, the selection is removed. As seen it may even select text on a different line.

I guess it may have to do with the (positive) feature that the selected text is put into the find text box. However, it also has this disadvantage.

What steps reproduce the problem?

1. Mark text on a single line
2. Press ctrl+r to open the find-replace widget
3. Type a text to find

What is the expected output? What do you see instead?

The selection is kept.

Versions

• Spyder version: 4.0.0.dev0
• Python version: 3.7.3
• Qt version: 5.9.5
• PyQt version: 5.9.2
• Operating System name/version: Windows 10

Dependencies

pygments >=2.0    :  2.4.2 (OK)
qdarkstyle >=2.6.4:  2.7 (OK)
sphinx >=0.6.6    :  2.1.0 (OK)
pyls >=0.27.0     :  0.27.0 (OK)
nbconvert >=4.0   :  5.5.0 (OK)
pandas >=0.13.1   :  0.24.2 (OK)
numpy >=1.7       :  1.16.4 (OK)
sympy >=0.7.3     :  1.4 (OK)
cython >=0.21     :  0.29.10 (OK)
qtconsole >=4.5.0 :  4.5.1 (OK)
IPython >=4.0     :  7.5.0 (OK)
matplotlib >=2.0.0:  3.1.0 (OK)
pylint >=0.25     :  2.3.1 (OK)

[oscargus]

Maybe it makes sense to still have a “Replace selection” button. Apart from the original issue here, I think it is much more convenient compared to a check box. I mean, how often do you want to just find something in a selection?

[oscargus]

I noticed it while working on #9687 . However, it seems to be using completely different parts of the code (I’ve only looked at what happens after the “Replace selection” button is pressed.)

I may be able to fix it, but not in the near future. I’m also thinking that maybe this is what is supposed to happen, at least parts of it. I mean, copying the selected text (at least in case of a words or so) when pressing ctrl+f or ctrl+r is a nice feature. Being able to interactively search while typing the search term is a nice feature. Not sure if it is possible to distinguish between that and my use case. Maybe by keeping the selection, but still marking the found text if possible? Which may be a quite big effort if the “plain” replace next is based on selection.

Another option would be to have a check box that alternates between find/replace within the whole document and selected text. That would distinguish the use cases, but may also lead to people being annoyed when they forgot to uncheck the box…

I’ll try to see what other editors do.