Column Mode Search

[armagad]

I do not know how long ColumnMode has been a feature but I love it.
I don't know if this is possible but I would like to suggest a behavior for Find when ColumnModeOn.
I want to be able to select a column and then search for just that column:

1234
ABCD
1235012345 - This line is different from Line 1 (obviously, : ) its a lot longer now)
ABCD
ABCD
123423
1234BC

So if I hit F3 after selecting the bolded column, I should find that same column spanning lines 3 and 4. And then what would be really spiffy (but not nessessarily a must for this behavior) is if it found the column again at the end of lines 6 and 7.
Is this the eventual behavior of Find in column mode?
Is there was to do this already?

Thanks everyone. (I LOVE UltraEdit) Its the only program I use today that I was using 7 years ago! I love it!

-Matt
PS Sorry if this is a repeat, I only half heartedly searched the forum posts...

[Mofi]

Currently (v12.10a) such a column search is not possible. You can write a feature request email to IDM.

As not perfect but better than nothing workaround you can search in column mode with a regular expression. For your example this would be in UltraEdit style: 23*^p*BC.

It will find correctly 23 BC in line 1+2 and line 3+4. But the disadvantage of this workaround can be seen in line 5+6 where not the correct block is selected.

[ddjen11]

how do you specify # of repetitions? like looking for column 101 ~102 to be 'DE', so

%?{100}DE

or something like that.

Thanks

[Mofi]

I still use always the UltraEdit regular expression engine which does not support repetitions. I'm not a Perl regular expression expert, but this would work with the Perl compatible regular expression engine selected in the search configuration dialog of UltraEdit v12+ with option Match Case also enabled:

^.{100}DE

Do not mix the UltraEdit style with the Unix/Perl style. The UltraEdit engine and the legacy Unix regex engine do not support repetitions. With these regex engines simply 100 hundred ? (UE) or . (Unix) must be used in the search string.

Hint: Insert 10 ? in the find what field in the find dialog, select it, copy it to clipboard with Ctrl+C, paste it 9 times with Ctrl+V after the existing 10 ? and you have 100 ?. That's easier and faster than inserting 100 ? manually.

[ddjen11]

Hello Mofi,

It works great, thx for the help.