Select content inside braces?

[highend]

Hi,

the Ctrl + B (Search - Selecting to Matching Brace) selects everything between two braces _but_ includes both of them in the selection.

In 90% of the cases I need a function that selects everything between two braces (multiline must be supported, too) but without including the braces.

Is this possible with a macro?

Regards,
highend

[Mofi]

I think, with a macro it is not possible taking into account that Search - Select to Matching Brace works in both directions and therefore the macro would need to find out if the command selected a block downwards or upwards. Variables are not supported in macros.

But selecting everything between 2 braces is possible with a script. The advantage of a script solution is that it can be made really smart. See the script SelectWithinBraces.js below which I just coded for you and which I will use in future maybe too.

Code: Select all

/* This script selects smart everything between two matching braces.
   The limitation is that only single character braces are supported.
   So it works for { and }, ( and ), [ and ], and < and >. But it
   can't be used for other "brace" strings like "#ifdef" and "#endif".
   But match brace feature is usually used only for real braces. */

if (UltraEdit.document.length > 0)  // Is any file opened?
{
   // Remember current position of caret in file.
   var nColumn = UltraEdit.activeDocument.currentColumnNum;
   var nLine = UltraEdit.activeDocument.currentLineNum;

   // Run match brace command which either selects a block downwards
   // to matching closing brace or upwards to matching opening brace.
   UltraEdit.activeDocument.matchBrace();

   // Is really a string selected now?
   if (UltraEdit.activeDocument.isSel())
   {
      // Get selected block into a string variable.
      var sBlock = UltraEdit.activeDocument.selection;
      // Remove the first and last character of the
      // block which are the opening and closing braces.
      var sBlock = sBlock.substr(1,sBlock.length-2);

      /* In C/C++/C# and JavaScript and perhaps other languages the match brace
         command could be used also for selecting a block between { and } and
         in this case it would be good to select just the lines between { and }.
         Therefore remove from beginning of string white-spaces and first line
         termination and also all white-spaces at end of the block. It is also
         for strings between ( and ) good to remove spaces at beginning and
         end of the selected inner string. */
      sBlock = sBlock.replace(/^[ \t]*\r{0,1}\n{0,1}/,"");
      sBlock = sBlock.replace(/[ \t]+$/,"");

      /* If match brace was downwards, the caret is now positioned after
         matching closing brace. In this case move caret 1 character to
         left and use match brace command again to select updwards. */
      if ((UltraEdit.activeDocument.currentLineNum > nLine) ||
          ((UltraEdit.activeDocument.currentLineNum == nLine) &&
          (UltraEdit.activeDocument.currentColumnNum > nColumn)))
      {
         UltraEdit.activeDocument.key("LEFT ARROW");
         UltraEdit.activeDocument.matchBrace();
      }
      // Set caret 1 character to right after opening brace.
      UltraEdit.activeDocument.key("RIGHT ARROW");

      // Use a find for the already determined string
      // to select everything between the matching braces.
      UltraEdit.activeDocument.findReplace.mode=0;
      UltraEdit.activeDocument.findReplace.matchCase=true;
      UltraEdit.activeDocument.findReplace.matchWord=false;
      UltraEdit.activeDocument.findReplace.regExp=false;
      UltraEdit.activeDocument.findReplace.searchDown=true;
      if (typeof(UltraEdit.activeDocument.findReplace.searchInColumn) == "boolean")
         UltraEdit.activeDocument.findReplace.searchInColumn=false;
      UltraEdit.activeDocument.findReplace.find(sBlock);
   }
}

[highend]

Thanks a lot Mofi, your script works perfectly.

I really like UE more and more, beeing able to assign hotkeys to scripts and macros makes the whole thing really usable