🐞 Missing Function for Replacing Characters with Multiple Ranges and Strings

[tom-ludwig]

Description

The current implementation lacks a function that accepts multiple ranges and corresponding strings for replacement. We need a method similar to the following:

public func replaceCharacters(in ranges: [[NSRange]], with strings: [String])

This function should allow replacing characters in multiple ranges with their respective strings.
While you can call replaceCharacters(_:with:) multiple times, each call is treated as a separate insertion, which creates a misleading undo history.

Example:

Comments:

Screen.Recording.2024-08-20.at.7.13.48.PM.mov

To Reproduce

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Expected Behavior

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Version Information

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Additional Context

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Screenshots

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[thecoolwinter]

After starting working on this, I don't think it's a necessary API. If the issue it's solving is undo grouping, you should be able to call textView.undoManager?.beginGrouping() before and textView.undoManager?.endGrouping() after applying all your edits to force the undo manager to group them all into one undo group.

An API call like this would have some requirements that would be hard to indicate through a simple method call. Like requiring all the ranges to be non-overlapping, and requiring that range groups are ordered so that edits can be applied to the text without modifying the given ranges and strings. I think that should be handled by the library consumer.

[tom-ludwig]

You’re absolutely right; it makes more sense to implement that situation specifically