how to make global search & replace with helix ?

[noor-tg]

hey, the question is the title.
I know how to make per file search and replace. what I want to do is to search + replace in the entire workspace files (or sub of them by ext or some sort of regex).
for example when I want to search 'test' I do:

• click space+/.
• the search picker show list of files contain the regex.

then when I want to replace it I need to go to each file and replace manually.
so there is not way to replace them all with one or more commands.

is there any hack to do this ? or I need to use external shell tools like sed or sd ?

Edit

Until a refactoring feature is added to helix core or as plugin with steel . Use external tool like serpl . Check the accepted answer link.

thanks.

[Omnikar]

is there any hack to do this ?

I think you can probably get the global search picker using <space>/searchterm<ret><esc> then use this macro:
<space>'<tab><ret>ssearchterm<ret>creplaceterm<esc>

Repeat the macro a number of times equal to the number of search results, and then :wa afterwards.

[noor-tg]

I think this is too much .

[CBenoit]

We probably want better support for this kind of use case. Currently, you best bet is either @Omnikar’s solution or to use an external tool such as sed.

[noor-tg]

this is what i did with sd. until real solution is presented.

[cd-a]

Is there already a plan to implement it? I couldn't find an issue related to that, but I might have missed it.

[noor-tg]

I don't think there is any plan to do any thing about it. at least now.

[CBenoit]

Hi, I just created an issue out of this discussion in order to help tracking

[7flash]

I've added this to my ~/.zshrc

global_replace() {
    if [ "$#" -ne 3 ]; then
        echo "Usage: global_replace <directory> <search_pattern> <replace_pattern>"
        return 1
    fi

    local directory=$1
    local search_pattern=$2
    local replace_pattern=$3

    find "$directory" -type f ! -name '.*' -exec grep -Iq . {} \; -and -exec sed -i '' "s|$search_pattern|$replace_pattern|g" {} +
}

alias gr='global_replace'

Now I can write ":sh gr ./src A B" and it will execute global search within src folder to replace all A with B

[noor-tg]

Why not use existing tool like sed or sd ?

[noor-tg]

and the problem with external tools is that there is no interactive way to make the replace operation.

[7flash]

Why not use existing tool like sed or sd ?

you can see its actually doing sed over all the files

[jpaju]

Maybe you could use tool like serpl to make the changes interactively?

[noor-tg]

@jpaju this is very good.
Thanks for sharing.

[kirawi]

There is #4381 but it's been inactive for a while now.

[noor-tg]

Any info about why it was not completed or merged ?

[kirawi]

The author never unmarked it as a draft.

[noor-tg]

The author never unmarked it as a draft.

I should complete my journey learning rust . Just to contribute to helix 😅