Debug Console should support find

[gregg-miskelly]

• VSCode Version: 0.10.10
• OS Version: Ubuntu 14.04

This goes along with a few other debug console feature requests that I see (ex: #3974), but it would also be nice if find worked in the debug console.

Steps to reproduce:

1. Start debugging something, have the console be full of text
2. Hit Ctrl-F to find

Result: Find works in the editor window instead of the debug console

[sergiogarciadev]

The Ctrl+A also selects all text on the editor windows instead of the debug console.

[GregRos]

Is there any status on this? It seems like a really basic feature. Every other editor in existence has it I think. There is even search in the terminal, which I'd think would be harder to implement.

[kevinsalerno]

Can we get this please? VSCode is brilliant, but debugging in-editor is 1/10 for this lack of select all and/or find in debug console

[GregRos]

@kevinsalerno You can use Select All. Right click and pick "Copy All". However, you still can't use Ctrl+A.

[ChristosChristofidis]

But even if you right click copy all you will be missing the lines (ie. main.js:323)

[ncannasse]

Big up for this, having to search through debug logs requires manual copy/pasting right now, not very optimal...

[GregRos]

@ncannasse Exactly my experience. In my project I have a lot of debug logs...

[dafeldib]

Hi, definitely need this added to help with many development tasks.

[mattwelke]

Would like this too. I know some people redirect their debug output to the terminal and work there, but I don't like doing this. I prefer to keep my debug console for my debugging and my terminal for my terminal stuff. Would like to see Find support in the debug console.

[FelDev]

@Welkie redirecting the debug output to the terminal sounds like the way to go for now.
Any tip on how to do that?

[mattwelke]

@mesieu You can use the property "console": "integratedTerminal" on the debug launch task to redirect the output to the terminal.

[MaadhavShah]

This is honestly essential, idk why it's not implemented yet

[AppnovaHub]

I'd like to add this as the only feature I've ever requested because it's frankly bizarre that it's not there, it's one of those basic things, not a fancy thing, I think.

[mattwelke]

@snapcorp I bet the reason it hasn't been implemented yet is because a lot of the developers I encounter set the debugger to output into the integrated terminal instead. I seem to be the only one I know who chooses to keep it in the internal console. This is probably a Node dev thing, because the popular logging libraries choose to log to stdout instead of the console (which is a good idea of course, it's more performant), but VS Code by default will only show console output in the internal console.

[kyrosle]

sorry that, my word my cause some bad dispute, i am a newbie programer, for this topic, i think we can track the debug console event and filiter out the ouput event, and then put them into the webview editor view, this is the project i start to trying : https://github.com/kyrosle/develop-kit, hoping it can provide new ideas

[kayces]

It's 2024, and it's astonishingly unbelievable that VS Code still doesn't support a search function in the debugging console. As someone working in client-side development, I find this particularly frustrating. The logs that I need to monitor are constantly getting buried under a deluge of logs from various third-party SDKs. The existing filter functionality is far from sufficient - it only shows the exact matching line, completely stripping away the context provided by preceding and following lines. This makes it virtually impossible to effectively track down and understand the issues at hand. For a modern IDE that's widely used in the development community, this lack of a basic but crucial feature is a significant oversight and a major hindrance to productivity.

[gjsjohnmurray]

I just published https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=georgejames.searchable-debug-console that may serve as a workaround.

[XKMR]

user @roblourens mentions here #169648 that such feature exists, but I fail to find it.

UPDATE:

I am not sure if you were looking for the same thing, but by pressing Ctrl + Alt + F while having the debug windows in focus, you can in fact search in it.

[asapsmc]

It's now mid-2024, still no implementation available?

[meganrogge]

Hi everyone, find is now available in the debug console and can be activated using ctrl/cmd+alt/option+f. We have chosen to go with this keybinding for now because it aligns with the tree's find keybinding, which is what we use for this implementation.

ATM, tree find does not provide support for highlighting matches in the output, tracked here #225417. It might be possible to do this when #212077 has been implemented. If that is possible and doesn't cause perf issues, then the behavior of find will better align with that in the editor and we can consider switching the default keybinding to match that one, ctrl/cmd+f.

I realize a primary part of this feature request was to have ctrl/cmd+f open find in the debug console. For now, you can feel free to manually set this yourself.

We have left the filter widget in the debug console because find doesn't support negative patterns ATM, bolstered by some user feedback #225093 (comment).

[abhijit-chikane]

but now the this filter control does not get focus on Ctrl + f in insider release

[meganrogge]

That should work the same as it always have. I'll look into it.

[meganrogge]

Thanks for calling this out @abhijit-chikane ! will be fixed in insider's tomorrow #226661