| Thank you for your detailed reply. So let me address the points. > How would you know that??? Typically I'm working on code that I wrote, or I've been studying it enough that I've gotten to the point that I'm refactoring and editing it. It isn't like a gameshow where I have a blinder on and then the blinder is removed and I'm given a task to perform. > - set word selection by default not to have to worry about substrings So you have to do another step? I can pick word selection or not dynamically on a case by case basis without having to go somewhere else and turn word mode on or off. Or maybe I'm misunderstanding how your editor works. At any rate, I don't see how my approach is roundabout -- I directly express if I want complete word matching or not, and I can even mix both types in a single search/replace operation. I don't understand your next point -- I can select the body of a function without knowing how many lines it has. It isn't clear to me what your approach is, "incrementalism". Are you doing a word search and replace one at a time? I thought we were discussing multi-cursor editing. > Then proceed with the "direct" way:
> - go to your desired word anywhere within the function
> - invoke select forward/backward commands until visually reaching the beginning/end of said function (the candidates will all be highlighted) What you've described is just another way of doing it, not fewer steps. |
That doesn't explain it. You can't know for any "foo" whether all the content, including comments, has "foo" as a subword for any non-trivial amount of text because you're not a computer.
> so you have to do another step?
No, you reduce many steps having to specify word-based selection every time with a cognitive overhead ("If there are other words") with a single default.
> I can pick word selection or not dynamically
So can I, and I don't need to do precision jumping in the middle of a combined text field to do that, but that's a different benefit
> It isn't clear to me what your approach is, "incrementalism"
when instead of counting 5 lines and selecting them you press a selection key the amount of times is needed to select what you need
> I can select the body of a function
and as I've pointed out, that's a different workflow. You've added a "in this semantic block" requirement and mistakenly compare it to the original incremental one
> just another way of doing it, not fewer steps.
it is fewer steps, I've pointed out which steps are not needed, and then there is another condition complicating your simple explanation when it's not a certainty that you actually want to replace everything within a block. But again, within semantic blocks there are different tradeoffs