Witzend ReplaceInFiles Add-in for Visual Studio

The Witzend ReplaceInFiles™ Add-in supercharges the Replace in Files command of Microsoft Visual Studio .NET, providing one-step search and replace for all project files. The add-in merges seamlessly into the Visual Studio environment, installing a new Replace in Files command that makes global file revisions a snap, whether you work in C++, C#, or Visual Basic.

The Witzend ReplaceInFiles Add-in vastly improves Visual Studio’s ability to search and replace in project source files. The ReplaceInFiles Add-in attaches so transparently to the Visual Studio environment that the only outward change to Visual Studio is a new Witzend Replace in Files command added to the environment’s Tools menu. Simply choose the command to activate the ReplaceInFiles Add-in. Behind the scenes, the Add-in communicates with Visual Studio via COM interfaces.

Features

• Date and size filters. You can restrict a search to files within a specified range of size or date. For example, search and replace only in those files between 10K and 50K in size and dated within the last month.
  
• Case sensitivity and whole-word searching. Specify case sensitivity (find Abc but not abc) and whole-word filters (find any but not anywhere).
  
• Confirm replacements.The ReplaceInFiles Add-in lets you confirm replacements before they’re made. Each located string is shown highlighted in context, allowing you to click a Yes or No button to confirm or disallow the replacement.
  
• Search multiple projects in a single step. Find yourself working with large solutions that contain many projects or subprojects? ReplaceInFiles intelligently recognizes multi-project solutions and quickly scans through all files in each project. For precise control, the Add-in’s Project view lets you omit individual files from the scan.
  
• Search any folder. The optional Browse view lets you search-and-replace anywhere, even in files that aren’t contained in a project. Navigate to where you want the search to begin and ReplaceInFiles does the rest. It can “drill down” through nested subdirectories, ensuring that all contained files are scanned.
  
• Automatic file backup. The ReplaceInFiles Add-in can automatically backup each file before revising it. The feature is intelligent, backing up only revised files and giving each the same name as the original file with a numeric addition.
  
• Online help. The interface is very intuitive for the Visual Studio programmer, but if you have a question, an extensive online User’s Guide is always available. Or you can activate the “question mark” button on the ReplaceInFiles dialog and click any feature for a detailed description.
  
• Text that spans lines. Locate strings that start on one line and end on another.
  
• Find non-printing characters. Find text containing any ANSI character using normal C-style escape sequences like \n for newline and \t for tab.
  
• Backup folder. Optionally store a project’s backup files in a single subfolder.
  
• Condensed pathnames. Ensures you can always read a filename, no matter how long the path. A tooltip shows the complete path.
  
• Search project files or specific folder. Choose whether to search files belonging to your projects, or navigate to any folder and begin searching there.
  

Technical Specifications 

All of the ReplaceInFiles Add-in’s core functions are written in highly-optimized 32-bit assembly language, ensuring minimum size and maximum speed. A hundred replacements in a dozen source files, for example, take less than a second on a typical mid-range machine.

The ReplaceInFiles Add-in communicates with Visual Studio using COM interfaces to merge with the environment. The add-in file is small in size with a base address designed for rapid loading. All settings persist between Visual Studio sessions through the use of a small INI file.