Select Until Pattern

A Visual Studio Code extension that allows you to extend your text selection until a specified regex pattern is found.

Features

This extension provides two powerful commands for text selection:

Select Until

Extends the current selection forward from the cursor position until the specified pattern is found.

Command: Select Until

Usage:

1. Place your cursor at the starting position
2. Run the command (via Command Palette: Ctrl+Shift+P / Cmd+Shift+P)
3. Enter a regex pattern to search for
4. Your selection will extend from the cursor to the pattern match

Select Backwards Until

Extends the current selection backward from the cursor position until the specified pattern is found.

Command: Select Backwards Until

Usage:

1. Place your cursor at the starting position
2. Run the command (via Command Palette: Ctrl+Shift+P / Cmd+Shift+P)
3. Enter a regex pattern to search for
4. Your selection will extend backward from the cursor to the pattern match

Use Cases

• Quickly select text between delimiters (parentheses, brackets, quotes)
• Select code blocks or sections based on patterns
• Navigate and select text in structured documents
• Bulk editing with multi-cursor support

Examples

Example 1: Select until closing bracket

const obj = { foo: 'bar', baz: 'qux' };
           ^cursor

Pattern: } Result: Selects foo: 'bar', baz: 'qux'

Example 2: Select backwards to opening bracket

const obj = { foo: 'bar', baz: 'qux' };
                              ^cursor

Pattern: \{ Result: Selects backward to include { foo: 'bar', baz: 'qux'

Regex Support

Both commands support full JavaScript regex patterns, allowing for powerful and flexible text selection:

• Literal strings: hello
• Special characters (escaped): \(, \), \[, \], \{, \}
• Character classes: [a-z], [0-9], \w, \s
• Quantifiers: +, *, ?, {n,m}
• Anchors and more: ^, $, \.

Requirements

• Visual Studio Code version 1.106.0 or higher

Commands

Recommended Keybindings

You can add custom keybindings in your keybindings.json:

[
  {
    "key": "ctrl+shift+.",
    "command": "select-until-pattern.select-until"
  },
  {
    "key": "ctrl+shift+,",
    "command": "select-until-pattern.select-backwards-until"
  }
]

Known Issues

None at this time. Please report issues on the GitHub repository.

Release Notes

0.0.1

Initial release of Select Until Pattern

• Select text forward until a regex pattern
• Select text backward until a regex pattern
• Multi-cursor support

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please feel free to submit a Pull Request.

License

See LICENSE file for details.