LabVIEW Search&Replace: Combine Text and Object Search

[comrade]

Hi all,

in recent months I've been working on a huge pile of code that was written by someone else. This left me to do searches for places where TypeDef member values are written to the TypeDef'ed cluster, where Enum constants have a special value etc. It is a real pain in the butt being able only to either search for a text or a specific kind of Labview object. If there was a way to combine these two parameters, things would be much easier: Instead of browsing through hundreds of results of a text search where 99,8% are "Unbundle by Name", but I search for the "Bundle by Name" object to determine, where that darned value is put into the TypeDef I can simply define the search text, choose "Bundle by Name" as Labview object and receive the result list containing three entries.

[wiebe@CARYA]

Any suggestions on how to improve this?

Note that in >16 you can filter the search results. So you can search for text, and then filter for unbundle. Sadly, you can't filter on the text of the results (that can be different when a reg.ex. was used), but for finding (un)bundles, it does the trick.

Spoiler

I've been working on and off on a scripting Search\Find and replace. It's not easy. Searching for (un)bundle+text is just one example. That would be easy to implement, but very limited. You'd want some kind of a query language, allowing you to combine and\or refine search results. Probably in a recursive manner. I am developing my own scripting tools for that, but building a GUI for that is tricky.

[comrade]

Thanks for the heads up. I haven't worked with anything newer than 2015 yet. This feature would already greatly improve the capability of the search&replace function

[wiebe@CARYA]

It could be in 14 or 15, I only use 13 and 17 right now .

Here's how it looks (after years of not having it, it might go unnoticed):

The gray "filter" over the filter text is a glitch.

[comrade]

LV2015 definitely doesn't have that feature. But it looks like there is a definite reason (apart from the soon fading support for 2015) to move onto a newer LV version... Thanks.

[tst]

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@comrade wrote:

LV2015 definitely doesn't have that feature

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Actually, it does. It's just hidden. The filter is only displayed after you press a key on the keyboard, so you need to do your search and then just start typing after you get the results window in focus and the box will appear.

I don't remember what reason NI had for hiding this filter box, but I think it was that they wanted feedback on how it worked from people who knew it was there.

[tst]

LV2015 definitely doesn't have that feature

[comrade]

Thanks for the enlightenment. Never in my life would I have guessed that. Forums actually are helpful.

Thanks a lot, tst!

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