Find and replace text in CotEditor on Mac

CotEditor has a powerful find and replacement feature that also can use regular expressions.

Enter find and replace conditions

Find/replacement fields

Enter the text to find to the find field, the field with a lope icon.

To replace matched text, enter the text to replace with to the replacement field, the field with a pen icon in addition to the search text. When the replacement field is empty by replacement, the matched text is just removed.

To insert the following special characters to the fields, use the following key combinations:

Character	Key combination
line ending character	`Option`-`Return`
tab character	`Option`-`Tab`

Find/replacement histories

You can reuse previous find and replacement text by selecting them from the lope/pen icon in the field.

Find options

Option	Description
Regular Expression	Search with regular expressions.
Ignore Case	Ignore character case on search.
In Selection	Search text only from selection.

Change advanced find options

You can customize the find behavior in the advanced find options view. To open the view, click the button in the Find window.

Option	Description
Wrap search around	Find from the the beginning of the document if there is no match after the insertion point.
Search incrementally	Search document as you type in the search field.

Textual search

Options for search when the regular expression option is turned off.

Option	Description	Default
Match only whole words	Restrict search results to whole words.	Off
Distinguish characters strictly	Exact character-by-character equivalence.	Off
Ignore diacritical marks	Search ignores diacritical marks (for example, ö = o).	Off
Ignore width differences	Search ignores width differences in character forms (for example, ａ = a).	Off

Regular expression search

Options for search when the regular expression is selected.

Option	Description	Default
Dot matches line separators	Allow period to match any character, including newline characters (singleline).	Off
Anchors match lines	Allow ^ and $ to match the start and end of lines (multiline).	On
Use Unicode word boundaries	Use Unicode TR#29 to specify word boundaries	Off
Unescape replacement text	Unescape metacharacters with backslash in the replacement text.	On

Highlight search results

With the Find All and Highlight All commands, all the places in the document that match your search criteria can be highlighted. When searching using regular expressions, each captured group is highlighted in a different color.

To remove the highlight, choose Find > Remove Highlights.