Find and replace text in CotEditor on Mac

CotEditor provides powerful find and replace features, including regular expression search.

Enter find and replace conditions

Find/replacement fields

Enter the text to search for in the field with the magnifying glass icon.

To replace matched text, enter replacement text in the field with the pen icon. If the replacement field is left empty, the matched text is removed.

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

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

Find/replacement histories

You can reuse previous search and replacement text by selecting it from the magnifying glass or pen icon in each 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	Continue searching from the beginning of the document if there is no match after the insertion point.
Search incrementally	Search the 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 determine 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.