Column/multi selection mode
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Is there a way in the Matlab editor to select vertical selections of text (like Alt-selection in MS word or Notepad++) and to insert text or an incremented numbered list into a vertical selection? (Notepad++ has this by pressing Alt-C, but can only increment)
1 Comment
James Johns
on 18 Oct 2017
Dear MathWorks, please implement this functionality. A "Column Mode" in Editor would be fantastic. Also, a "Column Mode" where you can increment numbers would save time as well. In 2017, we still have to open UltraEdit and Excel to do this and paste results in MATLAB.
Answers (7)
per isakson
on 2 Mar 2012
No, but I agree it would be useful!
Every other day I copy blocks of code to Notepad++ to use "vertical selection" and regular expressions.
0 Comments
Amy
on 28 Nov 2018
Hi all -- column selection mode, or block edit mode, was added to the Live Editor in R2018a, and there are plans to include the feature in the regular editor in a future release as well. You can select and edit a rectangular area of code by pressing the Alt key while making a selection with the mouse. This is mentioned briefly in the release notes for R2018a and also in the documentation page for creating a live script. Please go ahead and try it out!!
4 Comments
Bryan Munro
on 26 Jan 2018
I'll second this, it's hard to overestimate how much time this feature would save me on a daily basis!
0 Comments
Richard Yau
on 8 Nov 2018
Mathworks really needs this column edit feature in their editor. There's no reason not to have it and I end up having to temporarily open another editor just to edit something and going back to matlab editor afterwards. Why is this not already available????
0 Comments
Ivan
on 30 Oct 2020
Edited: Ivan
on 30 Oct 2020
also was looking for multi line selection, have made this function to open file in notepad++.
Can be used to fast open in any editor, good to assign it to some keyboard shortcut
function edit_in_npp()
% the function will open active in editor file in npp in the corresponding line
% before use check that npp is in your system path or set path to npp_path
% variable below.
% to set path from cmd use setenv('PATH', [getenv('PATH') ';C:\Program Files (x86)\Notepad++']);
npp_path='notepad++.exe'; % or set npp_path=C:\Program Files (x86)\Notepad++\notepad++.exe
doc=matlab.desktop.editor.getActive;
system(sprintf('"%s" "%s" -n%d',npp_path,doc.Filename,doc.Selection(1)));
1 Comment
Peter Scotson
on 30 Mar 2021
Very good! Suggest adding an ampersand to the sprintf('... &'). I needed to use the full path to notepad++
Maxim Piz
on 15 Nov 2021
I have to use notepad ++ to make easy tasks which the regular editor should be capable of. The is no need to do that in the live editor. This is standard feature for decades.
Walter Roberson
on 26 Jan 2018
I see no evidence that Mathworks will be making any feature changes to the regular editor, other than in the sense of continuing to work on the code analyzer and autofixes. Otherwise all of the editor development appears to be going into the live editor. Thus I do not expect the column cut or paste to ever be put into the regular editor. I would instead suspect that the live editor is intended to replace the regular editor in time.
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