Find and replace in Skink (regex, case, whole word)

Press Ctrl+F and type. Skink searches as you type from the cursor, marks every visible match and shows “N of M”.

Enter keeps the match, Esc goes back to where you were. Later, Ctrl+N and Ctrl+P jump to the next and previous match.

To replace, press Tab in the find bar, type the replacement and press Enter. Every match is replaced as one undo step.

To search all files in the project, see Project search.

Find bar keys

Key	Does
Ctrl+F (also F3, F7)	Open the find bar
Enter	Keep this match and close the bar
Esc	Close and return to where you started
Alt+R	Toggle regex
Alt+C	Toggle case-sensitive
Alt+W	Toggle whole word
Alt+S	Search only inside the selection
Tab	Move to “Replace with”
Ctrl+N / Ctrl+P	Next / previous match, after the bar is closed (:findnext / :findprev)
Ctrl+L	Go to line (not part of find, but close by)

These Alt keys mean something else in the editor. They only toggle options while the find bar is open.

The active toggles show in the prompt: .* for regex, Aa for case, \b for whole word.

Case: smart by default

Without the case toggle, search uses smart case: a lowercase query matches any case, and a query with a capital letter matches exactly.

foo finds Foo and FOO; Foo finds only Foo.

Search in a selection

Select some lines, then press Ctrl+F. A selection that spans several lines starts the search inside it, shown as [sel].

With a smaller selection, press Alt+S in the bar to limit the search to it. Replace then only touches matches in the selection.

Replace all matches in a file

1. Press Ctrl+F and type what to find.

2. Press Tab and type the replacement.

3. Press Enter. Every match in the selection, or in the whole file, is replaced.

The status line reports how many matches were replaced. Ctrl+Z undoes all of them at once.

Capture groups in regex mode

In regex mode the replacement can use capture groups: $1 for a numbered group and ${name} for a named one.

For example, find (\w+): (\w+) and replace with $2: $1 to swap both sides.

Replace from the command line

:replace FIND WITH replaces every literal FIND with WITH, in the selection or else the whole file, as one undo step.

Quote text that contains spaces: :replace "two words" "other words". :replaceall is the same command.

Tips

• The editor’s last column is a scrollbar that marks find matches in orange, so you can see where matches are across the whole file.
• Jumping to a match inside a closed fold opens the fold.

Note

For replacing across files, use project search and then :greprep, which goes through a preview so you can check each change. See Project search.