Search & Replace

Find next match:

For huge buffers, scan in chunks (don't materialize whole string).

Regex search:

• Use re module.
• For interactive: compile pattern, scan buffer.
• Multi-line: re.MULTILINE flag.

Live search:

• As user types, find first match starting from current cursor.
• Highlight matches.
• Common: vim's /pattern.

Replace:

• Find + insert+delete.
• Optional: confirm each, replace all, replace in selection.
• Undo: each replacement is one entry, OR group all into one undoable.

Find in files (project-wide):

• Walk file tree.
• For each file, search.
• Parallelize across files.
• Modern editors index workspaces (LSP, Tree-sitter).

Fuzzy find:

• Match approximate sub-sequences.
• Used for file picker, command palette.
• Algorithms: FZF (Floyd-Warshall-like), proximity scoring.

Incremental search:

• Vim's /pattern: go to first match as user types.
• VS Code Ctrl+F: live highlight.
• Ctrl+G or F3: next.

Search history:

• Recent searches accessible via up arrow.
• Persistent across sessions.

Selection-based search:

• Highlight selected text → Ctrl+F places it in find input.
• Or Ctrl+D to add next occurrence to multi-cursor (Sublime).

Code-aware search:

• Symbol search via LSP.
• Definition / references / implementations.
• Faster than text search, semantically aware.

Performance:

• Naive O(n*m) substring search slow for huge files.
• Use Boyer-Moore, KMP, or std string find (often optimized).
• For regex on huge files: streaming line-by-line.