Customize your Find in Files Results experience!

Another awesome hidden editor feature…

You can customize your Find in Files results to show what you want to see and how you want to see it.

Example:  You don’t want to view the entire file path shown in the Find Results tool window.

Find all "using", Match case, Whole word, Subfolders, Find Results 1, "Entire Solution"

C:\Documents and Settings\someuser\Local Settings\Temp\~vs90.cs(1):using System;

Matching lines: 1 Matching files: 1 Total files searched: 1

Instructions:  (since these involve modifying registry settings, please use at your own risk!)

1. Go to HKCU\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\8.0\Find
2. Add a new string called Find result format with a value of $f$e($l,$c):$t\r\n where

$f is the filename

$e is the extension

$l is the line

$c is the column

$t is the text on the line

Note:  You don’t have to restart Visual Studio to pick up on your registry changes.

Results:

Find all "using", Match case, Whole word, Subfolders, Find Results 1, "Entire Solution"

~vs90.cs(1,1):using System;

Matching lines: 1 Matching files: 1 Total files searched: 1

Full list of items you can specify in the registry

Files

$p      path                       

$f      filename               

$v      drive/unc share            

$d      dir                        

$n      name                       

$e      .ext                       

Location

$l      line                       

$c      col                        

$x      end col if on first line, else end of first line

$L      span end line

$C      span end col

Text

$0      matched text               

$t      text of first line

$s      summary of hit

$T      text of spanned lines

Char

\n      newline                   

\s      space                     

\t      tab                       

\\      slash                    

\$      $                         

If you come up with a great combination of values, please leave a comment and share with the group!

Tags: VSTips