column selection

[jps]

Welcome to the forums! There's no way to do it yet, but I'll add something for the next beta.

[vim]

Any update on binding column selection to keyboard shortcut?

[jps]

Still only half way there: As Sublimator mentioned, Ctrl+alt+up/down implements a sort-of column select.

[vim]

...and finish with shift to do the actual selection.
it's good enough, thanks

[gpfsmurf]

And if, like me, you need to cut & paste some columns using the keyboard, here's a simple plugin to do it:

Code: Select all

import sublime, sublimeplugin

class pasteColumnCommand(sublimeplugin.TextCommand):
   def run(self, view, args):
      clip = sublime.getClipboard().split(u"\n")
      for region in view.sel():
         view.replace(region, clip.pop(0))

   def isEnabled(self, view, args):
      return sublime.getClipboard() != ""


[vim]

delicious! i was missing this kind of ability

[DaveM]

Column selection and replace works amazing, but it is only for rectangular selection
e.g. replacing - with _ in the name attribute without touching the other -

Code: Select all

<string name="x-x-x">a-a-a</string>
<string name="y-y-y">b-b-b</string>
<string name="z-z-z">c-c-c</string>


I have tried other editors as well and then replace in the column selection was not possible (selection disabled or all lines were selected)

But what if it looks like:

Code: Select all

<string name="x-x">a-a-a</string>
<string name="y-y-y-y-y">b-b-b</string>
<string name="z-z-z">c-c-c</string>


What I would like is an organically adjusting selection. You select x-x and then like column selection it auto adjusts the selection upto the double quotes. It looks constantly for the same shape in every line and add it to the selection.
I don't know if this already possible in Sublime Text by the way or what the real name for it is ( "organic block selection", "column selection with Gaudí feature","shape based selection", "auto regexp selection" ).

[jbjornson]

There are different ways to do this with multiple selections in Sublime. On approach is to use whole-word navigation (ctrl+shift+arrow_keys) once you have the cursors at the beginning (or end) of your desired text. shift+home/end are also very helpful. I'm almost always able to fulfill my oddly-shaped selection criteria using that approach. In the few cases where that approach hasn't worked, you can always do a regular expression search.

In your example, you could easily get your desired multiple selections in the following way:
1) select all of the end of the name attribute values: closing quote with closing angle bracket (">)
2) extend the selections to the beginning of the line with shift+home
3) deselect to the beginning of the name attribute value with 3 times ctrl+shift+right_arrow.