Preserving formatting in find and replace

The replace command is a staple of text manipulation in LiveCode. At present, its form is:

replace <string> with <replacement> in <target>

The command searches for the string <string> in <replacement> and then replaces any occurrences with the string <target>. A long standing limitation of the command is that if <target> is a field, then the styling on the text is removed.

We propose to add an implementation of the current command which performs the replace operations on the field ensuring formatting is preserved. The rule will be that any occurrences of <pattern> in the field will be replaced by <replacement> using the styling of the first character of the found instance of <pattern>. For example, let us say field 1 contains:

the quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog

Then

replace “the” with “THE” in field 1

Would result in

THE quick brown fox jumped over THE lazy dog

Benefits

This feature will optimize the coding process of find and replace in LiveCode saving you time and effort. Presently when trying to replace a string in a field all formatting would be lost without implementing a more time consuming workaround. We are proposing a find and replace strings in fields feature whilst preserving the formatting.

If this project is successfully funded we estimate that we will commence development in December with an estimated final delivery in early February 2016.