Search results

Results pane

In the center of the window, there is a pane that displays the results of your search. Right-click a found file to perform various operations with it (copy or cut the file, view its properties, etc). Press Enter or double-click a file to open it.

On the Replace tab, you can check and uncheck the small boxes to select the occurrences that you want to replace. If you want to select only a few occurrences, press the Clear All button first, then click the boxes near the occurrences that you want to replace.

To check and uncheck boxes using your keyboard, press the Space button. You can also press the Insert button to check a box and move to the next box (similar to selecting files in Norton Commander).

Use Ctrl+C to copy the file names and the occurrences to clipboard. If you do not want to copy the text after and before the matches, press Ctrl+Shift+C.

Context viewer

The lower pane on the Search tab is called “context viewer”. It shows you the lines of the file where the text was found.

You can list the file with arrow keys, Page Down, Page Up, Ctrl+Home, and Ctrl+End keys.

To select some text, use the left mouse button. The context menu allows you to copy the selected text to clipboard and to select all text in the file. (You can also use Ctrl+C and Ctrl+A keys for this purpose.)

Syntax highlighting is implemented for HTML, CSS, JS, PHP, Python, and C/C++ files in this version. More programming languages will be added later. If the file is larger than 1 MB, it's not highlighted.

Status bar

The status bar displays the number of files and matches found. Also shown are the total numbers of searched and skipped files. This information is often useful for troubleshooting. For example, if the number of searched files is zero, the folder you selected may be empty, or the file mask you entered may be too restrictive. The skipped files are binary files that have the extensions listed in the Options dialog.

The central part of the status bar shows the name of the selected file and its encoding. Sometimes there are a lot of matches in one file, and its name is scrolled out of the screen. In this case, you can look for the file name in the status bar. The encoding information is also useful for troubleshooting.

Sorting

You can sort the found files by path, name, extension, date, or size. Please click the right part of the status bar and select the sorting criteria.

Aba sorts the found files after finishing the search because reordering the list while searching would create some visual clutter and hinder navigation in the list. So when searching, Aba adds found files to the end of the list. The list is sorted only when the search is done.

When you select sorting by file name or extension, all file names or extensions are highlighted in bold. When you select sorting by date or size, Aba displays the last modification date or size for each file. The file size is rounded up to the nearest kilobyte just like in Windows Explorer. For example, if the file size is 3 bytes, it's displayed as 1 kB.

Hotkey Action
Ctrl+F2 Sort by path (first by the directory, then by the file name)
Ctrl+F3 Sort by filename (regardless of the directory)
Ctrl+F4 Sort by extension
Ctrl+F5 Sort by modification date (recently changed files first)
Ctrl+F6 Sort by file size (the largest files first)

This is a page from Aba Search and Replace help file.