Sort Find in Files results, or open multiple files from there Follow
I do a search for something, I get a list of files that term is in, I need to open many files from the list, but I can only open 1 at a time, and doing the search again shows the files in random order, so it's difficult to hunt and peck for unopened files.
I see no option for sorting the list by file, nor any way to open multiple files at once.
What's the solution here? Is this a missing feature, or is there some purposeful reason this is so limited?
Please sign in to leave a comment.
Hi there,
1) If you look at how "Find in Files" works / evolved for the last 6 or so years, you would agree with me that it is just a preview of the full search (with a quick edit facility for small edits). The full search is done only after clicking the button at the bottom:
To have what you need (to a some degree) just use "Open in Find Window" button in the bottom right of the Find in Files popup and it will list ALL matches in a standard separate tool window where you will have A-Z order, grouping options. Quick edit panel is also available.
2) To open multiple files at once -- just select them there (Ctrl+Click works fine here on Windows) and hit Enter.
Can also check my comments in https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/IDEA-282541 and https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/WI-56052 (older ticket, short comment)
Other related tickets (mentioning just a few: you can search for more on IDEA project):
> If you look at how "Find in Files" works / evolved for the last 6 or so years
I don't know how I would have done that 😆 Sorry that I'm as familiar with 6 years of "Find in Files" evolution as you are. Maybe that's not something that would occur to a normal PHPStorm user, nor be easy to figure out how to do well; I wouldn't expect that from anyone to begin with anyway.
> it is just a preview of the full search
That's fine but appears to be completely irrelevant to having a sorted list (even just the first 100 sorted results, which I know is doable, it's like showing paginated results on a webpage or from a SQL query), or letting me select multiple files to open without having to re-do the search and get randomly-sorted results (very easy to open the same file or difficult to try to figure out which ones you still need to open).
> Search is done in multiple threads to find anything as fast as possible
OK, so we should have an option to wait for sorted results... even if that means seeing a warning blurb.
"Open in Find Window" I guess does what I need... though it's more cumbersome. Thankfully I don't need to open a lot of files from a search concurrently. I'm not sure what you mean by "Quick edit panel".
Thanks for the info.
The same the you have in the Find in Files popup -- ability to edit the file right there without opening the actual file in the Editor.
The Quick Edit Panel is nice for quick edits... not when you need to work with files in a broader context. That's why there should be some form of sorting; if the piecemeal fetching of results interferes with that, then we should have an option to wait, or something sensible. Showing randomly-ordered results, with no ability to multi-open files, is cumbersome and difficult, completely avoidable, and makes JetBrains look bad.