Search

Find and replace text in the current file or across your whole workspace, with regular expressions, case and whole-word matching, and file filters.

What you can do

• Find text in the current file, or search every file in the workspace
• Replace matches in the current file, or across all files at once
• Match with regular expressions
• Toggle case-sensitive and whole-word matching (the Aa / ab / .* buttons)
• Switch to matching by meaning instead of by characters (the Words / Meaning control)
• Narrow a workspace search with include and exclude path filters; node_modules and .git are skipped by default
• Browse the matches grouped by file, each row showing its line number
• Click a match to open the file with the cursor on that line

Replacing across all files changes many files at once, so it asks you to confirm first.

Reading the results

Matches are grouped by file, with the file's match count beside its name and each row's line number in front of the text. Long lines are trimmed around the match so the highlight is always visible, and a notebook's hit shows the prose of the cell rather than the JSON it is stored in.

A workspace search matches whole words, so test finds the word test and not the middle of retests. Use the .* button when you want partial matches.

Searching by meaning

The Meaning side of the control switches the same search box to matching on meaning rather than on characters, so a question worded unlike the passage that answers it still finds it. It reads the vector index the Vectors extension builds, and it is a mode of this panel rather than a second one: same input, same result list.

A line above the results always says which way the hits were found. When nothing has been indexed yet, or the embedder is not configured, the search falls back to keyword matching and says so along with the reason. Keyword results are never presented as semantic ones.

Nothing is highlighted in this mode. The hit was not found on those characters, and marking them would suggest a word match that was never measured. Each row shows its similarity score instead of a line number, and the list is capped at the thirty closest passages.

Keyboard shortcuts

• Ctrl+F — find in the current file
• Ctrl+Shift+F — find in files
• Ctrl+H — replace in the current file
• Ctrl+Shift+H — replace in files

Getting started

Open Search from the activity bar, type what you are looking for, and press Enter.