Interactive Search

The most frequently used method of searching is the Interactive search. This searches for the text as you type it into the Search box, so you only have to type in the word or phrase you want until it is found. StrongED will search forward in the text for the best match.

Interactive Search is invoked by key F4

Repeated presses of F4 will step back through previous search expressions you have used, as will clicking on the Old button.

Clicking on the Menu icon beside the writable box will open a list of previous search expressions so you can select the term you require.

There is only one list of search expressions, shared between all four searches.

The Case button switches case sensitivity on or off.

The Prev and Next buttons cause the Previous or Next occurrence of the search term (or the beginning of it) to be found, as will the Up and Down arrow keys. See the example.

It is very often useful to include a space before and/or after a short search word to avoid the word being picked up as part of a longer word.

As you type in the search term you want to find, the caret will jump in the text as you type. If the text you type is not found, StrongED will highlight the best match it can find to the start of the word.

As a consequence of this interactive behaviour, as you click the Next button StrongED will continuously search forward for the best match to the start of the word, so the length of words found will decrease!

If you don't want these truncated finds, close the Search box. Now Ctrl-N and Ctrl-P will goto the previous and next matches.

An example of Interactive search

To understand this, load the Lorem Ipsum text into StrongEd. At the end of the third line is the word exercitationem.

• Double click this to mark it.
• Press f4 to open the Interactive Search box
• Press f7 to copy the marked word into the search box
• The found highlight will jump to the best match to the front of selected word. Repeated clicks on Next will then find subsequent start-of-word best matches in order:
  • exercitatione
  • exercitat
  • exerc
  • exe
  • ex
  • e