All Manuals > LispWorks IDE User Guide > 3 Common Features

3.3 Performing editing functions

This section discusses commands available in the Edit menu of any window. These commands fall into five areas:

3.3.1 Undoing changes

You can undo changes made in a tool using Edit > Undo. This facility is most useful in the Editor and Listener - see 12.9 Other essential commands for more details.

3.3.2 Using the clipboard

You can use the clipboard to transfer data between tools, or even between the LispWorks IDE and other applications that you are running. There are three commands available, as follows:

Use of Copy or Cut followed by Paste lets you transfer items between tools, or to different parts of the same tool.

Unlike the clipboard in many other applications, the LispWorks IDE clipboard can contain a Common Lisp object. This makes the LispWorks IDE clipboard an exceptionally powerful tool, allowing you to pass objects between different tools in the environment so that they can be examined in different ways.

If the clipboard contains a Lisp object and you use the Paste command on a pane that only accepts text, then the object's printed representation will be pasted.

There are several ways to use these commands:

As well as the menu commands, you can use the , and buttons in the toolbar, for Cut, Copy and Paste respectively.

Note: You can also transfer data within the environment using the standard actions commands described in 3.8 Performing operations on selected objects.

3.3.3 Using the Object operations with the clipboard

You can use the clipboard to transfer a tool's "primary object" between tools. There are three commands available, as follows:

Use of Copy Object or Cut Object followed by Paste Object lets you transfer items between tools, or to different parts of the same tool. There are several ways to use these commands:

Note: You can also transfer data within the environment using the standard actions commands described in 3.8 Performing operations on selected objects.

the LispWorks IDE also interacts with the standard system clipboard, so that data can be transferred to or from applications other than Lisp. To do this, the system and the LispWorks IDE clipboards are kept in synchronization all the time, as follows:

3.3.4 Selecting text and objects

Choose Edit > Select All or Edit > Deselect All to select or deselect all the text in an Editor or Listener window, or all the items in a list or graph. These commands are useful whenever there is too much information to be able to select items one at a time.

These commands operate on the active pane of the current tool.

3.3.5 Searching for text and objects

You can search for and change text in most tools using Edit > Find..., Edit > Find Next, and Edit > Replace....

Choose Edit > Find... to find an item in the current tool (this might be a piece of text, or a fragment of Common Lisp, or an object, depending on the tool). You must supply an item to find in the dialog that appears.

Choose Edit > Find Next if you want to search for the next occurrence of an item you have already found. This command does not prompt you for an item to find, and so is only available if you have already found something.

Choose Edit > Replace... if you want to replace one string of text with another. A dialog box prompts you for a text string to find, and a text string to replace it with. This command is only available in the Editor and the Listener, and is most useful in the Editor.

These commands operate on the active pane of the current tool.


LispWorks IDE User Guide (Unix version) - 01 Dec 2021 19:37:02