Selecting "Find..." ("Edit" menu F) will open the "Find" dialog box. A text or script window must be the front window while selecting the menu. Here is how the dialog works.
Find field : the search string.
Enter the search string in this field. Press the tab key ()(with the dialog box active) to toggle selection between "Find" and "Replace" fields.
Replace field : the replace string.
Enter the replace string in this field which you want to replace the search string in all its occurrences. See below the description of the "Replace all" button.
Find button
Clicking this button will select the next occurrence of the search string in the active window (according to the settings, see below). If the search string cannot be found in the active window, Smile will beep. If the Multi-file search box is checked, the behavior is different. See below "Multi-file search".
Replace all button
Click this button to replace all the occurrences of the search string by the replace string.
"Replace all" always operates on the whole contents of the window, whatever the state of the "wrap" checkbox.
"Replace all" is undoable.
wrap checkbox
(this checkbox not effective in Multi-file search mode).
If unchecked, Smile searches only the text after the selection. If checked, Smile searches, first, the text after the selection, then (if there is no hit at this point) the text before the selection.
case sens checkbox
If unchecked, the search considers lowercase and uppercase characters the same (case is ignored). Searching "John" will find "JOHN" as well as any other mix of J-O-H-N upper/lower case letters.
Multi-file search checkbox
Check this box to perform a search of all the files contained in a given folder, including the files contained in nested folders (a hierarchical search). The search is restricted to text and script files, whatever their creator (file types "TEXT" and "osas").
The field below the checkbox displays the pathname of the selected folder, if any folder has already been selected.
In Multi-file search mode, Smile does not select the found string(s). Instead it will open the "Worksheet" if not open, and write some lines in this window.
For each file where the string has been found, Smile will write two script lines, followed by the quotation of the first paragraph of the file where the search string was found.
Example : Suppose you are searching for the string "John" in your "Mail archive" folder, you might get the following output in the Worksheet :
The search string "John" was found in the file "Re - Hello world". The line between dashed lines is a copy of the first paragraph of this file containing the string "John".
The two lines above the quotation are a small script which will open the file, and highlight the found string (the script may vary, depending whether the file is text or a script). To execute this script, select the two lines, then press the Enter key (be careful, do not press the carriage return key instead). (You should be familiar with running scripts in text windows.)
Even if the string exists in multiple places in the file, only the first occurrence will be reported in the Worksheet. You must open the file (by executing the small script), then use the "Find next" command of the "Edit" Menu (shortcut G), to find the next occurrence(s) of the search string in this file.
If the search string is not found, Smile will open a "not found" dialog box at the end of the search.
A multi-file search may take a few minutes to complete. The search can be terminated by depressing (and holding) the Command and period keys ( .) until the busy cursor (spinning wheel) changes to an arrow.
Choose folder …
Click this button to choose the folder to search. The name of the selected folder will be displayed in the field below the button.
