Search & Replace preview

Hi. I really like what you’ve done in Search showing matches in their full context, complete with yellow highlights. In fact, it’s the best design I think I’ve ever seen in terms of clarity and ease of use. The only thing missing is a feature I first encountered in Google Sheets whereby a small preview of a cell’s pending value appears whenever the formula you’re editing reaches a calculable state: a live preview of the result.

In keeping with your current design, the way I’d like to see this is by doubling the cells in the results view such that each match snapshot is followed by a snapshot showing what that window of text will look like after the replacement has been made. This would completely eliminate the frustrating cycle of Attempt Regex > Discover Mistake > Undo > Attempt Modified Regex that happens when I forget whether Textastic uses /1 or $1 for capture groups. It happens when I get my capture groups mixed up. And it happens during replacements when I’ve made a capitalization error.

Honestly, what you have is already so close to perfect, it would be a shame not to reach out and actually reach perfection. 🌞