GREP search and replace / regular expression / regex

I can't believe this doesn't have more votes! I love the app and I look forward to future features but regex is my number one.

I'd also like to push this one forward -- there are many "nice to have" features you can do workarounds for with other apps, but this isn't one of them. And it's something I don't think any editor on the iPad has yet.

This is an amazing app, and it will be made even more amazing with GREP or Regex search and replace. Textforce already has this functionality and I think Textastic should continue to stay ahead of the competition by employing it too.

Here's a vote!

The lack of regular expression support is the only thing Textastic doesn't do better than other iOS text editors I've used.

Textforce supports regular expressions, as mentioned by Mr. Levings, but Textforce is slow, annoying, and it doesn't support text highlighting. Additionally, I can't open files from DropBox into Textforce. Boo-urns.

Anyway, I hope to see regex support soon! Thanks for a great app!

regexp search/replace would be really nice, but only, if it's full featured: buffers would in my opinion be a must for regexp-based replace.

What exactly do you mean when you say "buffers"? I'm not familiar with this term in connection with regular expression search.

GREP would free the iPad from being dependent on the desktop for this important feature. The ability to replace with back references, that insert a found sub-expression into the replaced string, is important for me so that files can be processed in various ways to accommodate the requirements of different iPad apps.

Yeah, I think this would be a great feature!

You can already search for "\n" if you want to find newlines and "\t" if you want to find tabs.

Yes, I have been using that feature for a while and it's very useful for the format conversions and other tasks - thanks.

\n and \t are a good start -- can you add a sequence for non-breaking space.

Textforce is in my workflown regularly for its superior find and replace implementation.

I'm trying to find and replace some non-breaking space characters (A0) but find that the search box does not support those characters if I paste them. They seem to be ignored by the search method.

Alternatively can you treat space and non-breaking space as the same character when searching? So when I enter space (20) it will match A0 and 20.

Is it currently possible to enter a non-breaking space in Textastic? (not in the search field)

So far I've only encountered non-breaking spaces in text that I've pasted from another App on the iPad.

I don't know if there's a way to enter those characters, such as by an external keyboard. Maybe it could be done using a TextExpander shortcut?

I don't see how this very nice app can be taken seriously as a development tool without a full GREP featured pattern based search and replace feature.
+1 for this ASAP!

The User interface in textastic is excellent, congratulations!
But to be useful for server management or code development, it MUST have GREP!
Thanks!!

+1

Regular Expression is really required.

I have tried to use Regular Expression in Textastic several times when I froget Textastic don't support it,
at last I have to turn on my PC or try edit code manually, generally it's a simple task if I can use Regular Expression.

Nice to see this must-have feature implemented! This alone brings Textastic yet again to a whole new level.

Well done and thanks. This helps in many ways by being able to operate on the iPad independently, saving a round trip through the Mac for a lot of activities.