Question

I am not 100% sure if this is the right place to be posting this question, but I could not think of anywhere else.

I having been using textmate for around 6 months to write Ruby on Rails applications.

The snippets and stuff are nice. I am wondering if it is possible to edit to words at the same time. I am using the mcol snippet which generates a add_column and remove_column in a database migration.

When the code is generated it highlights the table_name and changes both occurences of the word table_name when you start typing.

Hoping that this can be done to any word that you select.

Cheers

Eef

Answer 1

Since the whole idea of TextMate is to have an editable editor(!), if you look at the HTML bundle, the shortcut ctrl-shift-w invokes this:

<${1:p}>$TM_SELECTED_TEXT</${1/\s.*//}>

So, to add a custom shortcut to wrap a selection in a pair of editable text strings (which is what you want, I think?), go to Bundles > Show Bundle Editor then choose New Snippet from the add + button (bottom left) and use (e.g.):

${1:editme}$TM_SELECTED_TEXT${1/\s.*//}

where ‘editme’ is the default ‘doubly-editable’ value. If you add a new snippet shortcut in the ‘Key Equivalent’ field (I used ctrl-shift-alt-W) you can then wrap any selection in an editable pair of words. Depending on what you need, the same syntax might be expanded to match your requirements?

Note: once the shortcut is allocated, you can’t edit a snippet in place – you need to start again (I think – couldn’t find a way around that).