Show active line in Lister

[browny]

Real life example: text file with long lines; it is a table.
The value of interest is in the leftmost position, but search expression would be found in the column quite far to the right.
It is possible, though inconvenient, to Home key, then F3 twice to go to the next location - and so on.

It might be useful to show the active line to make it easily distinguishable; commonly this is done with a very light shade of grey.

But please no separating lines as in Compare by Content, because these separators hide underlines.
(That was the subject of a different suggestion).

[petermad]

Are you sure you are talking about a plain text file. AFAIK text files does not support tables. Are you sure your file is not shown in Lister by som plugin or that it is an .rtf file? Click Options in Lister - is "1 Text only" or "4 Image/Multimedia" selected?

[ts4242]

It might be useful to show the active line to make it easily distinguishable; commonly this is done with a very light shade of grey.

Support++
Advanced text editors usually highlights active line, e.g. Notepad++

You can select the line manually to temporarily highlight it.

[Stefan2]

Please note that Lister is not an Advanced text editor, but a quick way to show even the largest files.
As Mr. Ghisler already told, such additional features could slowdown the process of QUICKly showing files.

If one would need such features, he could already use alternatives to Lister,
f.ex. see http://totalcmd.net/directory/synplus.html and others like hpg_ed or CudaLister, or even Notepad++ or Notepad2

Ahh, there is also a dedicated page for editors: http://totalcmd.net/directory/editors.html



 

[Usher]

Are you sure you are talking about a plain text file. AFAIK text files does not support tables.

I'm pretty sure it's some log file. It's more or less a table in the database meaning. Many programs use syslog format or similar – fields are separated with space. Some programs use special field separators - tab, comma,semicolon, pipe, etc., see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delimiter-separated_values

There are dedicated tools to work with such files (syslog analyzers, database utilites).
But in the simplest case I would work another way. First, limit text to browse using command:

Code: Select all

find "keyword_far_right" log.txt > keyword.log.txt

Then just browse keyword.log.txt in lister with no need to search and go Home-down-F3-Home-down-F3…

[petermad]

. It's more or less a table in the database meaning.

Wouldn't that be called a Comma Separated file (.csv) or a Tab Delimited file (.tab) ?

It was just because browny called it tables, so it might be a formatted document like .rtf or of course .doc(x), and that it was maybe a plugin showing his file rather than Liste in plain Text mode.

[browny]

Are you sure you are talking about a plain text file.

Pretty sure.
If you never saw a text file formatted as a table, please use Excel/LibreOffice/OpenOffice/whatever... and save a spreadsheet as a text file (tab delimited for better results).

Advanced text editors usually highlights active line, e.g. Notepad++

This is a stock feature nowadays; even for rather simple editors.

[browny]

Please note that Lister is not an Advanced text editor, but a quick way to show even the largest files.

There is no need to impersonate Cpt. Obvioius.
Nor did I ask which editor to use, or what convoluted steps to follow, or how to write a program for the task.

As Mr. Ghisler already told, such additional features could slowdown the process of QUICKly showing files.

Is there any understanding how complex and resource consuming is that particular feature?
(A hint: it is already possible to select the whole line by repeatative double-clicking on it; which effectively would make a kind of "active line cursor".)

[Usher]

It's more or less a table in the database meaning.

Wouldn't that be called a Comma Separate file (.csv) or a Tab Delimited file (.tab) ?

It doesn't matter, which format do you choose, known or unknown, it's a table in plain text (note: "plain text" is NOT equivalent to MIME type "text/plain"). And it was just an example.

Focus on the real problem, please: Line highlighting is needed NOW, because TC supports very long lines NOW.
It will be useful also without search, f.e. when you manually mark some text and scroll Lister window with mouse far from that text. If you move a cursor to quickly go back to that text, you will have to mark it again.