Re:VS Code can do that?
by matthewmacleod on Saturday April 21, 2018 @11:52AM
(#16891871)
I'm not sure where this feature originated, but it's been a core feature of Sublime for as long as I've used it, and is also broadly available in other editors. Definitely not a VS Code-specific thing, though it's still great!
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I doubt it's where it originated, but I was using multi-select/multi-caret editing in jEdit before Sublime came around.
That and arbitrary window splitting (split any pane horizontally or vertically) are two features I really miss when they're not present. The latter's surprisingly hard to find; Sublime and VS Code don't do it (Atom does).
I believe Sublime introduced the feature. I looked it up and it was already present in the first release on January 18, 2008.
Column editing? That was in a shareware text editor that I wrote for Windows in the mid 90s and I didn't invent it.
Editors like n++ have column editing, but Sublime takes it to a different level. It's most generalized, it's multi-cursor.
You can for example put your cursor on a word, spam ctrl+d (of press alt+f3) to select all instances of that word, and start editing them all at ones, no matter where they are. They don't have to be perfectly in a column. You can also copy X items from anywhere, and if you have X cursors again somewhere else and paste, they'll each go in their respective slot.