Aba Search and Replace
Replace text in multiple files with regexes and undo
The new version goes beyond just search and replace; it allows you to convert text and images to and from Base64, encode and decode HTML entities like <, encode and decode percent-encoding (also known as URL encoding), decode JSON Web Tokens, and convert Unix/JavaScript timestamps to dates and vice versa.
Other new features and fixes include:
Fixed: a long file name was cut in the combobox (many thanks to Duane who reported the bug).
An option to disable the dot matches newline mode (the \s modifier; thanks to Helmet for the idea).
Line numbers in the text viewer (thanks to Yonatan).
An option to preserve the files' date/time (thanks to Duane).
Syntax highlighting for Scala and Go.
Ctrl+1, Ctrl+2, etc. to switch between the tabs.
Updated translations.
Fixed: when reading from disk failed, Aba crashed (mostly applicable to old HDDs and network drives).
Fixed: incorrect cursor position for Chinese characters.
Fixed: excessive completion sound when the search pattern was changed.
Fixed: in the Undo > In files field, the vertical scrollbar was displayed for long directory names.
Fixed: in some cases, a previous file name remained in the status bar when the search did not find anything.
Just as always, the upgrade is free for the registered users.
In the new version, Aba got a UI facelift and dark mode. Several critical bugs were fixed in this release, so it's recommended for everyone to install. The changes are:
- Dark mode.
- A larger, more modern UI font (Segoe UI).
- Syntax highlight for Java, C#, SQL, and Pascal.
- Drag and drop into the main window.
- Autocomplete in the path combobox.
- Allow to use a file name in double quotes.
- Fixed 13 bugs including 6 critical ones.
Released in December, Aba 2.6 is the first version that requires Windows Vista. The previous versions were tested on Windows XP, which remained popular for a long time after its release. Unfortunately, it became increasingly hard to maintain the Windows XP compatibility code and it limited the further development, so I had to say goodbye to Windows 2000/XP. Please contact me if it creates any problem for you; I always listen to your feedback and can send you the previous version.
In January 2023, Microsoft certified Aba Search and Replace for publication to the Microsoft Store. The new version 2.6 was also approved a few days ago, so you can download it from the Microsoft Store as well as from the website (https://www.abareplace.com).
Thanks to Richard, Aba is also available in French. If you are a native speaker of Spanish, German, or Italian and you can translate the 17 messages that were added in the recent version, please contact me. Feel free to use Google Translate or ChatGPT, then review and edit the automatic translation. Thank you so much.
The blog post about escaping in regular expressions is still the most popular on the blog. In April, I wrote a followup about empty character classes, which was also well-received.
The new Aba version remains lean and fast. No huge runtime libraries, no cluttered UIs or bloatware. Stay tuned for the next versions!
Just released a new version that includes a simple scripting language for your replacements. It allows you to insert the name of the current file, convert the found text to uppercase / lowercase, insert content from the other files, or extract such information as image width / height and ID3 tags.
After a nine-year hiatus, I decided to resume the project. Many things have changed, for example, free IDEs like Visual Studio Code now have a decent search-and-replace tool, but they still lack some features of my software. Surprisingly, Windows applications still sell well and I continue to receive positive feedback from customers.
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