Searching backward

[rjelinek]

Hello,

I am writing a command for Sublime 3, and I would need to search backward from the current position, something like this

def run(self, edit):
    pos = self.view.sel()[0].begin()
    region = self.view.find(r"---..---", pos) 
    self.view.sel().clear()
    self.view.sel().add(region)

but self.view.find() only searches forward. How can I search backward?

If there is no appropriate method, then can I use the self.view.run_command() method to call the find command (the same way as Ctrl+f does) and force that command to search backward?

Thanks

[kingkeith]

Add directional argument or flag to view.find

If you want to find the next occurrence of something in a plugin, it’s effortless. If you want to find the previous occurrence of something in a plugin, you have to use find_all and do a binary search. Presumably there’s a performance cost associated with it as well. I assume it would be easy to add an argument that allows the find to run backward instead of forward. If so, please add it. And, sorry, I admit I saw the feature request from 2012, but I just wanted to put it out here again: it w…

you can use Python’s re module, but its not possible to set arbitrary text/patterns in the find dialog unless it is the selected text in the main view

Issue: Allow plugins to set find and replace strings in the Find/Replace panels

it is possible to set the flag toggle buttons etc programmatically though in the find dialog

[Clams]

When I needed such a feature, I basically used find_all, and then you can easily find the region just before your position.