Tip: Use Ctrl+W to select content in the IDE code editor.

Tip: Use Ctrl+W to select content in the IDE code editor.

Place your cursor some random piece of code, preferably deep in code that have nested blocks. Press Ctrl+W. Repeat, and repeat while watching the goodness progress.

This tidbit was shared by Jim Mack in a comment in the FB Delphi group.

Edit: The feature was introduced in Berlin 10.1

The feature struggles with Unicode characters in code and strings.

Those of you that use national characters in your strings or code (such as Cyrillic, Greek, or Chinese) that also misbehaves, should add a comment / example to the QP issue and vote on it.

https://quality.embarcadero.com/browse/RSP-19787

25 thoughts on “Tip: Use Ctrl+W to select content in the IDE code editor.


  1. Uwe Raabe Really? I got the impression it was older – but that could be just me and my imagination, of course. Anyways – best new shortcut ever!


  2. Grrrr… I hate you now Lars Fosdal


    I read this post yesterday and I just shrugged…


    But today working all day in Seattle, I realized how often I would use it if it would be present…


    I guess it’s especially useful when blocks are covering multiple lines when visually you lost track a little of which “begin” goes with which “end”, etc.


    I wish GExperts would have something like that.


    Thx for the info.


  3. Евгений Савин Confirmed. It really loses it’s mind if there are Unicode characters in strings or variable names. That is not good.


  4. Lars Fosdal the problem in the IDE is that it is not Unicode aware it does just Unicode encoding.


    The IDE should re-use the compiler for anything syntax related.


    Better: the R&D team should contribute to DelphiAST so finally the syntax gets documented and any tool (not just the IDE or compiler) can use it.


    (Both the use of the compiler and contributing the syntax to the public have been suggested many times over the past two decades).

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