# I pit Find & Replace **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [May 30, 2004, 11:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-find-replace/247855 "2004-05-30T23:23:29Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 14\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![jimdigritz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/91b2a8/32.png) [@jimdigritz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jimdigritz)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2004, 11:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-find-replace/247855/1 "2004-05-30T23:23:29Z")
AAARGH. Why can I not Find & Replace in large documents? M$ Word, M$ Works Word Processor, Star Office 6.0, Notepad, WordPad, MetaPad, etc. Why, when I try to Find & Replace a common character such as a paragraph mark (ie when the document has been mangled by .pdf) do ALL word processors drop dead and DIE??? [Not Respondng] They all crawl to a halt and stop responding when asked to do something as systematic and simple as replace c.50,000 paragraph marks with spaces in a 800 page document. I have 1Gb RAM, and a 2.4Ghz Athon. WHY THE FUCK should this be a problem? I can generate 1million+ pixels per second and wander through photorealistic 3D worlds, but can’t seem to perform a basic Find & Replace. Fuck you you lazy half arsed Word Processor developers. ---
**Author:** ![Hunter\_Hawk](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/50afbb/32.png) [@Hunter\_Hawk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hunter_Hawk)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2004, 12:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-find-replace/247855/2 "2004-05-31T00:40:16Z")
The short answer is, you’re using the wrong tool for the job. Word processors weren’t originally intended for heavy-duty text editing–that’s what text editors are for. And since Word etc. feature development has strayed even further from core editing functions, there’s no reason to expect them to do a decent job at it. I personally wouldn’t even bother trying to use Word to create an 800-page document–I’d either break it down into subdocuments (which has its own set of problems), or use a tool such as XEDIT (which I’m not sure is even still available–I’ve heard of KEDIT but haven’t used it) or FrameMaker. ---
**Author:** ![Metacom](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ecae2f/32.png) [@Metacom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Metacom)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2004, 12:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-find-replace/247855/3 "2004-05-31T00:56:02Z")
Two words: emacs and LaTeX. ---
**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2004, 3:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-find-replace/247855/4 "2004-05-31T03:03:04Z")
Yep. On the Mac, I’d do the surgery in BBEdit. Text editors rule, word processors drool. ---
**Author:** ![friedo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/8edcca/32.png) [@friedo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/friedo)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2004, 3:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-find-replace/247855/5 "2004-05-31T03:50:59Z")
No need for all the heavy equipment. Just use sed. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2004, 5:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-find-replace/247855/6 "2004-05-31T05:02:16Z")
SPF2 (originally SPF/PC) is the only tool for genuine text editing (as opposed to word processing). It is even better than its sister XEDIT. I’ve used it to totally reformat files and actually created hypertext functions on a mainframe. ---
**Author:** ![jimdigritz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/91b2a8/32.png) [@jimdigritz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jimdigritz)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2004, 10:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-find-replace/247855/7 "2004-05-31T10:13:47Z")
My experiences: Emacs - I downloaded the most recent emacs distro, but can’t figure out how to install. I am a pretty experienced user, but this is way too complex. SPF2, I will take your word that this is good since I can’t find it Xedit - not sure if this can replace formatting characters ie Paragraph marks ^p KEdit, $159… hmmm LaTeX - can’t find a Windows distro that is still maintained. As a footnote I did try UltraEdit, ($35) and seems to do the job! 😛 thanks for all your input Jim ---
**Author:** ![biqu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7feea3/32.png) [@biqu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/biqu)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2004, 12:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-find-replace/247855/8 "2004-05-31T12:05:52Z")
> [@jimdigritz](#): > > LaTeX - can’t find a Windows distro that is still maintained. Even though you seem to have solved your problem already, may I suggest [MiKTeX](http://www.miktex.org/) as an up-to-date TeX distribution for Windows? (in case anyone reads your post and laments the migration of free software developers away from the Windows platform) ---
**Author:** ![Cheesesteak](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cheesesteak/32/3694_2.png) [@Cheesesteak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cheesesteak)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2004, 12:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-find-replace/247855/9 "2004-05-31T12:12:34Z")
I dunno, I used to use Lotus WordPro to find and replace about 60,000 quotation marks in a 10,000 line text document.\* Never gave me a moments trouble, and did the job quick as a wink. \*Thanks Lotus Approach, for being programmed to export text within quotes, and not making it a selectable choice, I can’t see anyone ever wanting THAT feature turned off. :rolleyes:, ---
**Author:** ![Metacom](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ecae2f/32.png) [@Metacom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Metacom)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2004, 3:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-find-replace/247855/10 "2004-05-31T15:56:08Z")
> [@jimdigritz](#): > > Emacs - I downloaded the most recent emacs distro, but can’t figure out how to install. I am a pretty experienced user, but this is way too complex. Try “xemacs”. It’s a fork off of GNU Emacs that’s much prettier, and the windows port includes an installer that anyone capable of editting text should be able to use. You can get it off of [www.xemacs.org](http://www.xemacs.org) ---
**Author:** ![Cerowyn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/82dd89/32.png) [@Cerowyn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cerowyn)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2004, 10:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-find-replace/247855/11 "2004-05-31T22:03:09Z")
I am puzzled that you seem to have this problem with “all” word processors. I just opened a 380 page technical document in Word and tried changing four different codes (font, paragraph, new page and underline) globally with no problems on a 1 GHz Windows XP box. Took a second or two for each operation. ---
**Author:** ![jimdigritz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/91b2a8/32.png) [@jimdigritz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jimdigritz)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2004, 12:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-find-replace/247855/12 "2004-06-01T12:27:43Z")
> [@Cerowyn](#): > > I am puzzled that you seem to have this problem with “all” word processors. I just opened a 380 page technical document in Word and tried changing four different codes (font, paragraph, new page and underline) globally with no problems on a 1 GHz Windows XP box. Took a second or two for each operation. Fair enough, minor character substitution is fine, but try replacing all paragraph marks with spaces (this is a common step in reformatting hard carriage returns in certain docs such as those exported from .pdfs) I think that Word (and all the others that I mentioned) have a problem with the major reformatting that is the result, and can’t handle the mass repagination, or something. That and lazy prgrammers. UltraEdit perfoms the above operation in literally 2 seconds (on a 12mb .rtf). It’s all in the programming baby. ---
**Author:** ![Dead\_Badger](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/848f3c/32.png) [@Dead\_Badger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dead_Badger)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2004, 1:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-find-replace/247855/13 "2004-06-01T13:09:38Z")
> [@Metacom](#): > > Try “xemacs”. It’s a fork off of GNU Emacs that’s much prettier, and the windows port includes an installer that anyone capable of editting text should be able to use. You can get it off of [www.xemacs.org](http://www.xemacs.org) FWIW, I really like [WinEdt](http://www.winedt.com/) for Latex under Windows - has a few project management tools that let you keep track of the document, plus some nice little touches like tracking labels, cites and so forth. ---
**Author:** ![Trunk](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/87869e/32.png) [@Trunk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trunk)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2004, 2:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-find-replace/247855/14 "2004-06-01T14:00:13Z")
LaTeX isn’t an editor. Xemacs for windows, or a windows version of vi (maybe vim or something) should be able to do it. LaTeX is a language for producing documents. You need to use an eidtor to generate LaTeX files. I think MikteK is a package that contains LaTeX and an editor but I might be wrong. But you can edit LaTeX files using Vi or Emacs or Ultra-Edit. Ultra-edit is a pretty good editor for windows. Easier to assimilate to for windows users than emacs or vi.