Text Handling Features

Cool ways to Control Your Text using BBEdit

April 3, 2024 by cryan.com

Whether you're a seasoned developer, a writer, or a web enthusiast, BBEdit's robust text handling capabilities make it an indispensable tool for manipulating text with ease.

BBEdit's Text Handling Features

BBEdit offers a plethora of features that streamline text editing and enhance productivity. Beyond the standard text entry and editing functions, BBEdit boasts several built-in tools for text manipulations. Let's explore some of these features:

1. Exchange Characters & Words: Swap characters or entire words effortlessly.
2. Change Case: Quickly convert text to uppercase, lowercase, or title case.
3. Shift Left/Shift Right: Indent or unindent lines with precision.
4. Un/Comment Selection: Comment or uncomment selected lines for code readability.
5. Hard Wrap: Wrap lines at a specified column width.
6. Add & Remove Line Breaks: Manage line breaks seamlessly.
7. Apply Text Factory: Perform a series of text transformations on multiple files simultaneously.
8. Educate Quotes: Convert straight quotes to curly (smart) quotes.
9. Straighten Quotes: The feature you're interested in! Straighten curly quotes back to their straight form.
10. Add/Remove Line Numbers: Enhance code navigation by adding or removing line numbers.
11. Prefix/Suffix Lines: Append or prepend text to lines.
12. Sort Lines: Alphabetically sort lines for better organization.
13. Process Duplicate Lines: Handle duplicate lines efficiently.
14. Process Lines Containing: Use grep patterns to manipulate specific lines.
15. Canonize: Perform powerful batch changes across files.
16. Rewrap Quoted Text: Perfect for reformatting or preparing email and online content.
17. Increase and Decrease Quote Level: Adjust quote levels as needed.
18. Strip Quotes: Remove quotation marks from text.
19. Entab/Detab: Convert tabs to spaces or vice versa.
20. Normalize Line Endings: Ensure consistent line endings across platforms.

Scriptability and Integration

BBEdit is not just a standalone editor; it's also fully scriptable. You can harness the power of AppleScript to automate tasks and create custom workflows. Additionally, BBEdit seamlessly integrates with the native Perl, Python, and Ruby environments provided by macOS. If you're a shell scripting aficionado, you'll appreciate its compatibility with Unix scripting languages.

Conclusion

BBEdit's commitment to text handling excellence sets it apart. Whether you're tidying up code, writing prose, or crafting HTML, BBEdit's arsenal of features empowers you to work efficiently. So next time you encounter those pesky smart quotes, remember that BBEdit has your back!

Give BBEdit a try and experience the joy of text manipulation: Download BBEdit today!