Find Previous disabled

[oonet]

Find dialog shows "Next" enabled but "Previous" disabled.

Xubuntu 17.10 with latest version of Geany from repository (1.29)

[elextr]

Doesn't happen for me with latest Geany. Perhaps you need to give more information about what you are doing.

[oonet]

Open new document. Select "Find" from "Search" menu (ctrl+f). Next is enabled, Previous is disabled.

[elextr]

Don't have Xubuntu, but doesn't happen here, what versions of GTK and Glib is it using? Can you try the latest version of Geany (1.30.1) from the PPA.

[codebrainz]

It happens here if you enable regular expression searching, which makes sense since it probably can't match expressions backwards.

[oonet]

Good catch! Previous doesn't work with regular expressions enabled, but does work with regular expressions disabled. As you say, makes sense. Fixed!

[dicktyr]

I'm surprised this has remained broken for so long, and further surprised that the issue was closed (at least twice)! Navigating to the previous regex match remains broken in the latest Geany (1.32) and, unfortunately, this appears to be "by design" (the same bug was reported in 2011)!

In any case, Geany is the only text editor I've used which does not support navigating to the previous regex match.

[elextr]

@dicktyr its not by design, its because the regular expression library does not support searching backwards so it would require finding all matches forwards from the start of the document and picking the one before the current position and nobody has written the code. Pull requests that add the facility are welcome, attempts to shame volunteer contributors are not.

[dicktyr]

nobody has written the code

hence it seems quite reasonable that this issue should remain open until then
and potential writers may appreciate this: https://github.com/google/re2/wiki/WhyRE2

(@elextr by the way, I made no attempt to shame anybody
but rather to bring attention to some simple facts)

[elextr]

@dicktyr the OP closed the issue, not any of the Geany contributors, thats their decision.