Synced find query double escaped when shared among windows

[nk9]

Description of the bug

Backslashes are double-escaped when query is shared across windows

Steps to reproduce

1. Open several files in ST in different windows
2. Cmd-F to open the find bar
3. Cmd-Opt-R to make it a regex search
4. Type \d in the query
5. Switch to another window and bring up the find bar (Cmd-F)
6. Notice that the query has been incorrectly escaped as \\d

Expected behavior

The query should be shared among the windows without being corrupted

Actual behavior

The query in other windows has backslashes double-escaped, so its meaning has changed.

Sublime Text build number

4200

Operating system & version

macOS 15.6.1 (24G90)

Sublime-escaped-slashes.mp4

[nk9]

I wanted to underscore how big of an issue this is. It essentially means having to re-enter regexes each time you switch to another window. Consider this typical query:
\.[^\d]
When you switch to another window, it's rendered as:
\\\.\[\^\\d\]
Nearly every character is escaped, and Cmd-G in the new window does nothing. It's faster to just re-enter the query entirely.

Also: this is a regression. I tried 4143, and the pasteboard contents aren't double-escaped.

[nk9]

This was getting in my way, so I went back to find a build which didn't have this issue. It was first released in build 4166 in Nov 2023. So I'm using build 4152 now, LOL!

[BenjaminSchaaf]

Note you can disable this behavior using the "regex_auto_escape" setting.

[nk9]

Thanks for this! Setting this to true does solve the problem for me. 🙏

I've found the original issue raised which caused this setting to be created. However, I don't really understand who would ever want the default behavior. Is there some documentation explaining the reason behind it?

The blurb in the original release notes says "Patterns taken from an open file are now escaped for regex searches." And the sentence above the regex_auto_escape setting in the default Preferences says: "If true, patterns copied from selected text to the find panel will automatically be escaped when doing a regex search." That's pretty clear. And I can understand why: if you select a string which is a regex or contains regex characters (which happens pretty often editing settings files) and search for it (Cmd-E), you'd expect the literal characters to be searched when you press Cmd-G, even if you happen to be in regex search mode. All good.

But I haven't taken the search from selected text in an open file, I've composed the regex pattern from scratch in the find bar. Why is the escaping happening when copying the pattern between windows? These seem like completely different use cases, and I'm struggling to see how this behavior could ever be wanted. If you've just done a search in one window, surely you'd expect switching to another window to execute the same search with Find Again?

[BenjaminSchaaf]

Sorry, to be clear this is clearly a bug that needs fixing, I was just suggesting a workaround you can use in the meantime.