How can I make Visual Studio find only single slashes and not double slashes?

Question

To add more precision to floating point numbers, I have to go through a bunch of C# classes and, wherever there is a division operation, multiply both the numerator and denominator by 1000. So suppose we have a numerator, n and a denominator, d. Then the original would look like this: n / d. And I would need to change it to (n*1000)/(d*1000).

To search for all the division operators I'm using the find function (ctrl+f) in Visual Studio 2013 Ultimate. I'm searching for all '/'. The problem is that the find function also picks up the slashes in the comments. How can have the find function only find the single slash '/' and not the double slash '//'?

Thank you for any suggestions.

As a side comment, you know what `(n * 1000) / (d * 1000) = n / d` ? So you don't change anything. — Sinatr, May 12 '14 at 15:53
Yes, I know, but it adds more precision to the final calculation. — navig8tr, May 12 '14 at 15:54
What about ctrl-f and look for /. Does that find what you are looking for? — Nigel Ellis, May 12 '14 at 15:57
Use a [double](http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/678hzkk9.aspx)? — Tim Lehner, May 12 '14 at 15:57
/ would work for some, but sometimes the programmer did not include a space. — navig8tr, May 12 '14 at 15:59
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5473136/can-c-sharp-store-more-precise-data-than-doubles (I hope I'm being helpful) — Tim Lehner, May 12 '14 at 16:00
BTW, I don't believe this will change the precision in any way. — John Saunders, May 12 '14 at 16:36

score 5 · Accepted Answer · edited Nov 27 '17 at 21:30

Good

Regex find (Ctrl+Shift+F with the Use Regular Expressions option checked) [^/<]/[^/>] in your solution - basically a / that:

is not preceded by another / or a < (i.e. closing XML comment tags like </para>)
is not followed by another / or a > (i.e. standalone XML comment tags like <see cref="Foo"/>)

The only false positives I see with this approach in a quick check against a solution of ~80 projects are...

Dates (e.g. 1/1/2014)
/ in comments (e.g. Note that an up/down change....)

...but others could come up depending on your code base - for example:

URLs (e.g. http://stackoverflow.com/users/1810429/j0e3gan)
XPaths (e.g. /Customer/Address/City/text())

Better

If you consistently put spaces between the division operator and its operands, you could tighten the regex a bit to alleviate these false positives, changing it from...

[^/<]/[^/>]

...to...

[^/<] +/ +[^/>]

...where + will match one or more spaces of course.

mclaassen · Answer 2 · 2014-05-12T17:28:29.260

2

Try this regex expression:

[^/<]/[^/>]

"Not a slash followed by a slash followed by not a slash"

edited May 12 '14 at 17:28

answered May 12 '14 at 16:13

mclaassen

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This is okay...but also matches closing and standalone tags in XML comments. – J0e3gan May 12 '14 at 17:24
1

Updated to exclude and /> – mclaassen May 12 '14 at 17:29

score 2 · Answer 3 · answered May 12 '14 at 16:25

2

You can find single / in VS2013 with the following using :

type Ctrl+f
in the search box, type (?<!/)/(?!/)
under the search box, click on the icon representing .*
select Entire Solution
Launch the search

But, you must know that the result will be not what you really want, because, you will find XAML code, URL, ...

answered May 12 '14 at 16:25

Xaruth

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Yes it will find xaml code, but at least it doesn't pick up the comments. Thanks for the suggestion. – navig8tr May 12 '14 at 17:30

score 1 · Answer 4 · answered May 12 '14 at 16:12

1

A regular expression search for (?<!/)/(?!/) should find only single slashes, by using zero-width negative lookbehind/lookahead assertions. The .* button in the small find dialog turns on regular expression searches. There is a checkbox under "Find options" for the full search dialog (Ctrl+Shift+F).

answered May 12 '14 at 16:12

Mark

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This just dresses up @mclaassen's so-so regex with a negative lookbehind & lookahead - same so-so results and needlessly complicated by a negative lookbehind & lookahead. – J0e3gan May 12 '14 at 17:27
@J0e3gan Well, in my defense, I answered first, and not being psychic I wasn't to know that I wasn't adding anything to the (non-existent) previous answers. While I am happy to be corrected, you may want to work on your delivery. – Mark May 12 '14 at 19:02

How can I make Visual Studio find only single slashes and not double slashes?

4 Answers4

Good

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