13. February 2017

Vertical text block selection in PlatformIO/Atom on Linux

Sometimes it is necessary to modify multiple lines at once. PlatformIO has support for multiple cursors which allows you to perform operation on multiple places.

You can place separate cursors by holding Ctrl and left click by mouse. That is handy, but when you need 4 or more lines it’s a little bit cumbersome.

When you need to select vertical text block of text in PlatformIO on Linux just hold Shift+Alt and use arrows Up/Down to select text block. Make sure that you press and hold keys in defined order. 1st is Shift and 2nd is Alt. If you change the order then the selection won’t work.

Here is how it looks like.

Shift+Alt+Up/Down:

Now you can use Shift+Left/Right to select block of text:

If you’d like to discuss this feature, there is a very very long discussion thread about it at Atom’s web page.