PhpStorm 2017.2 Help

Selecting Text in the Editor

In this section:

Basics

The basic way to select a piece of text is to extend the selection with the mouse cursor. PhpStorm, as a keyboard-centric IDE, suggests to use navigation keys to make selections.

You can opt to select pieces of text, or select rectangular fragments in the column mode, extend and shrink the selection, use multiselection, and sticky selection.

Selecting all text in the active editor tab

To select the entire text in the current editor tab, do one of the following:

  • On the main menu, choose Edit | Select All.
  • Press Ctrl+A.

Selecting with navigation keys

To select text from the current caret position to the beginning/end of the current word:

  • Ctrl+Shift+Left, Ctrl+Shift+Right.

To select text from the caret position to the beginning/end of the current line:

  • Double-click Ctrl and press Home/End

To select text from the current caret position to the top/bottom of the screen:

  • Ctrl+Shift+Page Up, Ctrl+Shift+Page Down.

Selecting a variable or a function name

To select the name of a variable or a function, place the caret inside the required name and double-click it or press Ctrl+W.

In the PHP context, you can select and copy variable names both with and without a $ sign. This behavior is configured through the Select variable name without $ sign on double click check box on the Smart Keys page of the Settings dialog (File | Settings | Editor | General | Smart Keys for Windows and Linux or PhpStorm | Preferences | Editor | General | Smart Keys for macOS).
When this check box is selected, only the variable name that follows the $ sign is selected on double click or pressing Ctrl+W. This is helpful if you often need to copy variable names without $: just double-click and copy the selection.
If you still need a variable name with $ selected, place the cursor before the $ sign and double click it or press Ctrl+W.

Alternative ways to select code

To make selection of a column of text, do one of the following:

  • Keeping the Alt key pressed, drag your mouse pointer to select the desired area.
  • Keeping the middle mouse button pressed, drag your mouse pointer to select the desired area.
  • Press Shift+Alt and the middle mouse button. This is specially helpful, if you want to avoid dragging.

Extending selection

To extend selection from the word at caret to the piece of code the caret is contained in, do one of the following:

  • On the main menu, choose Edit | Extend Selection
  • Press Ctrl+W to select the word where the caret is currently located.
  • Press Ctrl+W successively to extend selection to the next containing node (for example, an expression, a paired tag, an entire conditional block, a method body, a class, a group of vararg arguments, etc.)

    While extending selection, keep in mind that:

    • Pressing Ctrl+W successively in plain text or comments extends the selection first to the current sentence, then to the current paragraph.

Shrinking selection

To shrink selection in the reverse order (from the outermost container to the word where the caret currently resides), do one of the following:

  • On the main menu, choose Edit | Shrink Selection
  • Press Ctrl+Shift+W.

Multiselection

PhpStorm supports selecting multiple text fragments. So doing, one can select multiple words, lines or rectangles.

To select multiple words, follow these steps

  1. Do one of the following:
    • Press Alt and double-click the left mouse button.
      multiselection1
    • Press Alt+J, or select some text fragment. Then press Alt+J again, to find the matching piece of text.
  2. After selection is complete, you can start editing all the fragments as if they were one.

To select multiple fragments of text, follow these steps

  1. Press Alt
  2. Drag the mouse pointer
multiselection2

To select multiple rectangular fragments of text, follow these steps

  1. Press Alt (Windows or UNIX)/ (macOS)
  2. Drag the mouse pointer
multiselection3

Refer to the section Multicursor for additional information.

Toggling between line and column selection modes

To toggle between the line and the column selection modes, do one of the following:

  • On the main menu, choose Edit | Column Selection Mode.
  • On the context menu of the editor, choose Column Selection Mode.
  • Press Shift+Alt+Insert.

Sticky selection

To toggle sticky selection, press Ctrl+Shift+A, in the pop-up frame type sticky, and choose Toggle Sticky Selection from the suggestion list:

sticky selection

Tips and tricks

  • When sticky selection is on, you can turn it off by invoking copy or cut, or by toggling it again.
  • To create a large rectangular selection, create a normal selection first, with the given starting and ending points, and then press Shift+Alt+Insert to toggle to the column selection mode.
Last modified: 28 November 2017

See Also