If the global search patterns input had a memory (like a dropdown of all previous stanzas) as well as the input to create new ones, then search results would be flexibly decluttered.
IMO it’s an error to conflate the “Ignored Names” setting (targeted at making a neat Tree View) with the ad hoc need to exclude this or that from search results.
You can limit your search to a given pattern of file name, which doesn’t solve a lot of why you might want memory in your find function, but does provide a more flexible medium for discriminating between files than the ignored names setting. I believe that the reason for the ignored names exclusion is specifically so that you don’t look in node_modules/ unless you explicitly request it.
I think it’s an idea with potential, but for the developers to entertain it, they would probably need a very clear statement of why you believe the feature is needed and what it would output. Alternatively, if someone who felt passionate about improving the find-and-replace experience wanted to fork and improve on the built-in package, that’s something that Atom supports very well.
I thought of doing the work, but I have work to do.
Textpad (of yore, on Windows) had it. Just like a browser address bar has an automatic dropdown w/ memory and smart search, our control at the very bottom could offer some such.
Meanwhile, this bothered me enough to write here, so I fixed my immediate problem by laying down a fat $2.79 at the Mac App Store for a keyboard snippet manager that does the trick. This way I can use the “Search in Directory” function, and further decorate the patterns from snippets like “!" -> "!archives, !, !vendors”.
I’m happy. I hope you are too.
Argh! Didn’t realize markdown was in da house.
“!_” => “!archives, !_, !vendors, !node_modules”