editor.wordSeparators no longer allows double click to capture variable with "$"

[Ben-Conrad]

VSCode 1.58.2 on Windows.

We've been using this setting for many years to allow a double click (in PowerShell) to capture variable names (like $MyVariable). This is used extensively to copy/paste the variables inside VSCode.

By default VSCode only selects MyVariable when double click, so we use this editor.wordSeparators setting to remove '$'

"editor.wordSeparators": "`~!@#%^&*()=+[{]}\\|;:'\",.<>/?",

There has been a recent change in VSCode that prevents this from working. Double clicking on $MyVariable and ctrl-c only selects MyVariable.

I also notice that the "$" is highlighted with a different color than the rest of the variable name. See screenshots.

Ben

[Ben-Conrad]

WordSeparator not working:

PowerShell

Settings.json

[Ben-Conrad]

This guy's got the answer, it seems the behavior got toggled inside vscode recently- https://stackoverflow.com/questions/68128258/vscode-does-not-honor-editor-wordseparators-when-writing-powershell-code

{
"[powershell]" : {
"editor.wordSeparators": "`~!@#%^&*()=+[{]}\|;:'",.<>/?"
},
"files.defaultLanguage": "powershell",
"editor.showFoldingControls": "always",
"editor.acceptSuggestionOnEnter": "off",
"workbench.editor.enablePreview": false,
"workbench.editor.enablePreviewFromQuickOpen": false,
"editor.codeLens": false,
"files.hotExit": "onExitAndWindowClose",
"git.autofetch": true,
"git.confirmSync": false,
"git.suggestSmartCommit": false,
"git.alwaysShowStagedChangesResourceGroup": true,
"git.openDiffOnClick": true,
"git.postCommitCommand": "sync",
"git.promptToSaveFilesBeforeCommit": "always",
"git.confirmEmptyCommits": true,
"git.autoStash": true,
}

[Ben-Conrad]

I consider this a workaround but the maintainers may consider a bug so I'll leave open for a bit to see what you think.

[alexdima]

VS Code core does not ship a language-specific setting for editor.wordSeparators for PowerShell. This can be verified by using F1 > Preferences: Open Settings (JSON) in a vanilla VS Code installation and searching for editor.wordSeparators.

I think you are running into two problems:

1. You are using an extension which defines a language specific setting for PowerShell. Please reach out to the extension that is responsible. You can identify it using Extension Bisect (F1 > Help: Start Extension Bisect).
2. It is not made clear to you that the non-language-specific user setting you define for editor.wordSeparators is overwritten for PowerShell by the default language-specific setting the extension defines. I agree with this feedback cc @sandy081

[Ben-Conrad]

Thanks everyone, this appears to be an intended change in vscode-powershell, noted here: https://github.com/PowerShell/vscode-powershell/blob/c983f75be23b78daeb69e31a0987a655a14207b9/CHANGELOG.md#v202151

Closing issue.

[sandy081]

Filed #131707 to improve the user affordance