Touch selection is a close relative of the rubber band. With the Selector tool, if you drag from an empty canvas with the 
key pressed, instead of a rectangle you will see a red trail left by your mouse cursor—the touch path. After you release the mouse, all objects touched by (not included in) this trail will get selected, as shown in Figure 5-6.
Figure 5-6. Using touch selection (-drag): Objects that will be selected after you release the mouse are marked with darker gray.
So, you can literally “paint” over the objects you want to select, which is very convenient in situations where many objects are located compactly, but their bounding boxes are too big or too intertwined with those of other objects.
Unlike the regular rubber band, touch selection does not select completely transparent objects or those obscured by others—that is, those objects that you cannot really “touch.” In fact, touch selection behaves exactly as if it were a series of 
-clicks along the touch path, where each touched object receives one such click.
Note that if there is a selection, -drag has a different function: It moves the selection regardless of where you drag (6.1 The Selector: Moving). But what if you already have some selection and want to add to it by touch selection? Use 
-drag: Just like forces the rubber band even if you start from an object, with touch selection it forces the touch path even if you have a previous selection. The touched objects are then added to selection.
If you touch objects so that you can then delete them, the Delete mode of the Eraser tool performs both functions at once: Drag over objects and get them deleted once you release the mouse. This may be convenient if you want to use this functionality as a separate tool without having to hold .