Is there any built-in way to swap two arbitrary text blocks in Visual Studio? (I happen to be using VS2015).
Example: you have a method such as FooBar(target, source) and you decide it would make more sense to be FooBar(source, target). If you've called FooBar in a lot of places you might need to run multiple operations to swap the various pairs of variable names.
Having this done also within comments could also be useful.
While obviously you could do this with multiple search & replaces, or multiple Edit->Refactor->Renames (^R^R), those approaches are somewhat prone to error, and are more tedious.
If this doesn't actually exist within Visual Studio but another tool like Notepad++ (for instance) has this capability, that is almost as good.
These questions are similar but for more specific scenarios:
Does anyone know a visual studio keyboard short cut to swap around two sides of a statement?
Invert assignment direction in Visual Studio
Visual Studio has the built in functionality to reorder parameters. You can select this by using Edit > Refactor > Reorder Parameters.... Changing parameters in this form will update all the method calls in addition to the method. You can also request to preview all the changes which will be made.
More information here.
Related
I was just wondering if there was a tool like this that existed, or something within Visual Studio 2010 that I just haven't come across before. I have a situation that arises that I'm sure many other people have ran into before. I debug into a method one time, and it works, another time, and it fails. I know (on the front end), what needs to happen for it to fail, and what needs to happen for it to pass, however I can't seem to find anything on the back-end that would show me the differences in all the properties that get passed through that method for each use case.
Is there a tool that can kind of analyze the objects in the code that I am passing through this method through each run, and then show me a diff of properties? Which ones are set/aren't set, which ones are different, etc.?
I normally wouldn't mind just blowing up the watches on each monitor and cruising through them, but we have a LOT of properties on these specific objects.
Thanks guys.
Would something like Mole 2010 work? I know you can basically do a diff on objects to compare their properties, but I'm not sure if this would work in your situation with method parameters.
Maybe Pex will help you? It analyzes your code and created input values based on identified code paths and boundary cases.
Basically, our solution is composed of about 30 sub-projects.. and growing. Compiling this monster is fast and compiler warnings/errors/general output just scrolls by in a mishmash of ... well, poo. On unix it's easy to write a filter to "pretty-ify" the compiler output into something readable and, ultimately, useful.
Has anyone done this for VS2010? Something color coded as a minimum and one that would consolidate all the different projects would be ideal. Essentially, I'd love to have my compiler output displayed in a tree form with options to have all the children be closed unless there is a warning or error.
I also don't mind creating something for this or even having a macro that runs after the compiling is done that creates a more organized output of the whole mess.
Thanks in advance,
Scott
try vscommands 2010. It can colour the build/debug outputs and you can define your own formatting (warnings, errors, exceptions, code contracts ect.)
Is it possible to search or filter intellisense in visual studio?
Basically i know there is an enum in the project that contains 'column', but the enum doesnt begin with 'c'.
There has been lots of times where id rather not scroll through the hundreds (if not thousands) of valid objects it gives me.
I wonder if the real answer here is (and I won't be surprised to be voted down for this) that your enum isn't properly named. If it was then I'd expect the name to be obvious in the use context, may be consider renaming the enum?
You can search in Class View. Type "column" and hit enter.
Visual Studio 2010 changes all of this, giving you multiple very easy ways to do this type of search quickly.
If you're using ReSharper, you can use "Go To Symbol..." and type "column", and it will give you all symbols (types, properties, fields, methods, etc) that match.
Otherwise your best bet is to use the Object Browser and search.
I really don't know about doing that in intellisense itself, but assuming the objective is to actually find a member whose name you don't remember, you can write a small utility for that purpose using the underlying mechanism intellisense uses, reflection.
Open the Object Browser under View menu. From there, you can search within all the language constructs available to you.
Is it possible to get Visual Studio to do mathematical expression evaluation/reduction?
For example if I type '-0.005 + -0.345' how do I get Visual Studio to reduce that (i.e. replace it with the reduction)? Do I have to write a macro? If so, are there any pre-existing macros to do this type of expression reduction?
Just to be clear, I want to be able to highlight an expression and have it replaced with the reduced result. Many are suggesting the immediate window but I fail to see how that will suffice?
Edit I should point out that this is while editing not running or debugging. The immediate window is of little to no use. I also consider this a language neutral question. I would certainly be interested in seeing alternative macros to the one I had posted.
Edit Going Once... Going Twice... (i.e. any other suggestions before I consider accepting my own answer?)
Thank you for the above answers.
There probably are better ways, but here's a quick and dirty macro that does what I need.
References to the System.Data and System.XML namespaces need to be added.
Highlight the expression you want to evaluate and run the macro (it uses the calculated column in the DataTable to evaluate the expression.) It will replace the expression with the reduced result.
Edit - Updated code below. It worked extremely well for reducing a large number of expressions. As pointed out by others there is the immediate window but this will not work for editing purposes. This macro is a language independent solution for basic expressions "(), +, -, *, /".
Sub Eval()
Dim ts As EnvDTE.TextSelection = DTE.ActiveDocument.Selection
Using dt As New DataTable()
dt.Columns.Add("Expression", GetType(Double), ts.Text)
dt.Rows.Add(dt.NewRow)
ts.Text = CDbl(dt.Rows(0).Item("Expression"))
End Using
End Sub
Visual Studio by default will not do any mathematical expression evaluation / reduction. I'm not sure if you can get support for that via items like ReSharper, but if it is available it will be in an add-in.
Also, it would be helpful to know the language you are working in?
Some languages may be helpful in this area. F# for instance makes it easy to evaluate expressions in the IDE via the interactive window and will display out the result. This could easily be added back into your code but it doesn't appear to be exactly what you're looking for.
Here's an answer: Yes, it is possible using the following steps. (While technically performing what you're asking for, I'm not sure it will be extremely useful. :-)
Set a breakpoint in your program that's likely to get hit when you debug the program.
Then, run your program under the Visual Studio debugger.
When the breakpoint is hit, open the Watch window.
In the Watch window, add a new watch by clicking in the Name column.
Enter your expression '-0.005 + -0.345' (without the quotes) then hit [Enter].
... You should see the Value column get populated with -0.35.
Of course, that isn't in the context of the editor window ... which is, presumably, where you'd want to perform the reduction. So again, not very useful, I imagine. An add-in is the likely way to do that in the editor window.
You could just go to the immediate window and type "?<yourExpression>"
I have a VS project with an IntermediateDirectory like this: "....\temp\$(SolutionName)\$(ProjectName)".
I can read this value using a macro or add in, however, I would need the actual directory to manipulate files there. Right now, I manually replace the "$(SolutionName)" and "$(ProjectName)" with the respective values, which works fine but might become complicated when different macros or even user macros from property sheets are used.
So my question is:
Does the Visual Studio API have a built in function to expand macros like these? Or is there some other elegant solution?
There is an elegant solution! But I only know the one that applies to C++ projects.
Assuming you're in a C# add-in:
// Get the main project from the first startup project
VCProject vcMainProject = (VCProject)(_applicationObject.Solution.SolutionBuild.StartupProjects as IVCCollection).Item(1);
Project mainProj = (Project)_vcMainProject .Object;
// Get the configuration we'll be using
IVCCollection cfgs = (IVCCollection)_vcMainProject .Configurations;
VCConfiguration vcCfg = (VCConfiguration) cfgs.Item(mainProj.ConfigurationManager.ActiveConfiguration.ConfigurationName + "|" + mainProj.ConfigurationManager.ActiveConfiguration.PlatformName);
string finalString = vcCfg.Evaluate("....\temp\$(SolutionName)\$(ProjectName)");
You can also check out this page:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/czt44k0x%28VS.71%29.aspx
If you're not using this for C++, there should be a similar interface for the Project, Configuration, and Solution classes provided for other languages (C# and VB).
As far as i know, there is no API available that will expand those macro values. Although it shouldn't be too hard to write a quick and dirty implementation that deals with only the values that you care about.
For instance, in this case you only care about 2 values (SolutionName and ProjectName). If these are the values you are primarily interested in use a simple search and replace with the best values.
Yes this is a sub-optimal solution. But it may help to unblock your progress.