Is there a way to tell VS2010 to automatically ident lines just inside methods? Since I usually have only one namespace/class per file, I feel all this indentation a waste of space.
If that was possible, my method commands below would start after 4 chars, not after 12. this way I would get +8 visible chars in my screen (I try break my lines after 100 chars)
I haven't tried this, but it might help http://therightstuff.de/CommentView,guid,ef519229-154d-4ab9-85a3-dc5c18079bd6.aspx
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I am developing a combined Embedded + Desktop application. Memory constraints on the embedded platform make it important to know the size and count of items that will be sent and received. When I make size or element count changes on one system I need to coordinate those changes with the other system.
To get this information, I currently select and copy the elements of interest within visual studio and paste them into an external text editor that can give me the character count and the line count.
I would like to find a way to see that same information (count of selected lines and count of selected characters) within Visual Studio (2017).
The only way I've found so far is to perform find and replace within a selection, which does report the count of replacements. If I use regular expressions for the match I can get a count of whatever matched, so with two passes I can get the count of characters and lines replaced -- but then I have to Ctrl-Z to undo the damage, and this just seems like a bad idea. There must be a better way.
Is there any way to get the count of found or selected elements other than using Find & Replace and then un-doing the damage?
Virtually every other editor I've seen permits doing a "find" within a selection and tells you the count of matches, but I've not found any way to make Visual Studio show the count of matches, even though all the found elements are color-marked. I have to do "replace all" to get the count.
I see that there have been periodic feature requests for this same functionality going back quite a few years, but up to now they have been closed for lack of votes. I found macros for VS2010 that can do this, but I don't find any evidence that macros exist in VS2017. I have not found any marketplace extension that gives the count of selected lines and selected characters.
Note that I'm not looking to count lines of code in a file, or a project, or a solution. I'm only seeking to count the characters and lines "on the fly" in a selection within the Visual Studio IDE. I searched, but did not find any questions that appear to be duplicates of this question.
Edit:
Sadly, nearly 4 years later it seems there still is no native way to do this in any version of Visual Studio up to and including VS 2022. VS Code does show the count of selected characters, but that doesn't help since I need the full IDE of Visual Studio. Sigh.
VSCode displays the number of characters currently selected in the status bar, e.g. (143 selected)
You can use the following command (C# language) with my Visual Commander extension to count selected characters and lines:
public class C : VisualCommanderExt.ICommand
{
public void Run(EnvDTE80.DTE2 DTE, Microsoft.VisualStudio.Shell.Package package)
{
EnvDTE.TextSelection ts = DTE.ActiveDocument.Selection as EnvDTE.TextSelection;
System.Windows.MessageBox.Show("Lines=" + (1 + ts.BottomLine - ts.TopLine) + " Characters=" + ts.Text.Length);
}
}
(BTW, Visual Commander can also run a VS 2010 macro.)
While programming I often realize that I need to add something before already typed code. For example I type the name of the variable:
input[0]
and then I realize that my array is of type string and I need to convert it. So, I move to the beginning of the word (with Ctrl-Left Arrow) and start typing
Convert.To|input[0]
with pipe used to show the position of my cursor. I get some suggestions from Intellisense, including the ToInt32() method I am looking for. But as long as I confirm this suggestion with Tab or Space, I get the following:
Convert.ToInt32(|)[0]
So, the text from the cursor position to the end of the word is substituted with suggestion, and this is definitely not what I want.
This problem is not specific for VS 2012 and might be due to some extensions I have installed, but my attempt to pursue its origin did not yield anything. I have following extensions installed: ReSharper, PowerCommands, Productivity Power Tools.
If you are entering an unrelated expression before an identifier, add a space before you start typing the new expression. This will prevent the completion from replacing the existing identifier.
For example, if | marks the caret, the following scenario would avoid the problem you are facing.
Convert.To| input
This code completion feature is designed to prevent the insertion of incorrect identifiers. If Visual Studio behaved like some other IDEs I know of, using the code completion feature in your original example would result in the insertion of ToInt32input, which would never be valid.
If you are interested in additional thoughts regarding this feature in general, I have described this as the Extend (default for Visual Studio) and No-extend (default for NetBeans, Eclipse, and others) modes in my blog article Code Completion filtering, selection, and replacement algorithms.
A two years later answer. But it might still be useful for some.
What helped for me in VS2015 (which might also work in VS2012) is to add the a space character to the list of 'Member List Commit Characters' in the Intellisense settings.
After this the characters after the cursor are not removed by an auto-completion.
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I heard it takes 30 days minimum to get comfortable with vi. I'm on day 2 hehe. Right now, I seem to be merely memorizing different shortcuts for things I already did in Visual Studio (incremental search, prev/next word, etc.).
So far the most powerful aspect seems to be the numeric keys combined with commands (5 * next line), and the idea of normal/insert modes.
There are a few things I miss from Visual Studio. Ctrl-Click'ing the mouse for quick copy and pasting is probably the biggest.
So that I don't get discouraged, can you guys walk me through some things in vi that you do regularly that can't be done in Visual Studio? It'll help me focus on what to learn and help me develop better habits.
I'll just leave a link to this SO answer here.
VI means never ever having to take you fingers off the keyboard.
Note that I don't use Visual Studio, and know little about the available features in it. The following are examples of what I find useful in Vim, not a list of missing features in Visual Studio.
Macros
It's easy to create macros for complex (but repetitive) operations. To illustrate with a simple example, let's say we start with:
Line1
Line2
Line3
Line4
Line5
Now we want to envelop each line in a print(""); statement.
Place the cursor on the first line, and enter:
qx to start recording a macro to the register x
Shift+I print(" Esc to insert text at the beginning of the line
Shift+A "); Esc to append text at the end of the line
j to go down one line
q to stop recording the macro
4#x to execute the macro in register x 4 times
See :help complex-repeat for more info on Vim macros.
Text objects
Note that this is one of the improvements Vim has over the traditional Vi. If it doesn't work, you're probably running in Vi compatibility mode; use :set nocompatible to enable the full functionality of Vim.
Text objects allow you to easily select regions of text. Let's say we start with the following text, and place the cursor on some text:
<b><i>some text</i></b>
Now we want to delete everything between <i> and </i>. This can be done by simply typing the command dit (d'elete i'nner t'ag)! Or if we want to include the tags themselves in our selection, use dat (d'elete a t'ag). To delete everything inside the <b> tags, use d2it (d'elete two i'nner t'ags).
You can similarly use daw (delete a word), dap (delete a paragraph), di" (delete inside double-quotes), etc; see :help text-objects for the complete list.
Another useful example of text objects:
v2ap"+y
v toggles visual mode. This makes it easier to see what you're selecting, and lets you adjust your selection with a series of multiple motions before you execute a command.
2ap selects this paragraph and the next one
"+ selects the system clipboard as register for the next operation
y yanks the selection to the given register
In other words, that command would copy two paragraphs from your text to the system clipboard (e.g. for pasting them here at StackOverflow).
Global editing
The global command is used to apply an Ex command to all lines matching a given regular expression. Examples:
:global/test/print or :g/test/p would print all lines containing the phrase test
:global/test/delete or :g/test/d would delete said lines
:global/test/substitute/^/#/ or :g/test/s/^/#/ would search for lines containing the phrase test, and comment them out by substituting the regexp anchor ^ (beginning-of-line) with the symbol #.
You can also do some cool stuff by passing the search motions /pattern or ?pattern as ranges:
:?test?move . searches backwards for a line containing test, and moves it to your current position in the file
:/test/copy . searches forwards for a line containing test, and copies it to the current position in the file
Good luck and have fun learning Vim!
Edit a file on a Solaris machine that only allows SSH access.
This article is what got me started on Vim, and I never looked back:
http://www.viemu.com/a-why-vi-vim.html
It has some great examples on Vim's power.
Use screen to keep a session running on a remote machine accessed over ssh
Visual Studio's regular expressions are a little bit Mickey Mouse. Vim has the full POSIX regular expression language at your fingertips.
As far as I can tell (in Visual C# express 2010) ctrl-click just selects whatever word you click on. To do the same in VIM, you can combine the yank command with a movement command.
So you press "y" for yank (copy) then "e" or "w" to copy to the end of the word.
There is many differences.
Block (and column) wise copy, paste, edit
the dot command! (after duck tape the second most powerful tool on the planet, seriously)
I suggest you watch some screencasts at http://vimcasts.org/ to get a feeling of the power of vim.
e.g.:
http://vimcasts.org/episodes/creating-the-vimcasts-logo-as-ascii-art/
http://vimcasts.org/episodes/selecting-columns-with-visual-block-mode/
You could always use the Vim emulator/add-on for Visual Studio and get some of the power of vim mixed with the features of VS. If you're already using Visual Studio, I assume you're using a .NET language, which without VS, would be much more painful to use.
Vim Essentials is a nice set of slides.
Personally, I got used to vi a long time ago, when we didn't have the luxury of a mouse in student's Unix terminals. Since then, I used vi/vim for everything safe for writing emails.
To this day, I probably use only 1/20 of the commands, but never felt the need to write code with another text editor, and reaching for a mouse in an IDE feels very clumsy to me.
Using high level and expressive languages, that do not require an IDE (mainly python, sql, javascript) really helps. I suppose it wouldn't be as easy with Java or C++.
Not having to move and point with the mouse when coding (safe for using the browser) also helps preventing Carpal tunnel syndrome.
BTW, I suppose Vim integrates better with Unix than with Windows... and who said 30 minutes was a little optimistic :)
Edit documents over SSH. Vim's really nice for that.
Edit: looks like a lot of people have already said that :)
teco is your answer. You only need a PDP-10 and an ASR-33 and you're on your way!
I am refactoring a C++ codebase in Visual Studio 2005. I'm about half way through this process now and I've commented out a lot of old code and replaced or moved it. Now I'm searching to see that I have to change next but the search function keeps bringing me the old commented out stuff I no longer care about. I don't really want to delete that old code yet, just in case.
Is there any way I can search all files in the solution and get results ignoring what is commented out? I don't see a way in visual studio itself, is the perhaps a plug-in that would do it?
As the other provided solutions didn't work for me, I finally discovered the following solution:
^~(:b*//).*your_search_term
Short explanation:
^ from beginning of line
~( NOT the following
:b* any number of white spaces, followed by
// the comment start
) end of NOT
.* any character may appear before
your_search_term your search term :-)
Obviouly this will only work for // and ///-style comments.
You must click "Use Regular Expressions " Button (dot and asterisk) on your find window to apply regex search
In newer versions of visual studio .net regex is used which has a slightly different syntax:
^(?![ \t]*//).*your_search_term
My take:
yes you can use regular expressions, those tend to be too slow and thinking about them distracts from focusing on real stuff - your software.
I prefer non-obtrusive semi-inteligent methods:
Poor man's method:
Find references if you happen to use intelisense on
Or even better:
Visual assist and it's colored "Find all References" and "Go To" mapped to handy shortcuts. This speeds up navigation tremendously.
If you comment your old code with // you can use regular expressions while searching for something in your codebase. Something like this for example: ^[^/][^/].*your_function_name.*.
Previous answer gave a false-positive on cases where otherwise matching lines were placed on lines containing other source:
++i; // your_search_term gets found, don't want it found
So replaced the :b* with .* and added the <> so only entire words are found, and then went after some of the older C-style comments where there's a /* on the line:
^~(.*//)~(.*/\*).*<your_search_term>
In my case I was hunting for all instances of new, not amenable to refactor assistance, and boatloads of false-positives. I also haven't figured out how to avoid matches in quoted strings.
Just to add on, as I was doing a "find all" for division operator used in the code, used the below to exclude comments as well as </ and /> from aspx files:
^~(.*//)~(.*/\*)~(.*\<\/)~(.*/\>).*/
In Visual Basic within Visual Studio 2015, I was able to search for text outside of comments by adapting glassiko's comment from the most upvoted answer
^(?![ \t]*[']).*mysearchterm
And in C# you would use glassiko's comment exactly as it was
^(?![ \t]*//).*mysearchterm
Better use \s I think. ^(?![\s]*//).*your_search_term
delete the commented out code, it is in source control right? there is no need to keep it in the file as well.
i have noticed a number of empty method and class summary sections throughout a solution. It's rather large, hundreds of files/classes in a dozen projects. The empty summaries look something like this:
///<summary>
///</summary>
My question is: How do i form a regex expression in the Visual Studio file search to find all of the empty summaries in my solution?
Thanks!
No need to get your hands dirty - just use MS StyleCop. It's free, checks (among many other things) exactly what you need and gives a detailed report about it.
HTH!
^[ \t]*/// \<summary\>\n[ \t]*/// \</summary\>
if you type, watch the spaces. There are 4: before every \t and before every \<
If you want to allow space after the first line, the regexp becomes:
^[ \t]*/// \<summary\>[ \t]*\n[ \t]*/// \</summary\>
but msstylecop may be better, i don't know it yet ;-)