Having used optional parameters in a few classes here and there, I'm starting to dislike them immensely for the trouble they cause in certain cases with overload resolution, i.e. difficulties in binding delegates to them due to signature conflicts, as well as dynamic invocation problems with regard to method argument count.
How can I search in all files in my Visual Studio IDE (2010) project and locate all optional parameter usage? Would there be a clever regex I could use perhaps? Or perhaps using an older version of Visual Studio where optional parameters are not supported? I'm trying to avoid the hassle of manually scanning files in the project as it can be tiresome and error-prone. Thanks!
Your best bet may be reflection - it should be easy enough to loop through all members of all types where they are methods and they have at least one optional parameter.
That wouldn't do the substitution for you, but could give you a list of all offending members.
Something like:
foreach (Type tp in currentAssembly.GetTypes())
foreach (MethodInfo func in tp.GetMethods())
if(func.GetParameters().Any(p=>p.IsOptional))
Console.WriteLine(func.ToString());
Whilst this isn't probably the best way I tend to look at the Class View in visual studio. The types that are shown in square brackets are the optional parameters
Related
Is there a way to search for methods / functions in Visual Studio by their signature? For example, if I wanted to find the methods (on one or more classes) that return 'string' and take an 'int' or other parameters.
If it isn't build into VS, is there an extension that anyone may know of? Should I just bite the bullet and write my own?
You can use VisualStudio's search with Regular Expressions:
(String|string) :w(.*(int|Int32).*)
Should find any method that returns a string and has an integer in the signature. Though the caveat is that the signature can only take up one line, and it's by no means bullet-proof to only find methods (anything that matches that pattern will ultimately be returned). But, with a little finesse you could come pretty close.
I'm looking into writing an addin (or package, if necessary) for Visual Studio 2005 that needs watch window type functionality -- evaluation of expressions and examination of the types. The automation facilities provide
Debugger::GetExpression, which is useful enough, but the information
provided is a bit crude.
From looking through the docs, it sounds like an
IDebugExpressionContext2 would be more useful. With one of these it
looks as if I can get more information from an expression -- detailed
information about the type and any members and so on and so forth, without having everything come through as strings.
I can't find any way of actually getting a IDebugExpressionContext2,
though! IDebugProgramProvider2 sort of looks relevant, in that I
could start with IDebugProgramProvider2::GetProviderProcessData and
then slowly drill down until reaching something that can supply my
expression context -- but I'll need to supply a port to this, and it's
not clear how to retrieve the port corresponding to the current debug
session. (Even if I tried every port, it's not obvious how to tell
which port is the right one...)
I'm becoming suspicious that this simply isn't a supported use case, but with any luck I've simply missed something crashingly obvious.
Can anybody help?
By using IDebugExpressionContext you'll ultamitely end up getting ahold of an instance of IDebugProperty. This interface is implemented by the Expression Evaluator service. This is, typically, a language specific service. It's designed to abstract out the language specific details of evaluating an expression. It understands much higher level commands like "Evaluate", and inspection.
I don't think you're going to get what you're looking for though because you can't get ahold of any kind of type object this way. Nearly all of the inspection methods return their results in String form. For example you won't get the type Int32 but instead the string "int". This makes type inspection next to impossible.
I don't believe what you're trying is a supported case. The type system being evaluated doesn't exist in the current process. It exists in the debuggee process and is fairly difficult to get access to.
There's a hack you could do to get more information about the type of a variable you've evaluated using Debugger::GetExpression method.
You could evaluate "AppDomain.CurrentDomain.GetAssemblies()" to get all the assemblies loaded into the debugee, and cache them in your add-in. You may also need to listen for new assemblies being loaded onto the AppDomain.
Then, run the following:
Expression myExpression = Debugger.GetExpression(...);
Expression typeRefExpression = Debugger.GetExpression("typeof(" + myExpression.Type + ").FullName"
once you have the TypeFullName, you can search inside your assemblies cache for a matching System.Type, and once you have that, you can dig into it all you want using the standart Reflection API.
Note that this will only work in C#, because of its "typeof" keyword. You'll have to use a different keyword for VB.Net, for example.
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.
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.
For example, referencing something as System.Data.Datagrid as opposed to just Datagrid. Please provide examples and explanation. Thanks.
The benefit is that you don't need to add an import for everything you use, especially if it's the only thing you use from a particular namespace, it also prevents collisions.
The downside, of course, is that the code balloons out in size and gets harder to read the more you use specific qualifiers.
Personally I tend to use imports for most things unless I know for sure I will only be using something from a particular namespace once or twice, so it won't impact the readability of my code.
You're being very explicit about the type you're referencing, and that is a benefit. Although, in the very same process you're giving up code clarity, which clearly is a downside in my case, as I want code to be readable and understandable. I go for the short version unless I have a conflict in different namespaces which can only be solved with the explicit referencing to classes.. Unless I make an alias for it with the keyword using:
using Datagrid = System.Data.Datagrid;
Actually the full path is global::System.Data.DataGrid. The point of using a more qualified path is to avoid having to use additional using statements, especially if the introduction of another using will cause problems with type resolution. More fully qualified identifiers exist so that you can be explicit when you need to be explicit, but if the class's namespace is clear, then the DataGrid version is clearer to many.
I generally use the shortest form available in order to keep the code as clean and readable as possible. That's what using directives are for, after all, and tooltips in the VS editor give you instant detail on the provenance of a type.
I also tend to use a namespace tag for RCWs in a COM interop layer, to call out those variables explicitly in the code (they may need special attention on lifecycle and collection), eg
using _Interop = Some.Interop.Namespace;
In terms of performance there is no upside/downside. Everything is resolved at compile time and the generated MSIL is identical whether you use fully-qualified names or not.
The reason why its use is prevalent in the .NET world is because of auto-generated code, such as designer markup. In that case it would be better to fully-qualify names like class names because of possible conflicts with other classes you may have in your code.
If you have a tool like ReSharper, it will actually tell you what fully-qualified references you have are unnecessary (e.g. by graying them out) so you can lop them off. If you frequently cut-paste code across your various code bases, it would be a must to fully qualify them. (then again, why would you want to do cut-paste all the time; it's a bad form of code reuse!)
I don't think there is really a downside, just readability vs actual time spent coding. In general if you don't have namespaces with ambiguous object I don't think it's really needed. Another thing to consider is level of use. If you have one method that uses reflection and you are alright with typeing System.Reflection 10 times, then it's not a big deal but if you plan on using a namespace alot then I would recommend an include.
Depending on your situation, extra qualifiers will generate a warning (if this is what you mean by redundant). If you then treat warnings as errors, that's a pretty serious downside.
I've run into this with GCC for example.
struct A {
int A::b; // warning!
}