I use Visual Assist X, build from 05.01.2009, but the same problem occurred in the previous releases as well. (I run it on MSVS 2005)
When I do some refactoring (like extracting a method), everything's fine, but all the curly braces move forward. For example, before refactoring the code looked like this:
while (expr)
{
doSmth();
}
After refactoring:
while (expr)
{
doSmth();
}
So, I need to move manually all the brackets. Sure, the problem is minor, but it becomes annoying when you do a lot of refactoring. Is it a bug or just default settings? So, does anyone know a workaround?
It looks like Visual Assist takes its cue from the Visual Studio brace placement settings. To tweak this option, visit Tools|Options, then navigate to Text Editor, C/C++, Formatting. Make sure "Indent braces" is unticked.
(A related tip for general formatting issues after fiddling around with text is that you can get Visual Studio to do the reformatting for you. Put the cursor on one of the mispositioned braces, press Ctrl+Shift+] (extend selection to matching brace), then press Ctrl+K, Ctrl+F (reformat selection).)
BTW for genuine Visual Assist bugs the forum is a good place to go:
http://www.wholetomato.com/forum/
They seem to be only a small company, but they're generally pretty good at keeping track of open issues.
Related
I desperately need a way to bind cursor navigation to something like Alt-wasd in Visual studio. Is there a way to do this? I have looked around a lot and this specific kind of thing I can't find, which is surprising, because it is one of the most significant ways to speed up coding when VS autocompletes braces that you constantly need to move right to get out of.
You can assign custom shortcuts to the following commands: Edit.CharLeft, Edit.CharRight, Edit.LineUp and Edit.LineDown.
I am wondering, if it is possible, to have some kind of automatic code-clean-up in Visual Studio 2010.
Especially interesting would be:
Auto-Indent
Remove tailing empty lines
Remove unused usings
at special cases, e. g. on save of the file.
I haven't found anything in the options, but maybe I was just kinda blinded... ...afaik in eclipse it was at least possible to intend on save. There should be something like that in Visual Studio?
UPDATE: Thanks for the fast replies, the thing is that I am ware of the keyboard-shortcuts (but nevertheless thanks for mentioning), but I am working through tons of foreign code by now and it would be awesom not having to do it manually for every file :)
Auto-indent can be done with Edit/Advanced/Format Document, or equivalent keyboard shortcut (Ctrl-K, Ctrl-D for me, YMMV).
Tailing empty lines I'm not aware of an automatic solution for, though there may be an extension available (or you could write your own).
Removing unused usings is a built in VS refactoring, and also available in tools like Resharper or DevExpress. (Right click code, then Organize Usings/Remove and sort.)
I'm not aware of a standard way to have these happen automatically for every document save, but you could probably write a macro or VS extension that would make this happen.
Some of the above already exist directly in Visual Studio:
Ctrl - K - D will reformat the document (Edit -> Advanced -> Format Document).
There is a refactoring that deals with using statements (right click in the code, there is an option for "Organise Using").
As for empty lines, I don't know of anything built in.
But tools like Resharper do have code cleanup capabilities that deal with all of the above and more (Resharper menu -> Tools -> Cleanup Code).
None of the above will execute on save by default, but you should be able to write a macro that runs on the save event.
You could try CodeMaid. Its an open source solution for what you are describing.
To Auto-indent you can ue ctrl+k+d pretty much like ctrl+shift+f in eclipse. But for unused usings I dont know any.
Update: Since I see this is one of my most looked at questions, now a few years later I should point out what I found to be the most common cause of this problem: bad syntax elsewhere in your code. 100% of the time I've had this happen, it was because I'd forgotten a curly brace for another block of code, or I had a dangling if, or an earlier line of code I didn't finish. Check for IDE errors first for something like ") or } expected"
Original Question:
I feel like this is an all time dumb question to ask, but I have no idea how to fix this and google is turning up nothing.
In visual studio, when I type:
try {
}
VS would automatically reformat it to
try
{
}
But now it's just leaving it at the first one. I assume I accidentally hit a hotkey or something. Help me fix this please?
Tools->Options
Click Text Editor -> Whatever language -> Formatting
Tools->Options->Text Editor->C# (or whatever language)->Formatting->New Lines
Select the options you want.
If you have Power Commands installed you can then go to the Tools->Options->Power Commands and make sure "Format Document on Save" is selected.
Whenever you save the edited file the Curly Braces will be auto aligned.
In addition to the default Visual Studio settings mentioned, for ReSharper users, this is configured via:
ReSharper [menu] -> Options
In the Options dialog, navigate to Environment -> Editor -> Editor Behavior -> "Auto-format on closing brace". See image:
9 times out of 10 this problem is caused by bad code elsewhere on my document. Either I'm missing a ; on a line, or perhaps a closing }. Visual Studio is unable to figure out what I'm trying to write in code and thus it's unable to format. Check for compiler errors, fix them, and then press Ctrl+K then Ctrl + D to make Visual Studio reformat the current document (your hotkeys may vary, depending on the version of Visual Studio and your settings).
ViM has this option hlsearch where a searched string is displayed in highlight mode at all places in the file it is found. Is there a way to do the same in Visual Studio?
That is, if I search for "foobar", then all the foobar in the file are shown highlighted and this display remains until my next search. I find this very useful to see the places in a function where a certain variable is used (without having to manually search for the next appearance of that string).
I am aware of the Visual Studio Task List which can be used to look up strings like TODO. I hope the reader realizes that this is not a good fit for my problem which is more general text search and highlight.
If you like vim and are using Visual Studio you may want to check out Viemu.
The hlsearch Feature is of course included.
Example Picture:
Viemu hlsearch http://dklein.taunus.de/viemuhlsearch.png
With best regards.
Visual Assist X does this, along with something akin to light-symbol-mode. Among other things, of course.
Visual Studio 2010 now supports Reference Highlighting. Click on or move the cursor to any symbol such as names of variables, classes, methods, properties, etc. and it will highlight all other references in the file. It also allows you to navigate between the references using:
ctrl+shift+down arrow or ctrl+shift+up arrow
I use the RockScroll add-in. It has multiple features, one of them is that if you double click on a word it will be highlighted everywhere in the file. This is very similar to what you describe. It is free (as in beer).
If you happen to really like Vim, you might want to look into ViEmu for Visual Studio . I'm just a really happy user of it :)
I coded a Mancala game in Java for a college class this past spring, and I used the Eclipse IDE to write it. One of the great (and fairly simple) visual aids in Eclipse is if you select a particular token, say a declared variable, then the IDE will automatically highlight all other references to that token on your screen. Notepad++, my preferred Notepad replacement, also does this.
Another neat and similar feature in Eclipse was the vertical "error bar" to the right of your code (not sure what to call it). It display little red boxes for all of the syntax errors in your document, yellow boxes for warnings like "variable declared but not used", and if you select a word, boxes appear in the bar for each occurrence of the word in the document.
A screenshot of these features in action:
After a half hour of searching, I've determined that Visual Studio cannot do this on its own, so my question is: does anyone know of any add-ins for 2005 or 2008 that can provide either one of the aforementioned features?
Being able to highlight the current line your cursor is on would be nice too. I believe the add-in ReSharper can do this, but I'd prefer to use a free add-in rather than purchase one.
There is a RockScroll alternative called MetalScroll which is essentially the same thing with a few tweaks and improvements.
Also there is a small and simple WordLight plug-in that only highlights the identical tokens.
Both are open source and support code folding which is nice.
Imho, the bar next to the scroll bar in Eclipse is a lot more elegant solution than the scroll bar replacement of RockScroll/MetalScroll. Unfortunately I couldn't find any VS plug-ins that do it the Eclipse way, so I just stick with WordLight.
Check following addins
Productivity Power Tools- Displays error in scrollbar and
Highlight selected word
In a different question on SO (link), someone mentioned the VS 2005 / VS 2008 add-in "RockScroll". It seems to provide the "error bar" feature I was inquiring about in my question above.
RockScroll
EDIT: RockScroll also does the identical token highlighting that I was looking for! Great!
Old question but... Visual Studio 2010 has this feature built-in, at last.
The highlight functionality is conveniently implemented in VisualAssist.
In my opinion, they are both must-have.
1) Highlight identifier under editing caret:
Options -> Advanced -> Refactoring -> Automatically highlight references to symbol under cursor
2) Highlight search result - in all windows. Works for RegExps!
Options -> Advanced -> Display -> Highlight find results
About RockScroll: It doesn't highlight the identifiers. It only highlights the same string in the source code! If there are similar identifier declared : ex. _test and test, and test is highlighted it will highlight the string "test" in variable _test too! And it will also highlight the same string in a method called "sometesting()". So it isn't exactly like eclipse and doesn't work for me.
The automatic highlight is implemented in Visual Assist as the refactoring command "Find References". It highlights all occurences of a given variable or method, but that's not automatic (binded to a keyboard shortcut on my computer).
Here is an exmaple:
DevExpress CodeRush does this when you press TAB when the cursor is in an identifier, you can then tab through all the highlighted instances. There's also a DXCore plugin (the foundation upon which CodeRush/Refactor Pro are built) that does current-line highlighting.
In VS 2017, this can be solved by installing the Match Margin plugin.
It appears to be part of the Productivity Power Tools (which might be worth looking at for other features), but surprisingly, installing PPT didn't solve the problem for me, I had to install Match Margin separately.
The "error bar" functionality is provided in JetBrains ReSharper. I'm not sure if it does highlighting of references to the currently selected identifier.
For selected word(s) highlight function only, there is also StickyHighlight.
StickyHighlight supports Visual Studio 2010 & 2012.