Microsoft 9GD00001 manual Saving Time with Snippets, Using snippets

Chapter 2: Learning Just Enough C# or VB.NET: Basic Syntax 47

The Options window in Figure 2-6 is opened to Text Editor, C#, Formatting New Lines. As you can see, there are very detailed settings for even how the editor automatically formats new lines and where braces appear. If the code doesn’t format the way you want it to, visit this page to set the options to what you please.

Saving Time with Snippets

Snippets are important to learn because they will save you time. A snippet is a set of keystrokes that form a template for a piece of code. The code for a snippet is typically something that is common in normal programming. You’ll see many common statements and blocks of code in this chapter, many of which have associated snippets. This section shows you the mechanics of using snippets, and you’ll see more examples throughout the rest of this chapter.

To use a snippet, begin typing the snippet prefix until the snippet acronym appears in the Intellisense completion list, press the TAB key twice, and fill in the snippet form while tabbing through each field. Press ENTER when you’re done.

Since you’ve already learned about namespaces, I’ll show you the namespace snippet. To start, open any code file and click to start typing in a part of the file outside of all code blocks, such as directly below any using statements but above any existing namespace statements. Type the letter n and watch the completion list go straight to the namespace element. Type an a and you’ll see the namespace alone in the completion list, as shown in Figure 2-7.

NOTE

The CTRL-ALT-SPACEkeystroke in Figure 2-7 switches between the Intellisense modes Consume First and Standard mode. In Standard mode, which shows CTRL-ALT-SPACE, typing characters automatically selects keywords. However, there are situations where you are trying to type a word that doesn’t exist yet and Intellisense is too aggressive by adding the selected completion list item, instead of what you typed. In those cases, you can press the CTRL-ALT-SPACEkeys to go to Consume First mode and what you’ve typed will be selected. You can still use the DOWN ARROW key on your keyboard in Consume First mode to select the highlighted term in the completion list.

Figure 2-7 Using snippets