Microsoft 9GD00001 manual Filling in the Snippet template

48Microsoft Visual Studio 2010: A Beginner’s Guide

Figure 2-8 Filling in the Snippet template

You can identify snippets in the completion list by the torn paper icon. At this point, you can press the TAB key to complete the namespace keyword. Then press TAB again to produce a template where you can fill out the highlighted fields. Figure 2-8 shows the results of creating a namespace snippet by typing n and pressing TAB, TAB.

As shown in Figure 2-8, you would type in the Namespace name in the highlighted form field to replace MyNamespace, which is placeholder text. For templates with more fields, you would press the TAB key to move between fields. In the case of the namespace shown in Figure 2-8, there is only one field in the template to complete.

VB offers a couple of ways to add snippets: by typing prefixes or via a pick list. To see how VB snippets work, place your carat inside of the Module1 module, underneath End Main (not inside of the Main block). Type Su and press TAB, and notice that VS creates a Sub (method) along with a template containing a field for filling out the Sub snippet.

Another way to add VB snippets is to type a ? and press TAB. You’ll receive a pick list, as shown in Figure 2-9. You can navigate this pick list to find the snippet you need, as classified in one of the folders. VB ships with many more built-in snippets than for C#.

Now that you know how to use snippets, let’s move on to the different types of statements you can have in C# and VB and how snippets work with those statements.

Figure 2-9 VB snippet pick list