Visual Studio 2010 indents the following C++ code as:
if (Foo(arg1,
arg2))
{
}
Is there a way to change Visual Studio formatting rules to indent the code as below:
if (Foo(arg1,
arg2))
{
}
No, there's no way "out of the box" to force Visual Studio to indent code that way. It's always going to indent wrapped function parameters with only a single tab.
It turns out that such a style is in accordance with Microsoft's general coding guidelines, and probably why they've written it that way. I don't much care for it either, though, also preferring your style.
But it turns out that you only have to manually indent the first wrapped parameter. Subsequently, when you press Enter, Visual Studio will automatically start the next line underneath your first carefully lined up parameter.
Also remember that (if you've already written the method definitions), you can select multiple lines at a time and use the Tab key to line them all up. You don't have to do one at a time.
In general, there are unfortunately extremely limited code formatting options available for C/C++ code in Visual Studio. The C# programmers get a lot more goodies. You might be able to invest in an add-in or extension like Visual Assist X that gets you more features in the IDE.
I think this is a duplicate of Automatic indentation of arguments list on multiple lines in Visual Studio. In which I provided an answer for Visual Studio 2017.
Under menu Tools → Options → Text editor → C/C++ → Formatting → Indentation → "Within parentheses, align new lines when I type them".
Choose the option "Align contents to opening parentheses.
Try using a tool called Artistic Style (short for astyle). It can customize almost all your required code format. Regards to your indentation format, check its document on max‑instatement‑indent.
Furthermore, this tool can be easily integrated into Visual Studio .NET (check this for a quick setup).
Related
I have searched and read lots of threads, and it seems there are a lot of people who are having similar issues, but not this specific one.
Like most people, I am very picky about how my code looks.
For some reason, VS2017 has its own opinions.
When I type the following:
if (something == somethingelse)
{
the very instant I press the key for the curly brace,
Visual Studio reformats everything to:
if(something==somethingelse){
I can tell you that every formatting checkbox under TextEditor->JavaScript is unchecked. As a matter of fact, I have unchecked basically everything in all the languages.
I don't want ANY "help" from Microsoft.
I would really like ALL auto-formatting to go away.
Javascript formatting can be disabled in Tools → Options → Text Editor → JScript → Formatting.
VS2013 has added auto-formatting for C++. My personal opinion on auto-formatting is that it's ultimately harmful for developers but I have to accept not everyone agrees. What bugs me is that I can't seem to disable auto-formatting completely. I have unchecked every checkbox under Tools->Text Editor->C/C++->Formatting->General yet when I type:
void f ()
VS2013 replaces this with
void f()
That's not the code-standard in this specific project which means I have to go back and insert a space. There are other examples where I have to fight against VS.
I don't want to change the spacing settings because
I work in multiple projects with different code standards
I don't believe in auto-formatting so I just want it to get out of my way
I just want VS to not modify my code automatically.
PS. I am not against that VS can format code but I want to invoke that manually
You can turn off automatic C / C++ /C# code formatting by going to the Options dialog from the Tools menu, selecting the Text Editor → C / C++ / C# → Formatting → General page, and unchecking all the boxes there. You'll still be able to manually format when all of the auto-formatting settings are turned off.
I know this isn't exactly the answer you're looking for, but you can preserver that void f () formatting if you go to Tools > Options > Text Editor > C/C++ > Formatting > Spacing and under Spacing for function parantheses you check the option Insert space between function names and opening parentheses of argument list.
I also had this problem and unchecking all the checkboxes in the formatting options did not help.
It turned out that this was caused by an option in the plugin “Visual Assist X” from Whole Tomato Software.
In my case this problem could be solved by going to “Visual Assist Options”-->”Corrections” and unchecking the Checkbox “Format after paste”.
It's a bug in VS 2013 beta that it cannot be turned off completely, see issue submitted by FuleSnabel: http://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/details/797716/turning-off-auto-formatting-for-vs2013-c-only-seems-to-partial-disable-auto-formatting.
Some possible workarounds:
If you just peek into some projects which have different/weird style: if an unwanted auto-formatting happens, then you can perform one undo step, this should undo only the auto formatting part of the operation and not your contribution. Fortunately these two (or sometimes more auto formatting steps) are not grouped together into one command probably for this exact reason: you can go back and override it. It is annoying though if that happens all the time. You can configure the behavior to match your style, but you say you have project with different code styles.
Tools/Import and Export Settings... - you can export the specific settings for a certain project and then import it later. This will save .vssettings XML format file. If it's about just a specific file type, than it can be just a few kilobytes long. Unfortunately this requires manual steps. The best would be if these settings could be overridden from the solution configuration file or even the project configuration file, could be part of them.
Note, that this second point is problematic if you really work parallel in your projects with simultaneously open Visual Studios. In this case that settings will be saved finally what the last closed VS instance had I think.
Having different auto formatting saved for solutions can be a feature request for next release (certainly not make it to VS 2013). What I usually come across is the tab/space indentation behavior differences, it's the most common difference in project styles. Indentation also can be configured individually for most file types, but as as in your case, projects can differ, and then it becomes annoying.
Just remember that resharper can also override the indentation/formatting settings. You can turn that off by doing this
ReSharper -> Options -> Environment -> Editor -> Editor Behaviour -> Auto-format on closing brace (un-check this).
To turn off automatic brace completion, go to:
Tools > Options > Text Editor > All Languages > General > Automatic brace completion
...then uncheck "Automatic brace completion".
Go to:
Tools->Options->Text Editor->C/C++->Formatting->Spacing
Then deselect or select the boxes that pertain to the code type you are writing.
'Smart Tabs' concept allows to automatically insert tab character for block indentation and space characters for in-block formatting. It's described here. Unfortunately, Visual Studio's 'smart tabs' option in text editor settings just indents text on enter press. Same name, completely different and near useless thing :). So, maybe someone knows of a visual studio addin that can change how 'tab' key work so it will insert tab characters and space characters according to rules mentioned above? Any hints are welcome.
Update: I need it for C++. According to comments, ReSharper can do something like this, but only for Basic and C#.
I have mapped the tab-button to Edit.FormatSelection in Visual Studio to achieve this and it works very well for me. I have also remapped the normal functionality of tab so that I still can access them (Edit.InsertTab and Edit.TabLeft).
If no one comes up with an "as-you-type" utility, then Astyle with its convert-tabs and indent=tab options will reformat code after-the-fact.
ReSharper does this pretty well, and is highly configurable.
Have you looked at Visual Assist?
It's been a while since I used it (back on VC++ 6.0!), and I can't see a mention of "Smart Tabs" on the home page, but it might be there somewhere.
MS Visual Studio editor highlights some non-keyword identifiers as keywords
in C++ files. Particularly "event" and "array" are treated as keywords.
That's very annoying to me, because they are not C++ keywords.
I know how to add my own keywords to the list of syntax-highlighted identifiers,
but how to remove existing built-in ones?
I'm aware that this may require patching some executable files.
So does anyone know how to do this?
Thanks to article mentioned by Steve Guidi, I was able to find executable file that contains Colorizer and IScanner classes. It is named vcpkg.dll and located in /Microsoft Visual Studio 8/VC/vcpackages. (I'm using Visual C++ 2005 Express Edition, things may be different in other versions.)
The vcpkg.dll contains null-terminated UTF-16 encoded strings. I've opened it with hex editor, and searched for "array". There is only one such string in the file, so I've replaced it with "arrry". (It is important to maintain relative alphabetical order with respect to other keywords.) Then I've searched for "event", it shows up in several places, but there is only one that isn't part of some longer string, so I've replaced this one with "evvvt". After starting Visual Studio, it turned out that "array" and "event" weren't any longer highlighted, but "arrry" and "evvvt" were!
Of course this is an ugly hack, and it will void your warranty,
and probably goes against Microsoft EULA, but what a relief for the eyes!
Anyway, if you want to do it, be careful and remember to backup the file.
It doesn't look like a disable-syntax-coloring feature is exposed in a user-friendly way.
The only way I can think of selectively disabling syntax coloring is to create a new syntax coloring plugin for the IDE, and list all of the keywords you want colored. Microsoft gives information in this article on how to accomplish this task.
The drawback to this approach is that your IDE will now have two C++ languages and I'm not sure how it will select which plug-in to choose from once it loads a .h or .cpp file. However, this article suggests that you can override the existing C++ plug-ins by rewriting some registry keys.
I think the only "semi-practical" way to accomplish this to create a Visual Studio package that uses Text Markers to selectively cover up the keywords you don't want colored. Even that is not a little one-day task. Edit: Probably not even a full week task for someone not intricately familiar with the Visual Studio API and all its quirks, especially not getting it bug-free.
In other words, you probably want to just ignore them.
When I'm developing in C#, I heavily use GhostDoc to speed up the process of commenting my code. I'm currently working on a C++ project and I haven't found an equivalent tool. I know about Doxygen, but from what I know it is used to create documentation outside the code, not comments in the code. Are there any good equivalent tools? I would prefer one that runs in VS, but I could handle one that works in any IDE.
(Before someone brings it up, I don't rely solely on GhostDoc to create comments. I just use it to create the starting point for my comments.)
I've written an add-in, Atomineer Pro Documentation, which is very similar to GhostDoc (it generates/updates documentation comments to save a lot of time and effort when documenting), but it parses the code directly for itself and thus is able to handle C, C++, C++/CLI, C#, Java and Visual Basic code, and doesn't require the surrounding code to be in a compiling state before it will work. It will also automatically add/update documentation for more tricky things such as exceptions thrown within the body of a method.
It runs under Visual Studio 11, 2010, 2008 and 2005, and supports Documentation-Xml, Doxygen, JavaDoc and Qt commenting formats, as well as the format/style of comment blocks and the auto-doc rules used being highly configurable. It has a number of other handy features such as aiding conversions of legacy doc-comments to the above formats, and word wrapping in doc-comments and normal block comments.
The above is just a summary of some key features - This comparison of features with other products serves as a more complete list of the many other features available.
Visual Assist helps by providing custom scripts executed while typing (or on other).
For example, you can have a script for comments like this :
/************************************************************************/
/* My comment : $end$ */
/************************************************************************/
That would be suggested (via a combo-box exactly like intellisense) when you start typing "/**" for example.
When you select this suggestion (via Enter/Space/Click - customizable), it will insert the script where your cursor is and just replace markers that are between '$' characters by special values (like the current file name for example).
Here the $end$ marker will make the cursor be at this position when the script is executed. This way, you continue typing smoothly. For example with the previous script set, typing exactly :
/** this is a test comment to show you one of the many features Visual Assit!
will simply give :
/************************************************************************/
/* My comment : this is a test comment to show you one of the many features Visual Assit! */
/************************************************************************/
It's really easy to customize and the behavior of the suggestion (read : intellisense++) system is customizable.
Visual Assist might do the job, though I'm not absolutely sure.