In VS2010, we are told to expect a lot more code snippets. To be honest, I don’t use them much but watching the demo, I told myself it was time to give them another look. Sometimes I get a great feeling of productivity in hammering out for loop templates and properties and tell myself who needs snippets? But there is a lot of power there, and it's going even further in VS2010.
My problem is I can never remember which code snippets are there. I occasionally see them in Intellisense, but there is so much there it’s hard to pick them out. More than once, I’ve carefully gone through the Intellisense list trying to pound the useful ones in to my brain.
I decided to do a quick search for a list of code snippets in VS2008 for C#. Surely, I can’t be the first one who just wants a simple list, right? I came across Francesco’s blog who posted the code to iterate through your snippets and output them. A quick change to update it for VS2008, C#, and to output a comma delimited line per snippet, then a paste in to Word, and Convert Text to Table (by comma) and voila!
List of Code Snippets in VS2008 for C#
#if | Code snippet for #if |
#region | Code snippet for #region |
attribute | Code snippet for attribute using recommended pattern |
checked | Code snippet for checked block |
class | Code snippet for class |
ctor | Code snippet for constructor |
~ | Code snippet for destructor |
cw | Code snippet for Console.WriteLine |
do | Code snippet for do…while loop |
else | Code snippet for else statement |
enum | Code snippet for enum |
equals | Code snippet for implementing Equals() according to guidelines |
exception | Code snippet for exception |
for | Code snippet for ‘for ’ loop |
foreach | Code snippet for foreach statement |
forr | Code snippet for reverse ‘for ’ loop |
if | Code snippet for if statement |
indexer | Code snippet for indexer |
interface | Code snippet for interface |
invoke | Code snippet for safely invoking an event |
iterator | Code snippet for a simple iterator |
iterindex | Code snippet for ‘named’ iterator/indexer pair using a nested class |
lock | Code snippet for lock statement |
mbox | Code snippet for MessageBox.Show |
namespace | Code snippet for namespace |
prop | Code snippet for an automatically implemented property |
propg | Code snippet for an automatically implemented property with a ‘get ’ access or/and a private ‘set ’ accessor |
sim | Code snippet for int Main() |
struct | Code snippet for struct |
svm | Code snippet for ‘void Main ’ method |
switch | Code snippet for switch statement |
try | Code snippet for try catch |
tryf | Code snippet for try finally |
unchecked | Code snippet for unchecked block |
unsafe | Code snippet for unsafe statement |
using | Code snippet for using statement |
while | Code snippet for while loop |
You can see the snippet’s keyword typically matches the operator. So the next time you type for or while or try, remember to hit TAB-TAB to expand the snippet. Next time, we’ll look at making your own code snippets.