Visual Studio Hacks

Search Files Quickly #18

Chapter 3, Navigating Visual Studio

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HACK

VS File Finder is a very valuable tool that has the capacity to greatly speed

up the search for files in your solutions. VS File Finder was written by

Jonathan Payne and is available at http://www.zero-one-zero.com/vs. The

source code for this add-in is also available from that web site.

HACK

#18

Search Files Quickly Hack #18

Visual Studio’s default Find function is pretty run-of-the-mill. Perk it up with

incremental search.

Most users of Visual Studio are already familiar with the normal Find func-

tionality, which lets you enter a search term, and then Visual Studio will

look for that term in your current file. There is another type of search, an

incremental search, that lets you enter your search term character by charac-

ter while Visual Studio actively finds the first instance of that string in your

current document. You can then quickly jump to each instance that is found

in your document. All of this can be done with just a couple of quick key-

strokes.

The first keystroke you need to remember is Ctrl-I (Edit.Incremental-

Search). First, you will need to open a document, then press this keystroke.

This will turn incremental search on, which turns your cursor into what can

only be described as a pair of binoculars with a down arrow. The next thing

you need to do is simply start typing your search term character by charac-

ter. ...