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Quick Search

Quick Search was the code focused feature I mentioned previously.  It works for all C++, C#, and VB symbols and all file types.  It’s a very lightweight way to do incremental searches, quickly filter the results and get powerful search heuristics like substring.  Let's take a look at how I might use Quick Search.

If I was looking for an event handler and couldn't quite remember its name but knew that I used the typical naming convention, Quick Search can help.  My first step is to find all method signatures that contain the word "Click" by typing “Click” into Quick Search.

At that point, I may remember that it also contains "Enter"; by added the letter “E”, I’m able to quickly filter to everything that contains both "Click" and "E", treating the space as a wildcard search.  I’ve now reduced the results to a short list I can choose from.

Quick Search even supports camel-case matches.  So, for example, if I type in capital, "SPF", Quick Search will filter the results to only those that are a camel-case or exact match!

Call Hierarchy

Another scenario we're focusing on is reviewing dependencies.  For example, if I make a change to a method, I might want to know all the instances where it’s being called.  In VS 2010, we're improving the call browser experience in C++ and also bringing a new call hierarchy tool to C# and VB.  These features let you easily navigate all callers and callees of a method (see below.)

The call hierarchy tools also allow you to see all overrides of a method and any implementers of interface methods.  For instance, if I want to see who implements the MakeSound() interface method, I can invoke call hierarchy to see that there are two implementers, in Cat and in Dog.

Consume-First Development

Many features in Visual Studio, such as IntelliSense and Quick Info work best when an API that a user is consuming is already defined.  We recognize, though, there are times you need to code against an API that has yet to be defined completely.  For example, in test-driven development (TDD) we see the test-first pattern.  So, in VS 2010, we’re making it easier to do consume-first development.

I had previously talked about the "generate from usage" feature which generates code stubs for types, methods, properties, and constructors inferred from a symbol’s usage in code.  In the screenshot below, you can see “generate from usage” at work.

Generating the constructor will generate the following code: