{"id":578,"date":"2014-04-27T00:41:11","date_gmt":"2014-04-27T00:41:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.wholetomato.com\/?p=578"},"modified":"2019-05-03T17:28:51","modified_gmt":"2019-05-03T21:28:51","slug":"sort-lines","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wholetomato.com\/blog\/sort-lines\/","title":{"rendered":"Sorting One’s Code"},"content":{"rendered":"

Visual Assist has a plethora of features, and it’s difficult to know them all. It’s an even greater challenge to use all of them at every opportunity.<\/p>\n

We had\u00a0one user, Tom, write\u00a0recently that his “very small favourite feature” in Visual Assist is Sort Lines. Sort lines, we wondered.\u00a0We don’t often sort\u00a0when writing code. After a bit of\u00a0thought, we\u00a0acknowledged that if one does need to sort, however\u00a0infrequently, a built-in sort can be very\u00a0handy.<\/p>\n

In this blog post, I touch on a few use cases for Sort Lines, some of which might resonate with you.<\/p>\n

If you have enums not dependent on order, consider sorting them for readability. Sort all or a subset, remembering to exclude a count that must be the last item.<\/p>\n

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Select your lines and\u00a0invoke sort from the Tools submenu of VAssistX:<\/p>\n

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Sorting is always alphabetic, and done in place.\u00a0Only complete lines of a selection are sorted; sort Lines ignores the line with the text caret\u2014whether or not the line\u00a0includes any\u00a0selected text.<\/p>\n

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In unmanaged code, \u00a0#defines are sometimes good\u00a0candidates for a sort.\u00a0If circumstances allow, sort before assigning values to your macros. Sorting operates\u00a0at the line level, so don’t attempt a sort\u00a0if your macros and their comments span multiple lines.<\/p>\n

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Finally, if you are confident your C\/C++ headers don’t need to be included in order, sort them so they are easier to browse.<\/p>\n

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If you find yourself sorting manually, however infrequently, remember\u00a0that Visual Assist makes the task simple. Our user Tom uses\u00a0Sort Lines so much\u00a0he assigned\u00a0a shortcut to\u00a0the command.<\/p>\n

Finally,\u00a0if you have a different use case for Sort Lines, we’d love to hear about it. Please share your case in a comment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Visual Assist has a plethora of features, and it’s difficult to know them all. It’s an even greater challenge to use all of them at every opportunity. We had\u00a0one user, Tom, write\u00a0recently that his “very…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":28485711,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[672],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-578","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tips-and-tricks"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pfpLS4-9k","aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t