VB 2005 Snippet Annoyance - A solution...

With VB’s snippet feature, every time you add a new snippet the coloring stays around until you close the file and re-open it. This can quickly lead to a lot of visual clutter while your developing if you use snippets a lot. And why shouldn’t you leverage such a feature?

Well, during the beta I asked about whether this would be resolved in some manner and it was a bit late in the schedule. So I set out to figure out a possible work around. The work around consists of a simple macro that will save your current cursor location, save/close the file, open the file and return the cursor to it’s current location. You can configure the macro to work as a tool bar button and/or a keyboard combination.

Here’s what I’m referring to (visually):

Here’s the macro.

Sub ReloadFile()
 
  ' Make a note of the current file.
  Dim file As String = DTE.ActiveDocument.FullName

  ' Make a note of the current cursor position.
  Dim ep As EditPoint = CType(DTE.ActiveDocument.Selection, TextSelection).ActivePoint.CreateEditPoint

  ' Save the current file.
  DTE.ActiveDocument.Save()

  ' Close the current file.
  DTE.ActiveDocument.Close()

  ' Open the current file.
  DTE.ItemOperations.OpenFile(file)

  ' Move cursor to the previously saved position.
  CType(DTE.ActiveDocument.Selection, TextSelection).MoveToLineAndOffset(ep.Line, ep.LineCharOffset)

End Sub

Enjoy!

Note: For a step by step walk through on creating and consuming macros, see here.