Sunday, April 22, 2007

Ctrl-Shift-Up and Ctrl-Shift-Down

... there may just be a little more to them, than what initially meets the eye. Now it might be common knowledge to you guys -but- I was doing a little research on an article [learning actually] on using the keyboard and forgetting about the mouse when I came across one of those “Wow, that is seriously cool!” features that I just love to find. Ctrl-Shift-Up is a powerful [and pretty clever] little bugger –but- then so is its partner Ctrl-Shift-Down … maybe even more than you would initially think. Now, it may just be because I'm new to even looking at keyboard short-cuts [yea, I know ... I know] but this just makes things so much faster to get to. Using either of these keyboard short-cuts on a run of the mill method is a handy bit of knowledge to have when you need to toggle the cursor between the method and it’s declaration. Have you tried it on a Property declaration or method? From a Property declaration it will toggle the cursor to the first “etter” declaration it finds, from then on you can toggle between the “etter” declarations by continuing to key in Ctrl-Shift-Up. I suppose it’s waiting for you to decide on which of them you want to Ctrl-Shift-Down to. If it only finds one “etter” then it will go there and keying in Ctrl-Shift-Up again toggles back to the Property declaration … probably in case you want to add the missing sibling. If you’ve toggled down [Ctrl-Shift-Down] to either of the “etter” methods Ctrl-Shift-Down again ... you end up in the other “etter” method. How cool is that, eh? Thanks for stopping by, -- Dave
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10 comments:

  1. If that is a) cool and b) a surprise then I imagine you will be blown away by Ctrl+E

    Type Ctrl+E and the editor enters "incremental search" mode - whatever you type now, the editor will find the first/next occurence of. F3 will then find the next, etc etc

    It never ceases to amaze me that so many long-standing Delphians remain blissfuly aware of this feature that has been there since 1.0!

    Or maybe you knew of that one already?

    ;)

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  2. Hi Jolyon,

    No, I have yet to look into Ctrl-E and play with it in the IDE to see what it can do. As I mentioned this all came about looking into the keyboard short-cuts.

    Thanks for the tip, and for stopping by, it's appreciated.

    --
    Dave

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  3. Another couple of navigation keystrokes:

    Ctrl+Alt+Down or Up jumps to the next/previous method.

    Ctrl+Alt+Home or End jumps to the first/last method in the current unit.

    I hope you blog about more of your findings.

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  4. While on the subject, here are some favourites of mine:

    CTRL+SHIFT+I indent a block of code
    CTRL+SHIFT+U unindent a block of code
    CTRL+/ toggle comment on a block of code

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  5. Make the last one:
    CTRL+' to toggle comment on/off on international keyboards.

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  6. @Bruce
    There is definitely more coming. I was actually in the middle of a [rather large] post on what can be done in the code editor but broke out when I saw what was happening during my testing of Ctrl-Shift-Up/Down.
    @Robert
    Thanks, knowing the ones that get used most often helps for placement and emphasis in an article.
    @PeterS
    Guess I should really consider the international perspective - thanks, I will do my best.


    Thanks for the tips.

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  7. Install GExperts and you'll have access to even more amazing ones:
    CTRL+ALT+<UP>/<DOWN> to go to the next instance of the word you're currently on with your cursor.

    CTRL+ALT+./CTRL+ALT+, to (Un)Comment a block of code out

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  8. Hi Walter, by all accounts GExperts is indeed an excellent addition to the IDE. Although I've used GExperts before with both D7 and BDS2006 ... I can't say I ever made it "work for a living". What I did use in it, was excellent. I've since [sort of] switched to CnPack and although I've yet to become a CnPack power user ... I think I'll stick with just that for now. If I find that there's something missing that GExperts provides I'll certainly have another look at it. One step at a time for me now. I used to shove everything I could get my hands on into the IDE -but- not any more. For me, if I don't plan on taking the time to become proficient with it ... I'm not going to install it. It just gets too cluttered with things that I either just don't know or have sufficient time to learn how to [properly] use.
    If you're interested, you can have a squint at CnPack here:
    http://cnpack.org/

    Thanks for the comment, it's most appreciated.
    --
    Dave

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  9. you might want to check out the following page http://delphi.wikia.com/wiki/Default_IDE_Shortcut_Keys.

    maybe even help out and edit the page for missing or incorrect shortcuts.

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  10. xsintill, I've been using the page as a reference, one of many, but ... excellent point.

    ReplyDelete

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