Code Snippets – List of C# snippets in VS2008

In VS2010 we are told to expect a lot more code snippets.  To be honest, I don’t use them much but watching the demo I told myself it was time to give them another look.  Sometimes I get a great feeling of productivity in hammering out for loop templates and properties and tell myself who needs snippets?  But there is a lot of power there, and its going even further in VS2010.

My problems is I can never remember which code snippets are there.  I occassionaly see them in Intellisense, but there is so much there it’s hard to pick them out.  More than once I’ve carefully gone through the intellisense list trying to pound the useful ones in to my brain.

I decided to do a quick search for a list of code snippets in VS2008 for C#.  Surely I can’t be the first who just wants a simple list, right?  I came across Francesco’s blog who posted the code to iterate through your snippets and output them.  A quick change to update it for VS2008, C#, and to output a comma delimited line per snippet, then a paste in to Word, and Convert Text to Table (by comma) and voila!

List of Code Snippets in VS2008 for C#

#if	Code snippet for #if
#region	Code snippet for #region
attribute	Code snippet for attribute using recommended pattern
checked	Code snippet for checked block
class	Code snippet for class
ctor	Code snippet for constructor
~	Code snippet for destructor
cw	Code snippet for Console.WriteLine
do	Code snippet for do…while loop
else	Code snippet for else statement
enum	Code snippet for enum
equals	Code snippet for implementing Equals() according to guidelines
exception	Code snippet for exception
for	Code snippet for ‘for’ loop
foreach	Code snippet for foreach statement
forr	Code snippet for reverse ‘for’ loop
if	Code snippet for if statement
indexer	Code snippet for indexer
interface	Code snippet for interface
invoke	Code snippet for safely invoking an event
iterator	Code snippet for a simple iterator
iterindex	Code snippet for ‘named’ iterator/indexer pair using a nested class
lock	Code snippet for lock statement
mbox	Code snippet for MessageBox.Show
namespace	Code snippet for namespace
prop	Code snippet for an automatically implemented property
propg	Code snippet for an automatically implemented property with a ‘get’ access or and a private ‘set’ accessor
sim	Code snippet for int Main()
struct	Code snippet for struct
svm	Code snippet for ‘void Main’ method
switch	Code snippet for switch statement
try	Code snippet for try catch
tryf	Code snippet for try finally
unchecked	Code snippet for unchecked block
unsafe	Code snippet for unsafe statement
using	Code snippet for using statement
while	Code snippet for while loop

You can see snippet’s keyword typically matches the operator.  So next time you type for or while or try remember to hit TAB-TAB to expand the snippet.  Next time we’ll look at making your own code snippets.