Opening a .csv file in Visual Studio produces an unreadable jumbled mess. Is there any way to set up Visual Studio to automatically format these files in columns (a "grid-view", so to speak) so I can edit them directly in the IDE? Are there any tricks or workarounds or extensions that could make these files more easily readable?
(VSCode has what looks to be a fantastic extension for this sort of thing, but alas, it won't work in Visual Studio Pro/Enterprise. Also, BeyondCompare4 does this automatically, and Notepad++ has the TextFX plugin which supports this as well. Has no one ever produced such a plugin for VS?)
(UPDATE: I have created a feature request here. Please vote for it if you upvote this ticket.)
You can install csv-viewer extensions by searching for them in the search tool in the VSCode "Extensions" menu.
Some good ones are 'Excel Viewer' by GrapeCity, or 'Edit csv' by janisdd.
Both of these (and many more) allow you to view excel files in columns inside VScode, not just text files as is default.
Without extension, VSCode 1.44 (March 2020) might bring a native answer with:
Custom Text Editors
With custom text editors, extensions can now replace VS Code's standard editor with a custom webview based view for specific text based resources. Potential use case include:
Previewing assets, such as shaders or .obj files.
Creating WYSIWYG editors for markup languages such as XAML.
Providing alternative, interactive views of data files such as json or csv.
The custom editors documentation covers how to use the new custom text editor API and how to make sure your new editor works well with VS Code. Also be sure to check out the custom editors extension sample.
And that comes with:
workbench.editorAssociations setting
Also for custom editor, the new workbench.editorAssociations setting lets you configure which editor is used for a specific resource.
The example below configures all files ending in .catScratch to open using the example custom text editor from our extension samples.
"workbench.editorAssociations": [
{
"viewType": "catCustoms.catScratch",
"filenamePattern": "*.catScratch"
}
]
And:
View: Reopen with
The new View: Reopen with command lets you reopen the currently active file using a different custom editor.
You can use this command to switch between VS Code's standard text editor and the custom editor, or to switch between multiple custom editors for a resource.
When you open json files that have a "$schema" property in Visual Studio 2017, intellisense will add messages to the Error List window describing which lines in the file do not match the schema (e.g. missing required property, wrong data type, doesn't match pattern, etc.). This only happens if the file is currently open.
I would like these results to show up when I build (even if the json files are not open). I don't want to make an extension to do it, but I do currently run a custom executable during the build. I know how to format the output of the executable so that errors and warnings generated by that tool show up in the Error List window.
Basically, I am wondering if I can use that to somehow force the intellisense results specifically from the json files to appear in the Error List window. I would like to have the ability to promote some of the messages to errors and some to warnings, so I don't just want to hack it in by forcing the json files to open during the build. (Can I somehow use MsBuild to get intellisense results from json files?)
If there is no way to collect the results of intellisense in an external tool, then I will most likely use a completely separate json validation library instead. I just wanted to save the effort since it is built into Visual Studio. Thanks.
It turns out that NJsonSchema (https://github.com/RSuter/NJsonSchema) is so easy to use. If anyone has ideas about intellisense, that may still be useful, though.
I have the next configuration for a build system in PhpStorm:
And it works ok, but I have a problem... my build script needs to receive the name of the file I'm running it on, so, if I build a PHP file, it will run phpcs on it, but if I'm building a CSS or JS file, it will run gulp... with Sublime Text that is possible, is it possible with PhpStorm?
There are no macros support for Run/Debug Configurations -- they are made so they do not depend on a context (currently opened file in editor). In other words -- they are pretty static and all file names/paths are basically hard coded.
For what you are describing (build script).. you need to use External Tools functionality (which can have all of that and made specifically for such tasks). Once created, you can assign custom shortcut to any External Tools entry (check Settings/Preferences | Keymap for that) so it's more convenient to use it.
If you want such script to be called on every file save automatically -- then use File Watchers -- pretty much external tools that will be called for you automatically (once per each file modified).
Since you are doing this for a build script -- maybe you should try to use dedicated (and therefore more appropriate in general) tools? For example: Gulp / Grunt .. or even Phing.
Create external tool:
https://www.jetbrains.com/phpstorm/help/external-tools.html
You can assign hotkey to execute your build command.
There is an excellent package to preview markdown written using sublime text. I wanted to know how I might modify it, or perhaps use it as the basis for writing one that could process multi-markdown.
I'm using Linux (Ubuntu) and I'm currently calling multimarkdown in the terminal on each file.
One of the issues I think I might face is that multimarkdown refuses to parse an open file for some reason.
Any thoughts on how I might begin this or if an alternative solution exists would be very gratefully received.
There is a MultiMarkdown option in the syntax list - View > Syntax > Markdown > MultiMarkdown. Isn't that working? By the way the syntax (and almost any other) files are in packages folder of Sublime Text 2. This is the syntax file:
/Users/[username]/Library/Application Support/Sublime Text 2/Packages/Markdown/Markdown.tmLanguage
And MultiMarkdown file is in the same directory.
I'm intrigued by your statement that "multimarkdown refuses to parse an open file". Can you provide more information, or email me, or open an issue on github? MultiMarkdown doesn't check to see whether a file is open or not --- it simply reads the file and processes it. So if there's a problem, then the OS is not allowing MMD to proceed for some reason...
I don't have Sublime Text installed on Ubuntu (I generally use a command line only version of Ubuntu for testing MMD), so I can't test this situation exactly. I haven't had any other reports of difficulties parsing files (open or not). I don't have any trouble with Sublime Text 2 on Mac OS X and MMD.
As an alternative, you could try using one of the support scripts (e.g. mmd if you want MMD->HTML) and see if that has the same problem with open files.
PS> Are you using the latest build of MultiMarkdown, e.g. 4.2+?? (Though it shouldn't change anything related to open files)
Is there a keyboard shortcut to format code in Notepad++ ?
I'm mainly working with HTML, CSS and Python code.
For example:
<title>{% block title %} {% endblock %}</title>
<link rel="stylesheet" href="/media/style.css" type="text/css" media="screen" />
</head>
To:
<head>
<title>
{% block title %}
{% endblock %}
</title>
<link rel="stylesheet" href="/media/style.css" type="text/css" media="screen" />
</head>
I remember Visual Studio doing it with Ctrl+K+D and NetBeans having the feature too but can't find it within Notepad++, if it can even do it.
TextFX -> HTML Tidy -> Tidy: Reindent XML
Remember to have the HTML code selected before you do this.
there is such a plugin as UniversalIndentGUI, it can be installed right from the plugin manager and has possibilities to reindent the most used programming languages.
If you go to TextFX menu and go to TextFX Edit, you will see a menu item Reindent C++ Code.
That will also format C# code.
ANSWER AS OF June 2019
Install the XML Tools plugin from the Plugin Admin (in Notepad++ 7.7 at least)
Then click Plugins -> XML Tools -> Pretty Print (XML Only with Line breaks)
That did it for me.
Here is a list of the available shortcuts in Notepad++.
In case your desired functionality is not available, you are able to define own macros and assign them to a custom shortcut (i am not used to use macros).
UPDATE: I will post the shortcuts here in case the link gets invalid:
Shortcut Command
Ctrl-C Copy
Ctrl-X Cut
Ctrl-V Paste
Ctrl-Z Undo
Ctrl-Y Redo
Ctrl-A Select All
Ctrl-F Launch Find Dialog
Ctrl-H Launch Find / Replace Dialog
Ctrl-D Duplicate Current Line
Ctrl-L Delete Current Line
Ctrl-T Switch the current line position with the previous line position
F3 Find Next
Shft-F3 Find Previous
Ctrl-Shft-F Find in Files
Ctrl-F3 Find (volatil) Next
Ctrl-Shft-F3 Find (volatil) Previous
Ctrl-Shft-I Incremental Search
Ctrl-S Save File
Ctrl-Alt-S Save As
Ctrl-Shft-S Save All
Ctrl-O Open File
Ctrl-N New File
Ctrl-F2 Toggle Bookmark
F2 Go To Next Bookmark
Shft-F2 Go To Previous Bookmark
Ctrl-G Launch GoToLine Dialog
Ctrl-W Close Current Document
Alt-Shft-Arrow keys or Alt + Left mouse click Column Mode Select
F5 Launch Run Dialog
Ctrl-Space Launch CallTip ListBox
Alt-Space Launch Word Completion ListBox
Tab (selection of several lines) Insert Tabulation or Space (Indent)
Shft-Tab (selection of several lines) Remove Tabulation or Space (outdent)
Ctrl-(Keypad-/Keypad+) or Ctrl + mouse wheel butto Zoom in (+ or up) and Zoom out (- or down)
Ctrl-Keypad/ Restore the original size from zoom
F11 Toggle Full Screen Mode
Ctrl-Tab Next Document
Ctrl-Shft-Tab Previous Document
Ctrl-Shft-Up Move Current Line Up
Ctrl-Shft-Down Move Current Line Down
Ctrl-Alt-F Collapse the Current Level
Ctrl-Alt-Shft-F Uncollapse the Current Level
Alt-0 Fold All
Alt-(1~8) Collapse the Level (1~8)
Alt-Shft-0 Unfold All
Alt-Shft-(1~8) Uncollapse the Level (1~8)
Ctrl-BackSpace Delete to start of word
Ctrl-Delete Delete to end of word
Ctrl-Shft-BackSpace Delete to start of line
Ctrl-Shft-Delete Delete to end of line
Ctrl-U Convert to lower case
Ctrl-Shft-U Convert to UPPER CASE
Ctrl-B Go to matching brace
Ctrl-Shft-R Start to record /Stop recording the macro
Ctrl-Shft-P Play recorded macro
Ctrl-Q Block comment/uncomment
Ctrl-Shft-Q Stream comment
Ctrl-Shft-T Copy current line to clipboard
Ctrl-P Print
Alt-F4 Exit
Ctrl-I Split Lines
Ctrl-J Join Lines
Ctrl-Alt-R Text Direction RTL
Ctrl-Alt-L Text Direction LT
F1 About
The latest plugin is tidy2, which can be installed through Plugins>Plugin Manager>Show Plugin Manager.
I suggest editing config 1 and setting quote-marks: no, especially if you have script that makes use of quotes.
Also, tidying more than once can result in inserting ampersands the first time and then replacing the ampersands the second time. You may want to play with the config to get it to where you need it.
For JavaScript Formatting I use Notepad ++ JSMin Plugin.Quite Handy
This isn't quite the answer you were looking for, but it's the solution I came to when I had the same question.
[update - I'm using vscode now for everything. I think it works better in a lot of cases.]
I'm a pretty serious Notepad++ user, so don't take this the wrong way. I have started using NetBeans 8 to develop websites in addition to Notepad++ because you can set it to autoformat on save for all your languages, and there are a ton of configuration options for how the formatting looks, down to the most minute detail. You might look into it and find it is a worthy tool to use in conjunction with notepad++. It's also open source, completely free, and has a bunch of plugins and other useful things like automatically compiling Sass if you use that too. It's definitely not as quick as NP++ so it's not great for small edits, but it can be nice for a long coding session.
In my notepad++, it seems TextFX needs a perl environment to format HTML files. Tidy2 demands nothing so I think it's more handy.
If all you need is alignment, try the plugin called Code Alignment.
You can get it from the built-in plugin manager in Notepad++.
We can use the following shortcut in the latest version of notepad++ for formatting the code
Alt + Ctrl + Shift + B
In Plugins > Plugin Admin > Search 'XML Tools' > Install.
The window will restart and install XML Tools under plugins.
Open your file and click Ctrl + Alt + Shift + B
No. Notepad++ can't format by itself. Formatting can easily be accomplished in many IDEs like Eclipse, NetBeans, Visual Studio [Code].
Another Potential Solution
Okay, so it's been 12 years since this question was asked. I think that I've found a another acceptable solution, that is perhaps better for formatting files, using Prettier.
What is Prettier?
Prettier is described as: "an opinionated code formatter. It enforces a consistent style by parsing your code and re-printing it with its own rules that take the maximum line length into account, wrapping code when necessary."
Prettier Supports the Following Languages
HTML
CSS, Less, and SCSS
JavaScript
TypeScript
JSX, Angular, Vue
JSON, Markdown, YAML
And a few others.
If You Want to Use Other Languages, You Can Either Use:
Plugins made by the community to Prettier, which allow support for other formats such: Java, Rust, PHP, SQL, and others.
Non-Prettier formatters supporting other languages such as clang-format (npm version) (C / C++ / Java / JavaScript / JSON / Objective-C / Protobuf / C#), or Black (Python).
How To Install
You're going to need to install Node.js for this tutorial.
Note: There may be other work arounds for using the subsequent
mentioned software without using Node.js. But to keep this tutorial
simple and the fact that Node.js already carries widespread
familiarity among developers, I'm going to be using this software
without explaining how to install it.
After installing Node.js, install prettier globally to your system, allowing yourself to run prettier anywhere from the command line.
# NPM is the package manager used by Node.js
# And --global allows you to use prettier anywhere on your local computer.
npm install --global prettier
# To install other plugins (example):
npm install --g prettier-plugin-rust prettier-plugin-java
# To Install clang-format using NPM
npm install -g clang-format
# Usage Examples
prettier --write jquery-min.js # Formatting a JavaScript file
clang-format -i Test.cpp # Formatting C++ file
On Notepad++, install a plugin called NppExec from Menu> Plugins Admin...> Available> NppExec.
You can now run NppExec by either pressing F6 or by clicking Menu > Plugins > NppExec > Execute NppExec Script...
Now you should have a window pop up, giving you the option of executing a command.
You can either use prettier on a (1) specific file or (2) all files in a folder or (3) all files in a directory recursively.
You can always reload a file after it's better overwritten by Prettier using Ctrl+R, and enabling the following setting: Menu > MISC. > Update silently.
Commands and Screenshots of NppExec + Prettier.
REM Using Prettier on Current File (use cmd or powershell /c)
cmd /c prettier --write "$(FULL_CURRENT_PATH)"
REM Using Prettier on Current Folder (a single asterisk)
pwsh /c prettier --write "$(CURRENT_DIRECTORY)\*"
REM Using Prettier on Current Directory Recursively (double asterisk)
pwsh /c prettier --write "$(CURRENT_DIRECTORY)\**"
Install NppExec Plugin
Running NppExec Plugin
Executing Commands on NppExec
NPP+ v7.9.1 with the latest version of XMLTools can't format exported VBA code from Office 2016/2019 Word. It puts all the code on the same line since it strips the CRLF out. Moreover, when you enable "auto validation" it errors out on the first VBA line that is, Attribute VB_Name = "The VBA module name". So any of the xml tool validations apparently can't be used for VBA validation.