Smart Suggestions

Smart Suggestions are highly context-aware code hints that speed development by suggesting text you're likely to type in the current context. With Smart Suggestions, C++ users enjoy C#-like autocompletion for several common scenarios.

Pointer Assignment

Constructors are suggested for assignment to a pointer of that type, providing a significant reduction in typing.

Enum Assignment and Comparison

Assigning or comparing enums, including switch statement constants, will populate the suggestion list with the enum values.

Parameter Type Matching

When invoking a function or method, Visual Assist X notes the expected parameter types and suggests local variables with matching types. Click the link below the example for a demonstration.



Animate example

Suggestions for Type

You can define a set of Smart Suggestions to use when assigning or comparing built-in or user-defined types. For instance, when working with HRESULTs, Visual Assist X suggests S_OK and S_FALSE by default. You can add your own commonly used HRESULTs to this list by modifying the VA Snippet "SuggestionsForType HRESULT". Other built-in types Visual Assist X supports out of the box are bool, BOOL, Boolean, and VARIANT_BOOL.

Additionally, you may specify a set of values to suggest for other types (both built-in and user-defined types are supported). This is achieved by creating a VA Snippet titled "SuggestionsForType <typename>". In the example below, a set of severity values is defined.



In this example, typing code that assigns or compares a SEVERITY variable displays the user-defined Smart Suggestion list.



Note that Visual Assist X is simply inserting the text from the list you create, and has no awareness of the underlying meaning of that text (it may be a macro, string literal, number, etc.) In the example above, the SEVERITY values must be defined somewhere in your code, such as a company-wide standard header file.

Special Contexts

Visual Assist X suggests different items depending on your context. For instance, if you are defining a class, you'll see different suggestions than if you were typing in a method body. These suggestions are controlled by the various SuggestionsForType VA Snippets, using the special terms loop, switch, and class instead of true type names:

VA Snippet	Context	C++ defaults	C# defaults	VB defaults
SuggestionsForType loop	Within a loop control structure	continue; break;	continue; break;	N/A
SuggestionsForType switch	Within a switch statement	case default: break;	case default: break;	N/A
SuggestionsForType class	Within a class definition	public: private: protected: virtual void bool string static const	public private protected virtual void bool string static override internal	Public Private Protected

Miscellaneous

Smart Suggestions may be completed with the Tab key regardless of the "Selections committed with" settings under VA Options | Advanced | Listboxes.