C# Tutorial - Intellisense
Code completion or IntelliSense as it is often referred to, is a powerful feature that can dramatically increase your productivity when developing an application. It is designed to make the development of your application much easier by helping you automatically generate code in the Code Editor.
When you type a recognized word into your code editor, such as System, followed by the dot operator, C# Express displays a drop down list of all the members associated with the class or namespace. This allows you to easily find the member that you are looking for by scrolling down the list without having to remember all of the members for a particular object. Here is a list of what the icons mean.
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Assembly |  |
Public enumeration |
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Delegate |  |
Protected enumeration |
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Event |  |
Private enumeration |
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Interface |  |
Constant inside enumeration |
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Namespace |  |
Public method |
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Structure |  |
Protected method |
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Internal class |  |
Private method |
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Public class |  |
Public property |
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Protected class |  |
Protected property |
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Private class |  |
Private property |
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Public constant |  |
Public variable |
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Protected constant |  |
Protected variable |
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Private constant |  |
Private variable |
Using IntelliSense
When you are writing code in the Code Editor window, type the name of a namespace or class followed by the scope operator, also known as the dot operator (.). IntelliSense displays all valid members in a scrollable list. This list can be navigated by either the mouse or by using the arrow keys.
If you know the first few letters of the member name, begin typing them to jump directly to the member in the list. When you have located the member that you wish to use, then there are several methods of inserting the selected member in your code;
Type the character that will follow the member, such as open parenthesis, comma, space, semicolon, or others, to insert the selected member followed by the character that you have just typed.
Press TAB, ENTER, or double-click to insert just the member.
Press Esc at any time to close the member list. This will leave whatever characters that you have already typed in the Code Editor, so in order to open the Intellisense again, these will need to be deleted back to the end of the namespace or class.
When you select an item from the member list, but before you insert it, you are shown a Quick Info box on the item and any code comments for the item. The code comments are not shown for any classes that are not in the .NET Framework.
The information supplied in the Quick Info allows you to decide if this is the right member that you wish to insert in the code or whether a different member is needed.
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