Dumb completion in Visual Studio

Question

Intellisense is nice for what it does, but often I find myself longing for the "crude" text completion of editors like Vim. I can't seem to find a facility for being able to complete a word--perhaps in a string, anywhere really--and have VS try to complete it for me (based on stuff I've typed before in the current buffer, or in all open files, or however it wants to work).

Am I missing something? (Or if necessary, is there an extension to do this?) It seems like it would actually be tons easier to implement than Intellisense, but it really can save typing.

Thanks!

Answer 1

You may want to look at the VisualAssist add-in. Its autocomplete is aware of the things you typed recently, so it selects the most recent match by default. It also works in more places than the standard IntelliSense (e.g. include paths).

A word of warning however, when you start using it, it's hard to go back...

Answer 2

Take a look at ViEmu, Vi/vim emulation for Visual Studio, Word, Outlook and SQL Server. If it still doesn't fulfill your needs, attempt at rolling your own. Check out the Visual Studio Extensibility Reference and this tutorial to help you get started on VS Add-Ins.

Answer 3

As stated in other answers, Intellisense in Visual Studio 2010 has become much better. Not only the extensibility, but also implementation.

It now filters the list of members containing the typed name anywhere within them. This also works with classes and types, so you don't have to remember the full type or class name. And last be not least, you can filter the list using the Pascal Case naming pattern. This means less typing and less mistyping.

More information on the Intellisense improvements in VS2010 can be found on ScottGu's blog.