I was trying to compare 2 files and ended up using Notepad++ for one. When I saw how great it looked, I used it for both. I love the visible dashed line going from one bracket to the other. And the way you can click the box next to it to close that section... and I learned that box does the same thing in Visual Studio (yeah, I been using it 8 years ha ha).

My question is: Can I change the view in Visual Studio to show the dashed lines? It is very helpful. It is like training wheels... which I need...
Also, how can I use Visual Studio to clean up the formatting on a script? A lot of people use weird spacing and tabs (or worse no tabs). Is there a way to make it clean it up?

I googled it but all I could find for dashed line was show line numbering, which I already have enabled.

I am on Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate, if that matters. I did not realize it was so old, but I am temporarily on my old Win 7 laptop - extended beach vacation (sorry, not sorry). :cool:


Notepad++ These are the columns of dashed lines I mean. Super cool.
cool view.JPG
 
Under Edit in Visual Studio, you should see Format Document and Format Selection. Use Format Selection when you want to highlight part of the code and have VS format it for you, or Format Document to do the whole thing.

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I use VS 2019 Community Edition, and it has vertical lines line Notepad++

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Thanks! The format selection is what I was looking for.

I did more googling on the column guides and for my old version, they have to be added through the registry. I will probably just use Notepad++ when I want to see the guides. I will be back home in a month and can use my real computer, with a newer version.
 
I would never recommend doing it, but as far as the spacing / formatting goes, using Notepad++ and Extended Search Mode, you can do some pretty crazy code type things. I bet theres a way using that to redo spacing.
 
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