Hack 12. Customize Syntax Coloring

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Hack 12. Customize Syntax Coloring Specify the keywords you want Visual Studio to colorize, even in PHP! When working with Visual Studio, you will notice that language keywords are highlighted in blue. This coloring makes code more readable. If you ever want to see the impact that this coloring has, open a code file in Notepad and notice how much less readable it is. Unfortunately, most languages, including VB.NET and C#, won't let you change how keywords are colored in Visual Studio. One language that does provide a method for specifying your own keywords is C++. For example, you can add the word "DateTime" as a keyword to C++ with a few simple steps. First, you need to create a file named usertype.dat. This is a simple text file that contains all of the words that you want to be colored as keywords. Start by creating a new text file in your favorite text editor, add the word DateTime to the top line of that file, then save that file with the name of usertype and the extension of .dat. Here is what your file should look like: DateTime Next, copy this file to the following directory: <Visual Studio Directory>\Common7\IDE (for example, C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2003\Common7\IDE). Before Visual Studio will read this file, you need to restart the IDE; after the restart, you can open up a C++ source code file, and you should see DateTime colored as a keyword. You can then add additional keywords, each on its own line, and the IDE will pick these words up and treat them as keywords. Customizing the words that are colored is a great way to get confirmation that you typed the correct word and also increases the readability of your code. 2.8.1. Hacking the Hack If you wanted all of your classes to be colored, it would take a quite a bit of time to add all of them to the usertype.dat file. Steve King has written a nice add-in that will look through your entire solution, add all of your classes to a temporary usertype.dat file, then load that file with Visual Studio. This way, you can have all of your classes colored without the labor of doing it yourself. The only downside to this add-in is that this file is not saved when you close the IDE, so you will need to run this command every time you open the IDE. (It was written this way to avoid overwriting any changes to the original usertype.dat file.) This add-in actually does a number of other things that might be of interest to C++ developers, including adding regions, dependency and inheritance graphs, and the ability to search the Web. The add-in can be downloaded from http://www.codeproject.com/macro/kingstools.asp. 2.8.2. Add Coloring for Other Languages Many people use Visual Studio to edit languages that it was never intended to edit. Out of the box, Visual Studio won't do syntax highlighting for these languages, but you can fix this with a small registry hack and a custom usertype.dat file. The first part of this hack is to hack the registry and tell Visual Studio to associate the language's filename extension with C++. It may seem a little strange to add the extension as a C++ extension, but this is the only way to get the IDE to use the custom usertype.dat file, since only C++ will use the usertype.dat file. This example adds PHP as a supported language. First, you need to edit the registry and add the .php extension to the list of C++ file extensions. Always back up your registry by exporting the key you are modifying before making modifications to it, or use the alternate registry method [Hack #30] . To add the .php extension, create a new string value key under the File Extensions folder located here: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\VisualStudio\7.1\ Languages\File Extensions Replace 7.1 with the version of Visual Studio that you are working with: 7.0 for Visual Studio .NET 2002, 7.1 for Visual Studio .NET 2003, and 8.0 for Visual Studio 2005. The key needs to be named .php and the value of the key should be: {B2F072B0-ABC1-11D0-9D62-00C04FD9DFD9}. (Make this easy on yourself by copying this GUID from the .c key.) After this key is added, the .php extension will be treated as a C++ file, and any keywords entered in the usertype.dat file will be appropriately highlighted. The next step is to add all of the PHP language keywords to the usertype.dat file. These keywords are shown in Table 2-2. Table 2-2. PHP keywords list abstract array as boolean break case class default define do echo else elseif empty eval exit extends false for foreach function global if implements in include include_once instanceof interface new null php php3 phpinfo print private protected public require require_once return static switch true unset var while   You will need to add each of these keywords on its own line to usertype.dat, along with any other C++ keywords you may have defined. After you create this file and save it to the <Visual Studio Directory>\Common7\IDE directory, all the PHP language keywords will be highlighted whenever you open a .php file in Visual Studio. Thanks to a blogger named David Cumps for discovering this method. You can also download a .reg file to create the registry key and a prefilled usertype.dat file from his blog, located at http://weblogs.asp.NET/cumpsd/archive/2004/02/22/77926.aspx.

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