I pity the fool who messes with CTRL-SHIFT-T.

Tags: .NET, Visual Studio

Monday, August 22, 2005 4:24:00 PM

The Visual Studio IDE, among its myriad options and combinations and features and so forth, has a trio of rather odd key combinations:

CTRL-T - Interchanges the current letter and the one after it.
CTRL-SHIFT-T - Same thing, only for the current word.
ALT-SHIFT-T - Same thing, only for the current line.

These keybindings have been there at the very least since Visual Studio 4, where I first came across them.

And I wonder - what are they good for? Is there anyone that uses them regularly, or at all? What are they good for?

14 Comments

  • Frans Bouma said

    Perhaps to quickly correct 'teh' to 'the' etc. ? Otherwise it will require more keystrokes. (not that I use it, I sometimes accidently pressed those and wondered, 'what happened? and why!?' :D

  • Jason said

    I actually use ALT-SHIFT-T all the time. It doesn't offer hours of time savings or anything but it's just a slightly better way to do something small which you can't argue is a bad thing.

    Say you have a line of text:

    > This is a test.

    And then you realize you want to put a DIV around it... you start by adding the DIV to the IDE where it automatically closes the DIV for you:

    > <div></div>
    > This is a test.

    Break the opening and closing DIV apart:

    > <div>
    > </div>
    > This is a test.

    Put the cursor on the "</div>" line and press ALT-SHIFT-T:

    > <div>
    > This is a test.
    > </div>

  • Tobin Titus said

    I'm a keyboard shortcut junkie. With each new release of a dev tool, I always learn the new ones. I loved this combination, particularly when I want to move something down a few lines.

    Lets say, for instance, that I've assigned a variable on one line, but after testing I decide I should do the assignment after a few other operations. I ALT+SHIFT+T the line all the way down to where I want it. Very useful. Sure, you could accomplish the same thing with a cut and paste, but why would you when you can do it with one hand! ;)

  • Frederic said

    The same feature was available under Emacs and shell on Unix (don't know for vi, but would not be a surprise).
    I suppose that it was very useful when typing from a unix console without proper arrow keys/backspace support !
    Funny to see features 10+'s years old to still be around !

  • tickko said

    Tobin Titus...interesting use for Ctrl+Shift+T. Another great way to cut a whole line with a return after it in VS, Shift+Delete (cuts the line with a return, it doesn't matter where you are in the line) and Shift Insert or Ctrl V (paste).

  • pelesl said

    I would love it if there were a "transpose" command for = signs. So if you say x = y a magic key press would switch it to y = x I can't imagine the guy who put it in these functions in Visual Studio couldn't come up with a use for the one I want---so anyone know if that's already in there?

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