Visual Studio - What are suggestion and standard completion modes

7
votes

In Visual Studio, there's a button on the toolbar with tooltip:

Toggles between suggestion and standard completion modes. (Ctrl+Alt+Space)

My guess is that these have something to do with IntelliSense, but I'm not sure.

What is suggestion mode and what is standard completion mode?

1
visual-studiovisual-studio-2019

1 Answers

9
votes

The difference seems to be in whether completion is committed when you type keys that are not explicit commit keystrokes while typing. Tab is an explicit commit character; . and ; are examples of keys that are not explicit commit characters.

If I type "foo".sub( (in C# as an example) the behavior will be as follows:

  • with the button enabled (suggestion mode), I will get the same literal output with a closing parenthesis added: "foo".sub()
  • with the button disabled (standard mode), it completes using the best match in the completion list: "foo".Substring()

Turning this behavior on is more suitable in languages or projects where you are invoking dynamic (or new, not-yet-existing) methods and properites that are not present in the completion list, so that you don't have to fight with undesired partial matches.