Pete's Log: A revolutionary discovery

Entry #1842, (Coding, Hacking, & CS stuff)
(posted when I was 42 years old.)

OK, maybe the title is a little overhyped, but some things we only come across by accident or when shown by somebody else. For example, last week I introduced a coworker to the Windows 10 emoji selector (accessed by typing the Windows key + period). The importance of this being that it allows you to send beer emoji in IM applications that don't include them in their built-in emoji list. But that's just an aside.

Today, completely by accident, I discovered that VS Code multi-line editing is more sophisticated than multi-line editing in other editors I'm used to. Enough so that I am willing to forgive that entering multi-line mode requires holding down alt, shift and control.

I discovered this when hitting the End key while in multi-line mode. Visual Studio and Notepad++ will exit multi-line mode when you do so. VS Code instead will move the cursor to the end of each line you have selected, meaning you're not restricted to the same column of each line. Particularly useful for example when you have several lines of varying length, each of which you want to enclose in quotes: enter multi-line mode in the first column of those lines, type in a quote, hit end, type in another quote. Bam. Revolutionary.

You can also navigate around the selected lines with control+arrow while in multi-line mode. So neat.