Question

After writing code to populate textboxes from an object, such as:

txtFirstName.Text = customer.FirstName; txtLastName.Text = customer.LastName; txtAddress.Text = customer.Address; txtCity.Text = customer.City; 

is there way in Visual Studio (or even something like Resharper) to copy and paste this code into a save function and reverse the code around the equal sign, so that it will look like:

customer.FirstName = txtFirstName.Text; customer.LastName = txtLastName.Text; customer.Address = txtAddress.Text; customer.City = txtCity.Text; 

Answer 1

Before VS2012:

• Copy and paste the original block of code
• Select it again in the place you want to switch
• Press Ctrl-H to get the ‘Replace’ box up
• Under ‘Find what’ put: {[a-zA-Z\.]*} = {[a-zA-Z\.]*};
• Under ‘Replace with’ put: \2 = \1;
• Look in: ‘Selection’
• Use: ‘Regular expressions’
• Hit Replace All

With VS2012 (and presumably later) which uses .NET regular expressions:

• Copy and paste the original block of code
• Select it again in the place you want to switch
• Press Ctrl-H to get the ‘Replace’ box up
• Under ‘Find what’ put: ([a-zA-Z\.]*) = ([a-zA-Z\.]*);
• Under ‘Replace with’ put: ${2} = ${1};
• Make sure that the .* (regular expressions) icon is selected (the third one along under the replacement textbox)
• Hit Replace All