This is only marginally related to General/CocoaDevelopment, and is more a matter of an annoyance while typing General/ObjC code into General/XCode.
Having had past experience with General/CPlusPlus nested structures and Java method calling and liking how that General/ObjC declares it valid for General/MessagingNil most of the time, I’m finding that I’m stringing together 2 or 3 consecutive calls to various General/AppKit or Foundation methods, like so…
style = General/[[[NSParagraphStyle defaultParagraphStyle] mutableCopy] autorelease];
I’m finding all to often, than when I start typing a line, I don’t accurately forecast the General/MethodBracket depth. As a result, I find myself repeatedly backspacing or mousing back to earlier in the line to insert a leading bracket, or enduring General/XCode beeping at me when I type a trailing bracket before balancing them.
Does anybody here have a short General/AppleScript or Perl script suitable for the User Script menu that I can use to do the following…
*Travel backwards in the current source file across the mostly recently balanced method invocation *Insert a leading bracket before the balanced bracket pair *Return the text insertion point back to before the script executed
For example, starting with the source editor with this state… (General/PipeCharacter is the cursor.)
| style = General/[NSParagraphStyle defaultParagraphStyle] mutableCopy |
I want the script to leave the following result…
| style = General/[[NSParagraphStyle defaultParagraphStyle] mutableCopy |
I’d write it myself, but General/AppleScript is lousy at General/TextManipulation, and concerning Perl, I am not even General/KnowingEnoughToBeDangerous. I also suspect other developers here would appreciate having such a script as well. I can’t be the only one annoyed by this; there doesn’t seem to be an obvious keyboard shortcut to navigate text by punctuation balancing, just words and lines.
– General/DLWormwood
Just a further note, I’ve since attempted to use General/AppleScript with Xcode to solve this issue, but while I’m able to reliably get the current selection via a script method, I’m unable to do anything with it. Script Editor will kindly display exactly where in the document and what kind of state it is when returned as the result, but refuses to script any property extraction. When I get the record of properties, AS lists the content as “private.” I guess this means selection manipulation isn’t possible with Xcode 2.4 yet…