Using Code View

Code View allows you to switch between Light Theme and Dark Theme.

Click the Change Theme icon to toggle between the themes. Code View uses color markup to highlight HTML formatting, which some users might find more effective in Dark Theme.

Code View displays HTML formatting elements alongside your fixed text and ATL. This makes it useful for resolving non-obvious formatting problems. For example, here is a common formatting issue:

The script below has unwanted paragraph and line breaks at the end, which are invisible until you switch to Code View.

You should delete unnecessary <p> and <br> tags from the end of a script; otherwise, they are included when you call that script in another script (e.g. Main). This can have the the effect of inserting a large amount of unwanted whitespace into the calling script.

Another common problem is when you accidentally copy unwanted or unsupported markup into your script from another source. You can fix this by selecting the entire script and clicking the Clear Formatting button, but that also clears any formatting that you have deliberately applied (e.g. bold or italics). A more precise method is to open Code View and clear specific pieces of HTML markup by editing them out.

Code View includes a Find and Replace tool. A similar tool is available in ATL View but that works slightly differently.

The relevant keyboard shortcuts in Code View are:

The Replace option is useful when you have renamed an ATL element — e.g. a user-defined function (UDF) — and you want to instantly update all references to that element in a script. The example below finds all references to the Sales UDF and replaces them with Total.

The search is case-insensitive by default. This is why the search for "Sales" finds the fixed text "sales" along with each reference to Sales (a UDF). The tool works through each found item, and you decide whether to replace by using the YES and NO buttons. Alternatively, you can narrow the search by clicking the CASE SENSITIVE checkbox before entering the find term.

Another unique feature of Code View is the option to hide and display — i.e. 'fold' — sections of your script. This is useful when your script contains a large amount of code and you want to focus on specific parts.

Code View includes a sidebar with line numbers and corresponding disclosure widgets. To hide or display content, simply click the widgets. In the following example, the user wants to focus on calls to the forAll function.

Code View includes a syntax-highlighting tool to help you identify syntax errors resulting from mismatched brackets.

We describe this tool in detail in the Using ATL View topic, but a brief example of its value is given below. The following ATL block is for a simple conditional. It uses three types of brackets — double square, round, and curly — and contains multiple bracket-matching errors.

To find the bracket-matching errors, place the cursor next to a bracket. Green markup indicates correct matching, whereas red markup indicates a mismatch. This is shown in the GIF below.

Code View includes an autocomplete feature to help you work quicker and avoid mistakes when typing variable and function names. There are two ways to invoke the feature:

The resulting pop-up list includes all ATL functions that are (1) available in your selected project type, and (2) supported in the Function Builder. It also includes all variables except those defined in a script. The list automatically filters as you type:

You can move up and down the list by using your keyboard's arrow keys. Hit Enter on your keyboard to insert the highlighted item or hit Escape to dismiss the list and just carry on typing as normal. A selected function is inserted with an opening round bracket:

You can invoke autocomplete multiple times while writing a single ATL block. In the example directly above, autocomplete is invoked three times. This is done first by typing two opening square brackets to open the ATL block. The next two times — to call totalVal and to insert the LondonSales variable — the Ctrl + Space keyboard shortcut is used instead.