How can I reverse code around an equal sign in Visual Studio?

Question

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

txtFirstName.Text = customer.FirstName;
txtLastName.Text = customer.LastName;
txtAddress.Te         


        

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

Answer 2

None that I know of. Of course, if you use one of the many binding approaches available, then you won't have to - the binding will do the update in both directions (including change via notifications).

So for winforms:

txtFirstName.DataBindings.Add("Text", customer, "FirstName");

etc

Answer 3

An option to get them in there that way in the first place with Resharper would be to define a live template similar to:

$uiElement$ = $dto$;
$dto$ = $uiElement$;

This will allow you to type them once and it will duplicate it for you and then you can cut and paste the save version to the other method.

Answer 4

I had the same need but I had to accept more characters than a-zA-Z\. in the solution provided by John so I slightly modified its regular exception like this :

Find what : {^[^\=]*} = {.*}

Replace with : \2 = \1

This will reverse anything arround the first equal sign found on a line