dotPeek 2023.3 Help

Analyze search results

If any of the dotPeek's navigation and search actions produces multiple results, these results can be displayed in the Find Results window, which provides a lot of ways to analyze the search results.

Some actions, for example Find Usages automatically display the results in this window. For other actions, you can do it manually when a popup with the search results is displayed — click Show in Find Results Themed icon search results screen gray, press Shift+Enter or + on the numeric keypad .

Results of each new navigation or search action are displayed in a new tab of the Find Results window, so you can easily get back to previous searches.

If you close the Find Results window, you can always reopen it by choosing Windows | Find Results in the main menu or by pressing Control+Alt+U. Tabs with search results are preserved until you close the solution.

Find Results window

dotPeek: Find results window

Window tabs

When search results open in the window, they are displayed in new tabs, which show up on the left. The previously open tabs move to the right if the width of the window allows, otherwise they unload themselves saving memory - but you can always restore them by clicking the arrow that appears to the right of the tabs and clicking the required tab:

Tool window tabs

To prevent a tab from unloading, click the pin icon Themed icon pin screen gray next to the tab title.

Find Results window toolbar controls

Depending on the type of search results, the set of toolbar controls may vary.

Control

Name

Description

Themed icon refresh screen gray

Refresh

Updates window content to reflect any changes made in the code or externally.

Themed icon expand all screen gray Themed icon collapse all screen gray

Expand All/Collapse All

Expands/collapses all nodes in the current tab.

Themed icon up screen gray Themed icon down screen gray

Previous/Next


Shift+F8 / F8

Navigate to the previous/next item and scrolls through the source code accordingly.

Themed icon preview toggle screen gray

Show Preview Ctrl+P

Hides or shows the pane with a preview of the selected item in the position specified using the list (at the bottom or in the right part of the window).

Themed icon export screen gray

Export

Click this button to export the data currently displayed in the window in text format , or use the drop-down selector to export the data in an XML or HTML format. The Export Data dialog that appears will help you save the data to a file or copy it to the clipboard .

Themed icon merge screen gray

Merge Occurrences on the Same Line

When this option is selected, occurrences on the same line are shown as a single item.

Show Only Read Usages

Show Only Read Usages

When this option is selected, only read usages are displayed. Available for usages of fields, properties and local variables.

Show Only Write Usages

Show Only Write Usages

When this option is selected, only write usages are displayed. Available for usages of fields, properties, and local variables.

Themed icon filter screen gray

Filter Usages

With this list, you can select specific kinds of usages to display - for example, declaration, invocation, parameter, method return, and so on. Click Show All Usages to enable all kinds of usages or Clear Filters to disable all kinds of usages thus hiding all usages in the current tab.

Themed icon type layout alt screen gray

Show on Diagram

Click this button to display all the types shown in the window in the type dependencies diagram view.

Themed icon kind screen gray

Toggle grouping by kind

Use this button to group search results by kind of usage - that is, how exactly the target item is used at different places — for example, declaration, invocation, parameter, method return, and so on. You can further refine grouping inside 'kind' groups using the Group by selector.

You can also use the Filter Usages Themed icon filter screen gray selector to show/hide usages of specific kinds.

Group by

Allows grouping items in the window by different categories.

To open a specific result in the code viewer, double-click it or press Enter or Ctrl+Enter.

To study the source code of the selected item right in the window, click Show Preview Themed icon preview toggle screen gray on the toolbar. If necessary, you can locate the preview pane at the bottom or on the right.

Filter search results

To filter search results by name, just start typing the part of the name in the window.

Search results of most navigation and search commands can be further filtered by the kind of occurrence.

  • To show only read or write usages, click Show Only Read Usages or Show Only Write Usages on the toolbar.

  • Click Filter Usages Themed icon filter screen gray and choose which kinds of occurrences should be displayed.

  • To clear the filtering, click Filter Usages Themed icon filter screen gray and choose Show all usages.

  • To hide some occurrences, select one or more items or grouping nodes, and press Delete or right-click and choose Ignore. Selected occurrences will be hidden from the current results view. You can use the Show Ignored Usages Themed icon ignore errors screen gray button on the toolbar to show or hide ignored items, which are displayed in grey. To stop ignoring items, select them and press Insert or right-click and choose Undo Ignore.

Group search results

Search results are shown as a tree view, which can be displayed in various hierarchical orders. The default order depends on the initial search, but you can always change it with the Group by selector on the toolbar.

By default, all results are shown as separate items. Sometimes it can be convenient to display all results found in the same line as a single item. To do so, click Merge Occurrences on the Same Line Themed icon merge screen gray on the toolbar.

You can also group search results by kind of usage - that is, how exactly the target item is used at different places — for example, declaration, invocation, parameter, method return, and so on. To do so, click Toggle grouping by kind Themed icon kind screen gray on the toolbar.

If you want to display results as a plain list, select None in the Group by selector.

Other actions with search results

If the search results are related to each other (that is, if they are usages of a specific symbol, symbols derived from a specific symbol, and so on), you can display them in the type dependency diagram by clicking Show on Diagram Themed icon type layout alt screen gray on the toolbar.

If any symbol or a grouping node is not the target of the usages search in the current tab, you can find usages of this symbol or find usages of related symbols right from the Find Results window. To do so, right-click this item and choose the corresponding action in the context menu, or alternatively, press Alt+F7 or Shift+Alt+F7.

This feature is inspired by and borrowed from JetBrains ReSharper, a developer productivity tool for Microsoft Visual Studio.

Last modified: 11 December 2023