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SlickEdit Makes Refactoring Reality for C++ Programmers


New components allow for assembly with XML

By Jennifer deJong
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May 15, 2004 —  (Page 1 of 2)
Refactoring, the process of optimizing existing source code to improve structure and performance, is popular in the Java and Extreme Programming worlds. However, it's been more difficult to implement refactoring in C++.

To address the problem, SlickEdit Inc. announced version 9 of its Visual SlickEdit development tool, which it claims is the first commercial tool to support C++ refactoring.

Many developers attempt to refactor C++ applications manually using search-and-replace techniques, but such efforts are rarely successful, said Sandy Smith, SlickEdit's vice president of product management and marketing. "Their managers say, 'No, don't do that. It's too time-consuming and error-prone.'"

Visual SlickEdit 9 offers a safe, accurate way to do C++ refactoring, claimed Smith. Chief among the 10 refactorings it provides are rename, which updates the rest of the code when it renames variables, methods and classes; extract method, which lets the developer create a new method from a code fragment; and encapsulate field, which generates getter and setter methods for the specified variable and makes that variable private, according to Smith.

Also new to version 9 is a GUI builder that lets Java developers construct user interfaces with Swing and AWT while simultaneously editing code; and the ability to edit, compile and debug Common Language Runtime (CLR) applications. Although Microsoft developers can perform those functions in Visual Studio, according to Smith, Visual SlickEdit's editing features, including navigation, symbol manipulation and analysis, and differencing with side-by-side comparisons, are more advanced than those in Visual Studio.

Of interest to C# developers is a code completion feature that allows them to view help and parameter information for CLR library functions from within Visual SlickEdit 9, said Smith.

CODE EDITOR TURNED IDE
Visual SlickEdit originated in 1988 as a text-based code editor, but over time it has evolved into an integrated development environment (IDE) that supports 47 languages-including C, C++, C#, COBOL, HTML, Java, Perl, Python, Visual Basic .NET and XML-and runs on Linux, Unix and Windows, according to Smith.



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