Most code editors come with some kind of automated typing assistance. Ranging from little things like parenthesis and bracket matching, to function and variable suggestions, up to complex text snippets. Perhaps my experience with various editors has been lax, but I’ve never seen one that can perform complex text macros like, or as easily as, this wiz-bang app called Texter. I won’t steal lifehacker’s thunder by re-iterating the how-to’s of this wonderful little program. Instead, I’d like to show you some of my favorite texter tricks.
Favorite Texter Tricks (For Php programming)
Typing ‘lorem’ and pressing enter produces a paragraph of lorem ipsum text.
echop becomes echo”
“;
If I copy something, example: ‘hello world’, and type echoc, I get echo ”
hello world
“;
function, foreach, and if all expand automatically into their full structures with basic comments included.
query becomes “SELECT | FROM WHERE”
There are several functions which can be typed after the name of the variable they are supposed to modify.
Example:
$very_long_variable_name clean
transforms into
$very_long_variable_name = clean($very_long_variable_name);
I also have common if statements setup as questions I can type and texter transforms them. This way its easier for me to remember the texter commands.
Example:
empty?
becomes
if(empty(|)){
}
also
mysql_error?
becomes
if(mysql_error()) die(mysql_error());
Overall, the power of texter is that it gives you very clever tools to create semi-intelligent text macros. If you checkout the lifehacker page, you’ll see that texter can perform keystrokes such as control, shift, alt, up, down, left, right, insert, home, delete, and so on. All in a very easy to understand langauge which makes powerful scripts simple to write.
One last item of fun for texter before we end though. Under preferences, it has a stats tab. This sneaky page shows you how many characters texter has written for you and how much theoretical typing time it has saved. So far I’ve saved an hour of straight typing time (I’ve only had texter for over a week now). I call it sneaky because it makes me want to use Texter even more to get my numbers up.
So check it out and have fun. Hope it saves you some time.