"Your product is the closest thing to magic I've seen in a programming tool."

John McCormick

Architecture

Beginning with Microsoft Visual C/C++ 6.0, all Microsoft IDEs run lightweight parsers while you edit. While these parsers never produce object code, the information they collect assists you as you write code. This assistance is called IntelliSense. Its features include member listboxes, completion listboxes, hovering tooltips and auto parameter info. You enable or disable the individual components of IntelliSense in the options dialog of the IDE.



Visual Assist X eliminates several shortcomings in default IntelliSense, then complements IntelliSense with a plethora of powerful features to make your IDE more useable. The amount of assistance is determined by the IDE, your programming language and the options you select.



Like default IntelliSense, Visual Assist X includes parsers that execute while you edit. These parsers differ from the default parsers in that they do not ship with prebuilt symbol databases restricting the scope of the IntelliSense. Visual Assist X learns only from the headers and objects included in your projects, whether from the System, third party libraries, MFC or ATL/WTL/STL. This means IntelliSense comes alive more often and with more accurate results. Your IntelliSense has more sense.

For all programming languages other than C/C++, Visual Assist X keeps the default parsers executing and runs lightweight versions of its own. Visual Assist X pulls information from the database of its own parsers and from the default parsers.

For C/C++, you decide if you want IntelliSense exclusively from Visual Assist X, or from Visual Assist X only when the default parser is unable to provide it. You pick the configuration that yields the best results.



Fortunately, the better assistance in Visual Assist X comes without a price in performance. Our specially-designed parsers are low-priority, background threads yielding no impact on the responsiveness of your IDE. The threads awaken typically during idle time and go silent when you start typing. And since these parsers do not generate object code, they consume far fewer resource than traditional parsers.