Add an option to the C# code editor to simulate case insensitivity

[vsfeedback]

This issue has been moved from a ticket on Developer Community.

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I program in both C# and VB, and one of the frustrations I experience with editing C# code is related to its case sensitivity.

With VB, one of the code editor's excellent features is that once you've defined a variable, auto-complete will subsequently change the case of what you type to match the variable previously defined.

This means that many typos are automatically corrected. This gives a substantial productivity advantage over C#, as even slight typos where the only issue is capitalisation have to be manually corrected.

What makes this possible, of course, is that VB.net is intrinsically case insensitive.

Now, I've noticed in the C# editor, that a variable that is misspelled only in the sense that its case is wrong, will often have the correct case change available in the list of suggested fixes.

So it occurs to me that an option to automatically implement that suggested fix would give the same productivity advantage as enjoyed in the VB code editor.

If IntelliSense is clever enough (a) to work out when a case change would fix a particular precompile error, and (b) to offer such a case change in the list of suggested fixes, it must also therefore be possible in principle, to implement that fix automatically if such implementation was predicated on the selection of a suitable option.

I think making such an option available would make a big difference to C#'s usability, and speed of development, and therefore I'd like to request that it be added to Visual Studio's feature set.

It would be excellent as well, if the C# editor would do its auto formatting properly whenever the enter key was pressed (or indeed whenever you click to a different code line with the mouse). Although I have the option selected, it only ever seems to auto format the code when the ';' is pressed. Again, the VB code editor is far superior in this regard.

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Original Comments

Feedback Bot on 10/29/2021, 00:30 AM:

We have directed your feedback to the appropriate engineering team for further evaluation. The team will review the feedback and notify you about the next steps.

John Henderson on 11/6/2021, 08:37 AM:

I fully agree. Having to type everything with the correct case is a waste of time when no sane person actually makes use of case sensitivity.

[CyrusNajmabadi]

I don't try to write things with the right casing. I just write it as lowercase, and intellisense auto-matches against the right-cased item and corrects it for me :)

[JoeRobich]

I think it is an interesting idea that semi-colon could be the trigger to auto-fix error diagnostics in the statement being completed. Either for a fixed set of diagnostics or those with a single code fix being available.

[jmarolf]

@JoeRobich yeah, I like this idea in conjunction with code-cleanup settings. I'll keep this in mind when I revisit code-cleanup in a month or so.