I’ve been doing a lot of managed C++ programming lately and I had forgotten what a pain it is switching back and forth between the header file and source file.  Back in the days of Visual Studio 6 I had a macro that switched between the CPP and H file, so I went googling, but the macro I found didn’t work very well in VS2008.  Like any good coder, I decided to write it myself instead.

If you haven’t written a macro before, here are the steps.

1. In Visual Studio, go to Tools | Macros | Macros IDE. A new window should open and in the Project Explorer, the MyMacros project should be open.
2. Right click on the MyMacros project and select Add | Add Module. Name it CppUtilities.  The CppUtilities should open in the editor window.
3. Add the code from below into the module and save the project.

‘=====================================================================
‘ If the currently open document is a CPP or an H file, attempts to
‘ switch between the CPP and the H file.
‘=====================================================================
Public Sub SwitchBetweenSourceAndHeader()
  Dim currentDocument As String
  Dim targetDocument As String

  currentDocument = ActiveDocument.FullName

  If currentDocument.EndsWith(“.cpp”, StringComparison.InvariantCultureIgnoreCase) Then
    targetDocument = Left(currentDocument, Len(currentDocument) - 3) + “h”
    OpenDocument(targetDocument)
  ElseIf currentDocument.EndsWith(“.h”, StringComparison.InvariantCultureIgnoreCase) Then
    targetDocument = Left(currentDocument, Len(currentDocument) - 1) + “cpp”
    OpenDocument(targetDocument)
  End If

End Sub

‘=====================================================================
‘ Given a document name, attempts to activate it if it is already open,
‘ otherwise attempts to open it.
‘=====================================================================
Private Sub OpenDocument(ByRef documentName As String)
  Dim document As EnvDTE.Document
  Dim activatedTarget As Boolean
  activatedTarget = False

  For Each document In Application.Documents
    If document.FullName = documentName And document.Windows.Count > 0 Then
      document.Activate()
      activatedTarget = True
      Exit For
    End If
  Next
  If Not activatedTarget Then
    Application.Documents.Open(documentName, “Text”)
  End If
End Sub

If you switch back to Visual Studio and open the Macro Explorer, you should see the new module CppUtilities and the new macro SwitchBetweenSourceAndHeader in the tree.  You could run the macro from here, but it is much easier to bind it to a keystroke.

1. Click on Tools | Options then go to the Environment | Keyboard tab.
2. In the Show commands containing: box, type CppUtilities. This should filter the list down to one entry, Macros.MyMacros.CppUtilitities.SwitchBetweenSourceAndHeader.
3. Click on the Press shortcut keys: text box and then press the keystroke you would like to use to run the macro. If the keystroke is already used, it will show you below in the Shortcut currently used by: dropdown.  When you find one that is unused, click the Assign button to use it.  I use Ctrl+Shift+Alt+Bkspce.
4. Click OK then open a CPP or H file and give it a try.