Auto completion
Notepad++
has autocompletion capabilities, allowing it to finish a word that
you are typing by giving a list of possible options, or immediately
inserting it when only one possibility is left (powered by the
Scintilla component).
There
are two types of auto completion.
- The first one uses a list of well
known keywords and provides a hint based on that and goes by the name
Function Completion. It is triggered by selecting or automatically when a certain amount of characters is
typed (see also Preferences).
- The second one retrieves
all the words from the current file and provides hinting on that,
named Word Completion. This is triggered by selecting , or by entering a set number of characters (again, see Preferences). Word completion is the only type that can
automatically finish a word without displaying a list of options
first.
Somewhat
related but not exactly the same is the display of function parameter
hints, or calltips. This is a small tooltip that will show the
required parameters (and possibly some details of them) for a
function a call to which is being edited. This is specifically
targeted for programming purposes and serves no real value for other
tasks. The calltip will highlight the current parameter being edited
for a quick emphasis on what is actually needed. It is purely
passive and will not modify the text in any way. To trigger a calltip (if one can be found), select .Autocompletion
is language based (see Languages) and has different API files for
each language. For more details on these XML files and how to make your own ones, please refer to NpWiki++.