Open Selection Feature

Product Family: DACS, SCORE
Target CPU: Any
Language: Any
Host: Any

The DACS and SCORE Graphical User Interface (GUI) provides many useful shortcuts. One example of this is the Open Selection menu item available on the right mouse context menu and File menu for Editor, Message, and Library windows. If a filename is highlighted in the window, selecting this feature will open the highlighted file in a new editor window.

This feature may be used in conjunction with the File|Find in Files support offered by the GUI. For each match, the filename, line number, and the line containing the string will be displayed in a Message window. Double clicking on the filename in the Message window will highlight the entire filename and line number. The Open Selection menu item can then be used to open the file and position the cursor at the line containing the matched text.

Another use for this feature is in the DACS Library window. One of the attributes stored in an Ada library with each compilation unit is the name of the source file. (Note: The actual source code is also stored in the library, if the /nosave_source option is not specified to the compiler.) In order to view the attributes on a compilation unit, open the Ada Library in the GUI (Library|Open). Select Library|Show Units to display a dialog asking for the unit mask and which attributes to display. Check the Source File Name checkbox and click OK. This will provide output similar to the following in the right pane of the Library window:

+++ Command started at 02/19/99 14:15:57
HELLO
    Procedure Specification compiled Feb 18 14:50:43 1999
     File   : C:\Dacs\examples\hello.ADA
    Procedure Body          compiled Feb 18 14:50:43 1999
     File   : C:\Dacs\examples\hello.ADA

+++ Command completed successfully at 02/19/99 14:16:00
+++ ---------------------------------------------------------

Double click on the filename to highlight the text and then select Open Selection to open the file in a new editor window. The Library|Show Source menu can be used to display the source code that is actually compiled in the Ada library. However, this will not allow editing, since it is not necessarily the same as the source code on the hard drive.

There are countless other uses of the Open Selection feature, including opening build files used in the link command line of a Message window. This article cannot enumerate them all, but simply describes the usefulness of this feature.