In a blog post today, Microsoft described the new search feature as an answer to Visual Studio 2019 users who are inspecting to many variables in Locals or scrolling through Watch to find an object. With the new feature, users can highlight and navigate to a location they choose. Furthermore, navigation is possible to the value, name, and type columns of each search match. Microsoft says the update is available for Vis Studio 2019 in most languages, although Xamarin, Unity, and SQL are excluded. One of the core abilities of the feature is finding keywords faster by search and highlighting. Microsoft describes a system where the user types a search terms into the search bar. Visual Studio 2019 will automatically highlight search matches for more efficient locating.
Dig Deeper
Of course, some users want more than to simple see keyword results. With the new ability, digging behind keyword searches is now more organic: “You can execute a search query using ENTER or the right and left arrow icons (“find next” (F3) and “find previous” (Shift+F3), respectively) shown below. If you are not a fan of scrolling to the items you want, clicking the arrows are also used to navigate through each found match.” Microsoft says the easy search navigation works on a depth first system. This basically means search results are located as far into a variable as specified by the user. Because of this, users who want to see behind the keyword search can find information more quickly. What about going a step further? Well, Visual Studio 2019 now allows a “Search Depth” drop down options to find search results that are embedded deeper into objects. “This option gives you the power to choose how thorough you want to search inside your objects (up to 10 levels), letting you decide how long or short the search process takes.”
