Snippet (programming)
On the flip side, this means that snippets cannot be invariably modified after the fact, and thus is vulnerable to all of the problems of copy and paste programming.
For this reason snippets are primarily used for simple sections of code (with little logic), or for boilerplate, such as copyright notices, function prototypes, common control structures, or standard library imports.
These basic management abilities include operations such as viewing, adding, editing, deleting, sorting, filtering, grouping, renaming, and storing snippets in a repository, catalogue, or database.
Some editors provide a macro ability to snippets allowing function prototypes and variable control structures to be generated based on a standard template.
Some programmer's applications such as Eclipse, NetBeans, and Microsoft's Visual Studio (uses TextMate-inspired snippets underhood) and other IDEs include built-in parts of structure for ease of coding.
Snippets may be used inside commandline interfaces like bash, zsh (GNU Linux/Unix-like) or powershell (MS Windows).
Assuming weak typing and not being concerned about name collision, this is represented by the code: When the snippet is inserted, the programmer is prompted for the values of the two parameters.
These snippet feature groups include: The type of scripting support varies, but may include features such as running shell commands, providing a GUI dialog or other methods of user interaction with the operating system; other applications; or other sub-components of the hosting application itself.
This allows the user to indicate that one or more values supplied for a placeholder should be replicated and transformed in other places within the text of the programmable snippet.
For these and other reasons, emitting plain text from programmable snippets almost always entails being careful to avoid problems with syntax and delimiter collisions.
As of 2021 some sophisticated deep-learning tooling emerged that can help to infer specific functionality from a human readable text and generate corresponding source code snippets (e.g. GitHub Copilot).
