Just write a quick macro for Visual Studio that would replace < with < and > with >, etc. I am probably the 1000th person to do that. Yet, it proved to be surprisingly hard.<\/p>\n
DTE.ActiveDocument.Selection<\/code> is an Object<\/code>. No methods, no nothing. Need to cast to TextSelection<\/code> to do anything useful with it.<\/li>\nTextSelection.ReplacePattern()<\/code> happily replaces one pattern, then loses selection. Attempts to artificially restore selection failed, as TopPoint<\/code> and BottomPoint<\/code> properties are read only. MoveToPoint()<\/code> did not do the trick either. I am still not sure how to tell the IDE to select the text from here to there.<\/li>\n- If you attempt to do something like
Selection.Text = Selection.Text.Replace((...)<\/code> it works fine for one line, but for multiline selection it inserts lots of spaces and generally looks very weird. It also takes a lot of time and occasionally throws exceptions. A non starter.<\/li>\n- Tried to use
DTE.Find<\/code> object, could not find a way to close programmatically the damn Find window. Fortunately DTE.Find.FindReplace()<\/code> works without opening the window.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nOh yeah, if you try Googling for it – forget about it. You are drowning in crap. Bing is slightly better, but still no help there.<\/p>\n
Final solution:<\/p>\n
\n Sub EscapeXmlChars()\n Replace(\"&\", \"&\")\n Replace(\"<\", \"<\")\n Replace(\">\", \">\")\n End Sub\n\n Sub UnescapeXmlChars()\n Replace(\"<\", \"<\")\n Replace(\">\", \">\")\n Replace(\"&\", \"&\")\n End Sub\n\n Private Sub Replace(ByVal find As String, ByVal replace As String)\n DTE.ActiveDocument.Activate()\n DTE.Find.FindReplace( _\n vsFindAction.vsFindActionReplaceAll, _\n find, _\n vsFindOptions.vsFindOptionsMatchInHiddenText, _\n replace, _\n vsFindTarget.vsFindTargetCurrentDocumentSelection)\n End Sub<\/code><\/pre>\n