Wingware Blog: Auto-Editing in Wing Pro (Part 3 of 3)

Wing Pro implements a suite of auto-editing operations that take care of common low-level editing tasks. In the previous installments of this 3-part Wing Tips series on Wing Pro's auto-editing features we looked at managing Python code blocks and auto-invocation.

To finish up this series, let's take a look at PEP 8 compliant auto-spacing and a few less frequently needed but useful operations.

Note: If you have Wing Personal, you don't have the features described here. We'll return to features that are also present in Wing Personal next time. Or try Wing Pro on a free trial.

Auto-Entering Spaces and PEP 8

Wing Pro can auto-enter spacing as you type, but this operation is off by default since it may take some getting used to. Once enabled with the Editor > Auto-Editing > Auto-Enter Spaces preference, you can type x=1 to get x = 1 or i=range(x=0,10) to enter i = range(x=0, 10). Spacing is entered in a PEP 8 compliant way.

Shown above: Type "t([1,2,3],y=f)" without any spaces; PEP 8 compliant spacing is auto-entered as needed.

Some options for auto-spacing are available on the Editor > Auto-Editing preferences page, to control whether spaces are auto-entered after unambiguous keyword names are entered, whether to prevent insertion of spacing that is not PEP 8 compliant, and how to place spaces in type annotations.

PEP 8 Reformatting: If you're interested in maintaining strict PEP 8 compliance, you can enable automatic PEP 8 reformatting in the Editor > PEP 8 preferences group. Reformatting takes place either after leaving an edited line or for the whole file when it is saved to disk. Or, trigger reformatting manually from the Source > PEP 8 menu group.

Correcting Out-of-Order Typing

Wing recognizes some types of out-of-order typing and adjusts them automatically, as a way to save on keystrokes. Some of the transformations include:

Keys Pressed	Keys Entered
if x(:)	if x(): followed by a new line and indentation
def x(-)	def x() -> for entering a type annotation
x()t	x().t
x(.y)	x().y
x(,)	x(),

Shown above: Type "def x(:)" to start the first def, "def y(a,b-)" for the second, and finally "c=a,x(,)b"

Changing Type of Quotes on a String

When the caret is just after a string and a quote character is pressed, the quotes around the string are changed to that type of quote. This works with regular and triple-quoted strings, although it's most useful for regular strings when the string needs to be edited to contain a quote character.

Shown above: Type 'x = "test"', move caret to right, and then press ' to change to single quotes so the string can contain a double quote

That's it for our three-part Wing Tips series on auto-editing in Wing Pro. For details on all the available auto-editing operations, see Auto-Editing in the Wing Pro manual.

Auto-editing is just one way in which Wing helps with writing, testing, and debugging Python code. Next week we'll move on to some of the others.

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