Is it possible to hide classes and variables from intelisense?

Intellisense works by examining your project's source. So the only things it will see on your end user's end are those that are exposed in the source you give to them, i.e., if you are providing a binary library and associated headers, only what appears in those headers.

Therefore, you can 'hide' things from the end user's Intellisense database by not exposing them at a source level in the first place. Use techniques like the pimpl idiom to keep things out of class definitions, and keep a careful eye on what is appearing in code you're shipping to your end user with your library.

However, consider the benefit you get for these efforts. It might be enough to simply not document these parts, or mark them "not documented, private use only".

EDIT: This is all assuming C(++). If you're using a .NET language, there are apparently attributes to hide things from Intellisense.

Oh yeah forgot to say I was coding in C++.

I'll check out this pimpl idiom technique are there any other similar techniques?

Thanks

Kelvin

class Visible {private:  class Hidden {};public:};

Antheus in your example are you just not declaring a class in the private space of the class Visible?? If so how does that help? If you meant to declare an instance of the Hidden class in the class Visible.

eg

class Visible {

private:

class Hidden m_Hidden;

public:

};

It does not solve my problem because the user can still see that class instance as a private member I only want the relevant classes/functions to be shown. Like when you use STL you don't see any private functions or inherited functions that are of not relevance to you. I want to do the same thing.

Quote:

Original post by nivlekio It does not solve my problem because the user can still see that class instance as a private member I only want the relevant classes/functions to be shown. Like when you use STL you don't see any private functions or inherited functions that are of not relevance to you. I want to do the same thing.

Under 2008, I see all members, including private and inherited ones.

The reason for this has to do with naming convention - all non-public, non-STL members are prefixed with _, so they are placed at the end of the list.

When you are done editing that code create some macros with #define that will generate the code. The Visual Studio c++ intelisense is really stupid and on most cases is unable to understand that code. Also it has a really hart time understanding templates. You may create a combination of those 2 in order to stop intelisense from working anymore.


Raxvan

Quote:

Original post by Makaan When you are done editing that code create some macros with #define that will generate the code. The Visual Studio c++ intelisense is really stupid and on most cases is unable to understand that code. Also it has a really hart time understanding templates. You may create a combination of those 2 in order to stop intelisense from working anymore.

Please don't abuse macros to confuse intellisense. This at the least assumes intellisense won't improve. Another issues is macro abuse is annoying and can create weird errors that are time consuming to solve. Just my two cents.

Quote:

Original post by nobodynews Quote: Original post by Makaan When you are done editing that code create some macros with #define that will generate the code. The Visual Studio c++ intelisense is really stupid and on most cases is unable to understand that code. Also it has a really hart time understanding templates. You may create a combination of those 2 in order to stop intelisense from working anymore. Please don't abuse macros to confuse intellisense. This at the least assumes intellisense won't improve. Another issues is macro abuse is annoying and can create weird errors that are time consuming to solve. Just my two cents.

In my experience Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2's C++ Intellisense does tremendously well in understanding both macros and templates, including STL and several different smart pointer libraries, so abusing macros and templates to disable Intellisense will only lead to pain in the future.