Work with source code
When you work with code, CLion ensures that your work is stress-free. It offers various shortcuts and features to help you add, select, copy, move, edit, fold, find occurrences, and save code.
For navigation inside the editor, refer to Editor basics.
If you do not remember a shortcut for the action you want to use, press to find any action by name.
You can use the same dialog to find classes, files, or symbols. For more information, refer to Search everywhere.
If a file is read-only, it is marked with the closed lock icon in the status bar, in its editor tab, or in the Project tool window. If a file is writable, it is marked with the open lock icon in the Status bar.
Open file in the editor or select it in the Project tool window.
Do one of the following:
Go to File | File Properties | Make File Read-only or File | File Properties | Make File Writable.
Click the lock icon in the status bar.
If a read-only status is set by a version control system, it's suggested that you use CLion version control integration features. For more information, refer to Version control.
In the editor, place the caret at the characters you want to swap.
Go to Edit | Transpose.
There is no default shortcut for this action. You can assign a custom shortcut.
CLion offers several useful shortcuts for manipulating code lines.
note
If you need to undo or redo your changes, press / respectively.
To add a line after the current one, press . CLion moves the caret to the next line.
To add a line before the current one, press . CLion moves the caret to the previous line.
To duplicate a line, press .
To sort lines alphabetically in the whole file or in a code selection, go to Edit | Sort Lines or Edit | Reverse Lines. These actions might be helpful when you work with property files, data sets, text files, log files, and so on. If you need to assign shortcuts to those actions, refer to Keyboard shortcuts for more information.
To delete a line, place the caret at the line you need and press .
To join lines, place the caret at the line to which you want to join the other lines and press . Keep pressing the keys until all the needed elements are joined.
You can also join string literals, a field or variable declaration, and a statement. Note that CLion checks the code style settings and eliminates unwanted spaces and redundant characters.
To split string literals into two parts, press .
CLion splits the string and provides the correct syntax. You can also use the Break string on '\n' intention to split string literals. Press or click to select this intention.
To comment a line of code, place the caret at the appropriate line and press . Press again on the same line to uncomment it.
To move a line up or down, press or respectively.
You can use the standard shortcuts to copy and paste any selected code fragment. If nothing is selected, CLion automatically copies as is the whole line where the caret is located.
By default, when you paste anything in the editor, CLion performs "smart" paste, for example, pasting multiple lines in comments will automatically add the appropriate markers to the lines you are pasting. If you need to paste just plain text, press .
When you copy () or cut () a line without any code selected, the paste action will add the contents of the clipboard to above the current line, not at your caret.
If you want to paste your copied code at the caret, select the Paste at the caret position option in the advanced settings.
Place the caret at a line or a symbol, right-click to open the context menu, select Copy/Paste Special | Copy Reference. When you select the Copy Reference () option, CLion creates a reference string that includes the line number of the selected line or symbol. You can press to paste the copied reference anywhere.
CLion keeps track of everything you copy to the clipboard. To paste from history, in the editor, from the context menu, select Copy/Paste Special | Paste from History (). In the dialog that opens, select your entry and click Paste.
tip
The default number of items stored in the clipboard history is 100.
When you copy and paste code to the editor, CLion displays the hidden (special) characters represented by their Unicode name abbreviation.
In the editor, place the caret at the item you want to select and press / to extend or shrink your selection.
For example, in a plain text file, the selection starts within the whole word then extends to the sentence, paragraph, and so on.
If you need just to highlight your braces, place the caret immediately after the block closing brace/bracket or before the block opening brace/bracket.
In the Settings dialog () , go to Editor | General | Smart Keys.
Select the Use "CamelHumps" words checkbox.
If you want to use double-click when selecting according to capitalization, make sure that the Honor "CamelHumps" words settings when selecting on double click checkbox right below is selected.
In the editor, place the caret at the needed statement and press to move a statement up or to move a statement down. CLion moves the selected statement performing a syntax check.
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If moving of the statement is not allowed in the current context, the actions will be disabled.
In the editor, press or from the main menu select Code | Complete Current Statement. CLion inserts the required trailing comma automatically in structs, slices, and other composite literals. The caret is moved to the position where you can start typing the next statement.
Place the caret at the expression you want to remove or unwrap.
Press .
CLion shows a popup with all actions available in the current context. To make it easier to distinguish between statements to be extracted and statements to be removed, CLion uses different background colors.
Select an action and press .
Move and copy code fragments by dragging them in the editor.
To move a code fragment, select it and drag the selection to the target location.
To copy a code selection, keeping pressed, drag it to the target location.
note
The copy action might not be available in macOS since it can conflict with global OS shortcuts.
The drag functionality is enabled by default. To disable it, in the Settings dialog () , go to Editor | General and clear the Move code fragments with drag-and-drop checkbox in the Mouse Control section.
To toggle between the upper and lower case for the selected code fragment, press .
Note that when you apply the toggle case action to the CamelCase name format, CLion converts the name to the lower case.
To comment or uncomment a code fragment, select it and press .
To configure settings for commenting behavior, use options in the Comment Code section, on the Code Generation tab located in the language-specific pages under File | Settings | Editor | Code Style.
Folded code fragments are shown as shaded ellipses (). If a folded code fragment contains errors, CLion highlights the fragment in red.
You can configure default code folding behavior in Settings | Editor | General | Code Folding.
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If code in a folded fragment is changed during reformatting or refactoring, CLion automatically expands the folded fragment.
Call Help | Find Action () and search for folding. CLion will show a popup with all folding actions with their shortcuts:
To fold or unfold a code fragment, press /. CLion folds or unfolds the current code fragment, for example, a single method.
To collapse or expand all code fragments, press /.
CLion collapses or expands all fragments within the selection, or, if nothing is selected, all fragments in the current file, for example, all methods in a file.
To collapse or expand code recursively, press /. CLion collapses or expands the current fragment and all its subordinate regions within that fragment.
To fold blocks of code, press . This action collapses the code fragment between the matched pair of curly braces
{}
, creates a custom folding region for that fragment, and makes it "foldable".To collapse or expand doc comments in the current file, in the main menu select Code | Folding | Expand doc comments/Collapse doc comments.
To collapse or expand a custom code fragment, select it and press .
You can fold or unfold any manually selected regions in code.
To expand the current fragment and all the nested fragments, press . You can expand the current fragment up to the specified nesting level (from 1 to 5).
To expand all the collapsed fragments in the file, press . You can expand the collapsed fragments up to the specified nesting level (from 1 to 5).
You can collapse or expand code using the Surround With action.
In the editor, select a code fragment and press .
From the popup menu, select <editor-fold...> Comments or region...endregion Comments.
Optionally, specify a description under which the collapsed fragment will be hidden.
To collapse or expand the created region, press .
To navigate to the created custom region, press .
You can hide the code folding arrow icons that appear in the gutter.
In the Settings dialog () , go to Editor | General | Code Folding.
Clear the Show code folding arrows checkbox.
note
This option is available only in the new UI. In the classic UI, use the Show code folding outline option instead.