Parameter Info

Parameter Info, as its name implies, is designed to provide interactive guidance for the parameters needed for any given function call. This feature proves especially useful for making function calls that have a long list of parameters or a long overload list.

Parameter Info is initiated whenever you type an opening parenthesis after a function name. To see how this works, perform these steps:

1. Type the name of a function.

2. Type an open parenthesis. A pop-up box shows the function signature.

3. Scroll through the different signatures by using the small up- and down-arrow cues if there are multiple valid signatures (for example, multiple overloaded versions of this function). Select the desired signature.

4. Start typing the actual parameters you want to pass in to the function.

As you type, the parameter info pop-up continues coaching you through the parameter list by bolding the current parameter you are working on. As each successive parameter is highlighted, the definition for that parameter appears. If the function in question has multiple overloads, the pop-up box will contain up and down arrows that can be used to cycle between the different parameter definition sets.

In Figure 7.17, we are entering a parameter for the Console.ReadKey method. Note that we are using an overload of this function and the presence of the up and down arrows for cycling between the two defined function definitions for ReadKey.

FIGURE 7.17 IntelliSense: parameter info.