Subtle typos and the problems they bring, it’s enough to drive one nuts. Let me share a recent experience that will shed some light on my most recent experience. Below is a short snippet of code that show something similar to what I was recently attempting to do. It’s nothing more than a variable definition, and in one place incrementing the variable, in another I decrementing.
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In the previous post I described the basics for working with code completion in Xcode. In this post I will show how you can use built-in text macros to insert various code fragments.

As an example, begin by entering ifelse into Xcode and follow this by pressing Control . (control period) and you’ll see the following code block inserted:
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What follows is a quick review of how I use code completion in Xcode. Chances are that options and features exist beyond what I’ll cover here, so comments and suggestions are welcome.

Let’s say I want to insert a CGRectMake method. I can begin by typing CG and pressing F5 (or Option-esc), which will popup a list of possible matches:
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Beyond the settings you can access from the Preferences menu of Xcode, there are a number of configurable options that can be set using the defaults command from a terminal window.

Two of the settings that I have configured are to beep when a left bracket ( ] ) is entered without a matching right bracket, and second, to increase the number of entries in the recent projects menu (File menu, Recent Projects).
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Although covered many other places on the net, I recently had to make a change to the name that Xcode automagically inserts when creating new files, so I figured I’d also pass on this tip to readers of this blog as well.

By default, Xcode inserts a company name something similar to the following in all new source files (.m .h etc):
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In a previous post I introduced how to use #pragma mark to help navigate source files within Xcode. There are several additional tags that can be used within a source file to call out specific code or content.
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A friend in San Francisco, Rodney Aiglstorfer, was recently jumping through hoops to get Xcode to cooperate with his iPhone. There’s nothing more aggravating than having your application running within the simulator and getting stuck downloading to a device.

At one point in the process he opted to remove the Xcode developer tools and start the configuration from the beginning. Which leads to the tip: should you ever find the need to remove Xcode, run the following from within a terminal window to make it happen:

sudo <Xcode>/Library/uninstall-devtools --mode=all

<Xcode> is the directory where the tools are installed. For typical installations the full path is /Developer/Library/uninstall-devtools

Easy enough, just make sure this is what you really intend to do as once it’s gone, it’s gone.