Is it possible to disable command input in the toolbar search box?

Question

In the Visual Studio toolbar, you can enter commands into the search box by prefixing them with a > symbol. Is there any way to disable this? I've never used the feature, and it's slightly annoying when trying to actually search for something that you know is prefixed by greater-than in the code. It's particularly annoying when you accidentally search for "> exit" and the IDE quits (I knew there was a line in the code that was something like if(counter > exitCount) so entered that search without thinking).

At the very least, can you escape the > symbol so that you can search for it? Prefixing with ^ doesn't seem to work.

Answer 1

you can enter commands into the search box by prefixing them with a > symbol.

Wow, I didn't know that. Where do I find the list of possible commands?

I never actually use the search box, I've remapped ctrl+F to incremental search, which is usually ctrl+I

I find this much cooler than the normal search - give it a go, you might end up not caring about the search box anymore.

Answer 2

Wow, I didn't know that. Where do I find the list of possible commands?

The commands are the same as those you can enter in the command window, so you can pretty much drive the entire IDE and debugger using it. There are a load of predefined aliases for common commands. Open up the command window and enter alias for a list, to get you started.

Answer 3

This is a really cool feature. I've poked through the feature documentation, and the accompanying command list, and not a heck of a lot is showing up in terms of turning it off.

If you want to search for >exit, you could always type >Edit.Find >exit in the search box; that seems to do the trick. A bit verbose, though, but it really is an edge case.