Snippet (programming)

Snippet is a programming term for a small region of re-usable source code, machine code, or text. Ordinarily, these are formally defined operative units to incorporate into larger programming modules. Snippet management is a feature of some text editors, program source code editors, IDEs, and related software. It allows the user to avoid repetitive typing in the course of routine edit operations. In programming practice, "snippet" refers narrowly to a portion of source code that is literally included by an editor program into a file, and is a form of copy and paste programming. This concrete inclusion is in contrast to abstraction methods, such as functions or macros, which are abstraction within the language. Snippets are thus primarily used when these abstractions are not available or not desired, such as in languages that lack abstraction, or for clarity and absence of overhead. Snippets are similar to having static preprocessing included in the editor, and do not require support by a compiler. On the flip side, this means that snippets cannot be invariably modified after the fact, and thus is vulnerable to all of the problems of copy and paste programming. For this reason snippets are primarily used for simple sections of code (with little logic), or for boilerplate, such as copyright notices, function prototypes, common control structures, or standard library imports. Snippet management is a text editor feature popular among software developers or others who routinely require content from a catalogue of repeatedly entered text (such as with source code or boilerplate). Often this feature is justified because the content varies only slightly (or not at all) each time it is entered. Text editors that include this feature ordinarily provide a mechanism to manage the catalogue, and separate "snippets" in the same manner that the text editor and operating system allow management of separate files. These basic management abilities include operations such as viewing, adding, editing, deleting, sorting, filtering, grouping, renaming, and storing snippets in a repository, catalogue, or database.