How to create a comment block of //'s around text of different lengths

Question

I'm curious, if there's a way to create these blocks automatically around a text? Currently working in VS / VSCode projects.

/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
///////////////////// Demo Text /////////////////////////
/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

Due to varying text length, this can be really annoying.

Thanks!

Answer 1

I decided to make an extension to handle a wide variety of comment block requests, Comment Blocks, which is simpler to use than the version I previously made below.

With this keybinding (in your keybindings.json after installing the extension)

{
  "key": "alt+b",                     // whatever you want
  "command": "comment-blocks.createBlock",
  "args": {
    "lineLength": 57,          // what you used in your example
    "startText": "${LINE_COMMENT}",
    "endText": "",

    // two padded lines with no text surrounding the selected text
    "subjects": ["", "${selectedText}", ""], 
  
    "padLines": "/",   // pad with the '/' character
    "gapLeft": 1,      // 1 space to left of text
    "gapRight": 1      // 1 space to right of text
  }
}

Demo:

You can also select multiple lines of text (with the same keybinding!):

---

Here is a vscode solution. You will need some macro extension to run several commands in a row. Here I am using multi-command for example. See https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=ryuta46.multi-command

settings.json:

{
  "command": "multiCommand.createTextBlock2",
  // "interval": 350,
  "sequence": [
    
    "cursorEnd",        
    "cursorHomeSelect",
    {
                 // pad with equal number of /'s before and after text
                 
      "command": "editor.action.insertSnippet",
      "args": {
        "snippet": "////////////////////////////// $TM_SELECTED_TEXT //////////////////////////////"
      }
    },
    
    "cursorHomeSelect",
    {
      "command": "editor.action.insertSnippet", 
      "args": {
        "name": "Create a Text Block",
      }
    },
    "cursorDown"
  ]
},

A snippet (in one of your snippets files):

"Create a Text Block": {
  "prefix": "tb",
  "body": [
    
    "/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////", 
    "${TM_SELECTED_TEXT/(.*)(.{57})(\\1).*/$2/g}",
    "/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////",    
    
  ],
  "description": "create a text block"
},

And a keybinding (keybindings.json) to trigger the macro.

{
  "key": "alt+b",
  "command": "extension.multiCommand.execute",
  "args": { "command": "multiCommand.createTextBlock" },
  "when": "editorTextFocus && !editorReadonly"
},

To explain the macro:

You had 57 /'s on each line without any text, so that is what I used - chose some amount.

Step 1 of the macro: The text is selected and padded at the start and end of the text with lots of /'s. Must be an equal number of /'s before and after the text for the regex to do its magic - I used about 30 or so.

Step 2: The snippet is inserted.

The interesting part. Keep the middle 57 characters of the line containing the text with the regex (.*)(.{57})(\\1).*. The \\1 is a backreference to whatever was captured in the first capture group - so capture groups 1 and 3 will be the same length.

And capture group 2 will be our text surrounded by an equal number of /'s (if we added and equal number of /'s before the regex transform which we did). The .* at the very end of the regex is to handle the odd/even number of characters in the text.

regex101 demo - middle 25 characters

And see How to pad out line to certain length using regex replace and snippets for a similar question about padding out different lines of text to equal lengths.

Answer 2

That would have to be done via a plugin/extension, not possible natively.