1.5. Rename All Instances of Any Program Element

Symbolic rename allows you to rename all instances of any element you declare in your program, from classes and interfaces to properties and methods, in a single step. This technique, which is decidedly not a simple text search-and-replace feature by virtue of its awareness of program syntax, solves many knotty problems found in previous releases of Visual Basic. For example, imagine you want to rename a public property named FirstName. If you use search-and-replace, you'll also inadvertently affect a text box named txtFirstName, an event handler named cmdFirstName_Click, a database field accessed through row("FirstName"), and even your code comments. With symbolic rename, the IDE takes care of renaming just what you want, and it completes all of its work in a single step.

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Need to rename a method, property, or variable without mangling other similar names in the same file? Visual Studio 2005 includes the perfect antidote to clumsy search-and-replace.

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