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Viewing Information in Visual C ++

I'm trying to figure out what information lookup ( .sbr files) is used, but find only links on how to create it. So what is this for?

Thanks Dima

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visual-c ++ visual-studio
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Read here (Visual C ++ Team Blog: IntelliSense History, Part 1)

Capturing information about the C or C ++ program structure for a very long time in Microsoft products. Prior to even Visual C ++ 1.0, the compiler supports generating program information through .SBR and .BSC files. (Note: the compiler in Visual C ++ 1.0 was already version 8, so the command line tools were around after a while.) SBR files contain the link and definition information for the one translation unit that the compiler generates compiles . These SBR files are merged at a later stage, using BSCMAKE to create the BSC file. Then this file can be used to view many different aspects of the program: links, definitions, calling graphics, macros, etc.

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.sbr is pretty much Visual Studio ctags - an index of characters with backlinks to the source. When available, it is used by Find Symbol and other similar tools. This is more accurate than the built-in VS analyzer, because C ++ can be complicated, and a real compiler can do a better job (although not quite true in VS2010 anymore).

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At one time, viewing the information led to the "Go to Definition" engine, but it was redesigned in a later version of Visual C ++. Some third-party tools still use view information (I don’t remember exactly, but I think one of the Rational tools does) to cross-reference the code.

I always turned it off to reduce build time.

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