About Saving and Restoring Formatting Options (Visual LISP IDE)

The Visual LISP IDE code formatter by default saves all changes to the formatting options so that they carry over to subsequent sessions.

Note: The Visual LISP IDE is available on Windows only.

Alternatively, the current formatting options can be saved at the end of the program in the active text editor window in the form of a comment block. Visual LISP only saves formatting options in a program only when the Save Formatting Options in Source File option is selected from the Format Options dialog box, and when either the Format Edit Window or Format Selection tools are used. Each time the Format Edit Window or Format Selection tools are used, the comment block is replaced with one based on the current formatting options.

Note: Visual LISP only looks for the formatting option comment block at the end of the file.

The following is an example of what the code formatter adds to the end of an AutoLISP file when the Save Formatting Options in Source File is enabled:

;|<<Visual LISP© Format Options>>
(40 2 40 2 nil "end of " 60 9 0 0 1 T T nil T)
;*** DO NOT add text below the comment! ***|;

When Visual LISP opens a file, it looks for the comment block that begins with the line ;|<<Visual LISP© Format Options>>. If the comment block is found, the current formatting options Visual LISP is using are overridden with those in the program. If the comment block is not found or is incorrectly formatted, the formatting options are not loaded into Visual LISP.