CP Template Helper

A Visual Studio Code extension to effortlessly import your competitive programming templates!

Getting Started

To get started, create a cpth.config.json file in the folder containing your competitive programming files. You can use the file to provide information about your templates. Here is an example configuration which defines the pii template:

{
  "templates": [
    {
      "name": "pii",
      "template": "typedef pair<int, int> pii;"
    }
  ]
}

To use the extension in your code, you must have the following in it:

// MACROS
// ALIASES
// DATA STRUCTURES
// ALGORITHMS
// MAIN

These comments are used by the extension to figure out where to insert templates.

TIP: You can also use the cpth snippet to add these to your code.

Defining Templates

There are two ways to define templates:

1. Templates Inside The Config File

You can directly define the templates inside the config file in the templates array, as shown above in the getting started section. The templates array takes objects which have the following properties:

• name (required): The name of the template.
• template (required): The content of the template. This can either be a string (representing the full content of the template) or an array of strings (representing the individual lines of the template).
• type: The type of the template, which can be one of:
  • alias [default] (typedef, using, etc.)
  • macro (#define)
  • ds (class, struct, etc.)
  • algo (function)
• requires: An array of other templates that the template uses.

2. Templates As Their Own Files

You can put templates in their own separate files. In a template file,

• The first line should be // @template TemplateName, where TemplateName is the name of your template.
• If the template uses other templates, the second line should start with // @requires, followed by the required templates, separated by commas. For example, // @requires SegTree, vi, pii
• A marker comment should be placed in the file to indicate the start of the template. This comment can either be // START DATA STRUCTURE or // START ALGORITHM. Any code in the file after this marker will be included in the template content.

TIP: You can also use the tcpth snippet to add these to your template file.

NOTE: You can only define one template in one file. You cannot define aliases in separate files.

For the extension to use your template file, you must add it to the includes property of your config file. Example:

{
  "includes": [ "segtree.cpp", "dijkstra.cpp" ]
}

You can also put folders in the includes property to add all the template files inside them.

Sharing Templates

You can easily share your configuration files with others. To add other configurations to your config file, you can list their files in the extends property.

NOTE: Any file path you put in the includes or extends array in a config file must be relative to the location of that config file.