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Note: It's possible for object types with children to evaluate to a value. For example, even though Build is an object type with children, $Build$ can evaluate to a default value. Click ---------- to see a full list of object default values.be used as value types since they can have a default value. This is explained below in the Default Values section.

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Here's an example of pressing the Continua Variable starting key.

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To select an item you can use either Enter or Space. When using Enter on a value type item, the cursor will be placed after the closing character of the expression since value types have no children you can get values from. If the type is an object then Enter will place the cursor at the end of the selected object's text and before the closing character of the expression. To get the next list of options in the drop down for that object type, press the period key. Alternatively, you can use Space to select an item. If the item selected is a value type then the expression will be completed and a space added at the end of the closing character. If the item selected is an object type, Space will complete the expression and put the cursor immediately after the closing character.

As you type in the middle of the expression, the drop down list will filter its results based on the text entered. While the cursor is in the middle of an expression you can also use the key combination of [CTRL]-[.] or [CTRL]-[Space] to display the drop down with available options. The auto-complete behavior will come into effect and take into account what has already been entered into the expression to formulate the selectable items in the drop down.  

Default Values

Some object types are overloaded to behave like both objects and values. The most common time an object will be used as a variable is when an expression is used to get a repositories' source directory. For example, if I want to refer to a build's version I would use the expression "$Build.Version$". However, when typing that into an input field, you will note that "Version" is an object type that has children objects ("Default" and "DotNet"). If you select the "DotNet" item you will then get a drop down of items which are all value types ("Major", "Minor", "Build", "Revision"). If you wanted to get only the major version value of your version string then you would use the expression "$Build.Version.DotNet.Major$". Build Version is only one example where you may want to use the default value and not any of its children.

Here's a list of other important object types that have default values:

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