ClickHelp Software Documentation Glossary

What Is Snippet?

Snippet is a special term used in programming. It describes a small part of a machine or source code or just a part of a text. In most cases, snippets are considered to be units that are incorporated into larger modules of code or text. Adding and editing snippets can be the responsibility of different team members from code writers to content managers, who deal with editing and creating сontent of any kind, including textual. Unlike content managers, program source code editors, for example, dive deeper into the core of a product.

What Is the Purpose of Snippet?

From the snippet definition, we may understand that it is used to perform operations requiring some sort of routine in editing. For those who create content, snippets provide templates or prototypes and help to control structures of text or code, as it allows to avoid repeated typing and copy and pasting.

Key Areas of Using Snippets

Snippets can be used in software development, code editing, and creating or editing texts. The algorithms of snippet’s performance remain the same in their origin, while there can be some small differences related to the area of use.

Keeping that in mind, we may talk about snippet management, a process when code writers or content writers use and edit parts of code or text (or snippets themselves) with the help of snippet tools, represented mainly by special software.

Benefits of Using Snippets

The first and the most apparent benefit of using snippets is that they save time as they are templates of some content pieces that can be quickly included into a larger part of content. Users don't have to type the same text every time or copy and paste it. They use snippets instead.

The second and not such an obvious benefit is that templates allow programmers or writers to make fewer mistakes. They can be useful for beginners who learn to make prototypes or simple structures.

Using snippets is an excellent example of a solution that makes the work easier and faster.

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