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Reformatting text with Copilot#
I wanted to write alt text for the following screenshot (of this page), so I could include it in this post on Mastodon.

For my alt text I wanted just the concept I was trying to illustrate - which is the number of comments attached to each of those issues.
I hit “select all” in my browser and pasted the following block of text into a new document in VS Code:
1Day 9: Rope Bridge day2#11 by simonw was closed Dec 9, 2022374Day 8: Treetop Tree House day5#10 by simonw was closed Dec 8, 20226277Day 7: No Space Left On Device day8#9 by simonw was closed Dec 7, 202294010Day 6: Tuning Trouble day11#8 by simonw was closed Dec 5, 2022121613Day 5: Supply Stacks day14#6 by simonw was closed Dec 5, 2022151716Day 4: Camp Cleanup day17#5 by simonw was closed Dec 4, 2022181419Day 3: Rucksack Reorganization day20#4 by simonw was closed Dec 3, 2022212822Day 2: Rock Paper Scissors day23#3 by simonw was closed Dec 3, 2022241825Day 1: Calorie Counting day26#1 by simonw was closed Dec 1, 2022272I wanted to reformat this to be a list of items that looked like this:
1Day 1: Calorie Counting - 2 commentsSo I typed the following below:
1Reformatted sorted by number, with the " day" removed and with just the title and the number of comments:2
3Day 1: Calorie Counting - 2 commentsGiving it an example of the first item I wanted proved essential, since it let it understand that the 2 on its own line was what I meant by “number of comments”.
I hit “tab” a few times and Copilot completed the rest of the list for me:
1Day 1: Calorie Counting - 2 comments2Day 2: Rock Paper Scissors - 18 comments3Day 3: Rucksack Reorganization - 28 comments4Day 4: Camp Cleanup - 14 comments5Day 5: Supply Stacks - 17 comments6Day 6: Tuning Trouble - 16 comments7Day 7: No Space Left On Device - 40 comments8Day 8: Treetop Tree House - 27 comments9Day 9: Rope Bridge - 7 commentsHere’s what that looked like:

It also made up a suggestion for Day 10 - “Day 10: The ‘C’ Language: vb - 1 comment” - no idea where it got that idea from!