Become an Eclipse hotkey showoff

JavaWorld - The great thing about Eclipse is that it's so feature-rich. If you can't find a feature, then either you just haven't looked hard enough or there's a plug-in that adds it. The worst thing about Eclipse is also that it's so feature-rich. The tool bars are crowded, the menus are congested, and the configuration dialogs remind me of the Minotaur's labyrinth (although configuration is much better in Version 3.1). Even experienced Eclipse programmers are slow and clumsy users. I've looked over countless colleagues' shoulders and blurted out "Control-Shift-T" (open type) when seeing them struggling to find a class in the Eclipse navigation pane. And with a small conscious time investment, you too can stop fumbling around in Eclipse and become a hotkey showoff.

Proficiency in Eclipse is not only good for your own productivity (I know, contractors paid by the hour tend to favor text editors), but also for your curriculum vitae (CV). Since Eclipse is surfacing on many Java job descriptions these days, it has become a good buzzword to have on your CV. I put it on mine between POJO (plain-old Java object) and POJI (plain-old Java interface). More and more companies are moving to Eclipse since it's free and generally accepted by programmers, except for the few diehard IntelliJ and Emacs enthusiasts.

So that your CV isn't all lies and/or to help increase your programming productivity, in this article, I give you a few Eclipse productivity tips.

Eclipse features with hotkey combinations

Using Eclipse with hotkey combinations can be like playing a video game. Mortal Combat particularly comes to mind. To be good at Mortal Combat, you must memorize a slew of game-pad sequences. For example, to perform the Sub-Zero Skeleton Rip on your enemy, you must do a Back, Forward, Forward, Down, X-button on the game control pad. Well, Eclipse is no different. The joystick in this case is any combination of Control, Alt, Shift, letters, numbers and F-keys.

Let's go through my favorites in order of most frequently used. (Note: these are tested in Eclipse Version 3.02 and up.)

1. Control-Shift-T: Open type. Forget manually navigating through the source tree unless you're procrastinating.


2. Control-Shift-R: Open resource (looks for more than just Java files).

A tip to go along with these first two combinations is in the Navigator view, accessed from the yellow double-arrowed Link With Editor icon. This will make the file you open appear in the navigator hierarchy, which is often good orientation information. Turn it off if things get too slow.

3. F3: Open declaration. Alternatively, you can click on the Declaration tab (in the Java perspective, go to Window, then Show View, then Declaration). This key shows entire method declarations in the declaration pane when you click on a method call in the code.


4. Alt-left arrow: Go back in navigation history. Works like a Web browser's back button and comes in handy after jumping around using F3.


5. Alt-right arrow: Go forward.


6. Control-Q: Go to last edit location. This key combination is also handy after you've been jumping around the code, especially if you've drilled down too deeply and have forgotten what you were doing.


7. Control-Shift-G: Find references in workspace. Prerequisite to most refactors. For methods, this key combination is basically the opposite of F3, allowing you to navigate backwards up a method stack to find a method's callers. A feature related to this is turning on occurrence marking. Go to Window, then Preferences, then Java, then Editor, then Mark Occurrences and select a few check-box options. This highlights all occurrences in the code when you click an element designated for marking. I personally only use Mark Local Variables. Beware: Enabling too many highlights can slow Eclipse.


8. Control-Shift-F: Reformat code (according to code style settings). Our team agreed on a coding style, and we posted the Eclipse code style-rules files to our wiki. To do that, we sat together in Eclipse and went to Window, then Preferences, then Java, then Code Style, and configured Code Formatter, Code Templates and Organize Imports. We used the Export function in each of these screens to generate the config files. We put these on the wiki, and everyone imported them into their Eclipse.


9. Control-O: Quick outline. Within the editor, this key combination allows you to jump to a method or attribute by typing a few letters of the name.


10. Control-/: Comment/uncomment a line. Can also work on many lines at a time.


11. Control-Alt-down arrow: Copy highlighted line(s).


12. Alt-down arrow: Move line(s) down. Alt-up arrow works as well