Panasonic Youth rob sanheim writes about software, business, ruby, music, stuff and things

java.awt.List - the Bane of IDE AutoCompletion

When I’m cruising in Eclipse, nothing disrupts flow like having to fix stupid import problems. FOr example, I type in a reference to List and try to autocorrect it:

Oh! I wanted the standard collection type, not the AWT specific list! Here, Eclipse, let me tell you I need the the standard list type another five million times while I autocomplete my 56th for loop over a collection.

But I’m not bitter.

Is there some way to fix this, short of hacking my JDK to remove AWT, since I never use it? This is almost as bad as java.math.BigDecimal and com.ibm.math.BigDecimal when working under WSAD.

http://www.benpryor.com/blog/index.php?/archives/4-Top-10-Tips-For-New-Eclipse-Users.html
See tip #10 for the answer to your question. Other useful tips as well. Also look at http://www.aspectprogrammer.org/blogs/adrian/2006/02/tips_for_using.html for more tips.

Window->Preferences->Java->Appearance->Type Filters

Add java.awt.* to it and you’ll never see it again. I also have com.sun.* in my list.

Well that was quick. Thanks for the tips. I actually went to look for a preference for this before posting, but I was looking in the wrong place - guess autocompletion and navigation doesn’t fall under “appearance” in my mind.

But it controls what “appears” in the type listing so it makes perfect sense (or at least i’m sure it did to the developer who put it there:)

While configuration is an option here, what to do for the few that need awt? Or who don’t want to bother with configuration? Eclipse should automatically remember or figure out what should be at the top of the list. It has all the information it needs to do so. And it does similar tricks in other cases.

Tom - it sounds like Eclipse 3.2 is going to do what you want. Take a look at the new features on the latest milestones.