Eclipse Shortcuts

Editors are an integral part of a programmer’s life. If you have good proficiency in using an editor thats a great advantage. It comes very handy to debug. Traditional notepad and SOPs (System.out.println) are the way we start learning a language but that is not sufficient, so beginners start using an IDE and most importantly know the shortcuts.

For java developers there is a huge list and some popular areEclipse, Netbeans, IntelliJ Idea. I use Eclipse as my IDE and vim as a light weight editor.

This article is for those who use or intend to use Eclipse as IDE. Keyboard shortcuts are very important for comfortable and quick editing. I have abridged the following list of eclipse shortcuts from my own experience and literature.

There is a huge list of eclipse shortcuts available but I have listed only the most essential ones that you may need daily. Download this list as a pdf formatted for single page.

File Navigation – Eclipse Shortcuts

• CTRL SHIFT R – Open a resource. You need not know the path and just part of the file name is enough.
• CTRL E – Open a file (editor) from within the list of all open files.
• CTRL PAGE UP or PAGE DOWN – Navigate to previous or next file from within the list of all open files.
• ALT <- or ALT -> – Go to previous or next edit positions from editor history list.

Java Editing – Eclipse Shortcuts

• CTRL SPACE – Type assist
• CTRL SHIFT F – Format code.
• CTRL O – List all methods of the class and again CTRL O lists including inherited methods.
• CTRL SHIFT O – Organize imports.
• CTRL SHIFT U – Find reference in file.
• CTRL / – Comment a line.
• F3 – Go to the declaration of the variable.
• F4 – Show type hierarchy of on a class.
• CTRL T – Show inheritance tree of current token.
• SHIFT F2 – Show Javadoc for current element.
• ALT SHIFT Z – Enclose block in try-catch.

  General Editing – Eclipse Shortcuts

  • F12 – Focus on current editor.
  • CTRL L – Go to line number.
  • CTRL D – Delete a line.
  • CTRL <- or -> – Move one element left or right.
  • CTRL M – Maximize editor.
  • CTRL SHIFT P – Go to the matching parenthesis.

  Debug, Run – Eclipse Shortcuts

  • CTRL . or , – Navigate to next or previous error.
  • F5 – Step into.
  • F6 – Step over.
  • F8 – Resume
  • CTRL Q – Inspect.
  • CTRL F11 – Run last run program.
  • CTRL 1 – Quick fix code.

  Search – Eclipse Shortcuts

  • CTRL SHIFT G – Search for current cursor positioned word reference in workspace
  • CTRL H – Java search in workspace.
  Download eclipse shortcuts list as a single page pdf. You can stick it for quick reference in your workstation.