Hungry Backspace in Eclipse? - eclipse

In some editors there exist plugins implementing a feature called "hungry backspace" or "hungry delete".
If this mode is active in a text editor then one hit to the backspace key will automatically delete all whitespace chars backwards from the current cursor position up to the first non-whitespace character.
For example, this feature exists for Emacs and IntelliJ IDEA.
Does anyone know if it is also available in Eclipse?

Alt-Del is probably as close as you're going to get without writing a plugin yourself. Others have asked for this feature (coming from intelliJ) but so far it doesn't exist, or it's not published.
-Adam

CTRL-backspace is pretty close too: delete previous word:
function(); (4 spaces)
+ CTRL-BACKSPACE gives:
function
Other than that, AnyEdit plugin can convert trailing spaces into tabs (but also into "", effectively removing them)

Ctrl+Shift+Left, Backspace always works for me. works in notepad, web browsers, everywhere.
Stick to the standards :)

In SciTE, and Eclipse (3.4), Ctrl+Shift+Del with the caret after the last visible character will delete these spaces. Ie. it deletes from caret to end of line.
Actually, in SciTE I don't need to do that, since I have set it up to automatically remove these trailing spaces when saving.
Note: In Preferences > General > Keys, there is a Remove Trailing Whitespace binding (without key assignment by default) which seems to apply to File.

From eclipse Windows menu/Preferences
Search for Keys and filter to "Delete Previous Word"and Bind it to the Ctrl+Backspace

Related

How to use tabs instead of spaces for other than indenting in Eclipse neon?

I want to use the tab character rather than the set of spaces in every opportunity that presents itself. In Eclipse helios, this was not a problem. Eclipse did not attempt to change anything but the indentation, and that setting was settable. Now, I will go from:
...
(tab)/**
(tab)*(cursor)
...
then I will hit the tab character with my cursor where shown, resulting in:
...
(tab)/**
(tab)*(space)(space)(cursor)
...
Anyone know why this might be and how to prevent it? The single most annoying application of this problem is when I copy a tab character and paste it somewhere else, it shows up as a set of spaces.
Note: I can overcome this via ctrl+f and replace, but that is so annoying to use after the fact. I am looking for something that prevents that from being necessary in the first place

How to remove trailing whitespace *from selection* in Eclipse

The question is as simple as stated in the title - how to remove the whitespace in Eclipse, but only from the selected lines.
There are a lot of answers on SO how to remove trailing whitespace in Eclipse. Most of them focus on automatically removing it on save and all of them concern removing all of the trailing whitespace in the file.
I want none of these, as I am working on large JS files that are awfully formatted and very frequently committed; removing all the trailing whitespaces in the file would easily cause merge conflicts and a lot of noise from the people.
So I want to select specific parts of the files and fix them, in the way that this is possible with Source -> Format (Alt+Shift+F).
Shift-Ctrl-Right arrow will highlight whitespace to the right until next non-whitespace character (which may be newline). Press delete. If you lose the newline, simply press enter.

Can NetBeans remove trailing whitespace and change tabs to spaces on save?

I just started to use NetBeans, and am trying to work out how to:
Make it so that trailing whitespace is removed on save. I know that you can invoke it manually, but it’s annoying if you forget. Can it be done automatically on save? I want this done because it keeps the code neat, because it’s really annoying when you’re moving through code and the text cursor goes all over the place because of trailing whitespace you don’t see, and because trailing whitespace has unintended effects on HTML layouts and other stuff.
Make it so that tabs are automatically made into 4 spaces while you’re typing rather than converting on save, or, worse, only when manually invoked.
For the first question, NetBeans 7.0+ has now a built-in solution. You can find it in:
On NetBeans 7:
Tools > Options > Editor > General > When saving files > Remove Trailing Whitespace: Never / Always / For Modified Lines Only
On NetBeans 8 / 9:
Tools > Options > Editor > On Save > Remove Trailing Whitespace From: None / All Lines / Modified Lines Only
[Original] For your first question, how to set NetBeans to remove trailing whitespace, the answer is that there is no setting (at the moment) to control that. It happens automatically, but not to every line. Whitespace is only removed from the lines you edit (or from the entire file if invoked manually). See Petr Pisl's blog entry titled "Removing trailing spaces" for a more complete explaination. (Note that even though he is blogging about NetBeans' PHP features, this particular feature applies to the basic editor shared by all NetBeans supported languages.)
[Update] This feature has been made available as of version 7.0, as pointed out by others in comments and answers below.
For your second question, set the editor to automatically make tabs into spaces as you type, you can find that setting in the Editor Formatting options:
Click on the Tools menu, and choose Options
Click on Editor in the top row of icons
Click on the Formatting tab
In the Language field, ensure that All Languages is selected
In the Category field, ensure that Tabs And Indents is selected
Check the box for Expand Tabs to Spaces
For each additional language that is available in the Language field, check that either Override Global Options is not checked, or that Expand Tabs to Spaces is also checked for that language.
Click OK
That will make sure that when you hit the tab key the specified number of spaces is inserted rather than a tab character. As above with whitespace removal, any existing tabs in the file are left as-is unless you invoke the manual command to change the entire file. (Moreover, even if you edit a line with tabs on it--leaving the tabs in place--the editor will not convert them to spaces. Only new instances of hitting the TAB key are controlled by this option.)
Tools > Options > Editor > On Save > Remove Trailing Whitespace From: None / All Lines / Modified Lines Only
This is as of Netbeans 7.3, according to Webmut.
For netbeans 7.4+
Windows - Tools > Options > Editor > On Save > Remove Trailing Whitespace From: None / All Lines / Modified Lines Only
Mac - Netbeans > preferences > Options > Editor > On Save > Remove Trailing Whitespace From: None / All Lines / Modified Lines Only
Also you can set this as language specific.
You can also set reformat while saving.
if you want to remove all trailing spaces in the file manually ONLY ONCE, you can invoke action 'Remove Trailing Spaces' from Source menu manually.
Source -> Remove Trailing Spaces

Is there a way to get Eclipse to treat 4 spaces exactly as it treats a tab?

I understand how to get Eclipse to insert spaces in place of tabs, but then I'd rather not have to arrow through 12 spaces to reach an indented block.
Bonus points if there's a way to hide the spaces from the 'show whitespace characters'. I like to see whitespace characters for tabs and carriage returns, but the display gets too cluttered when spaces are also displayed.
Try CTRL+[right,left] arrow key. Certainly one of my most-used combos.
As it turns out, this appears to not be possible in Eclipse.
With the next Eclipse 20199.12/4.14, that might actually be possible! (albeit ten years later)
See "Backspace/delete can treat spaces as tabs"
If you use the Insert spaces for tabs option, now you can also change the backspace and delete keys behavior to remove multiple spaces at once, as if they were a tab.
The new setting is called Remove multiple spaces on backspace/delete and is found on the General > Editors > Text Editors preference page.

Double click text selection in CFEclipse

In CFEclipse, I do a lot of double-clicking to select text. The standard behavior is to select all text within the nearest word boundaries. This is problematic when editing code where the original editor didn't use camel-case; for example, they wrote "myObject" as "my_object".
Is there a way to change the double-click selection behavior to include '_' as a valid word character?
In the latest version of CFEclipse, there is now the option to define what characters are considered word boundaries when double-clicking, and also the option to use different characters when using alt or shift keys.
In Preferences, goto CFEclipse > Editor > Text Selection to update this:
(source: bpsite.net)
CFEclipse does not recognize either the underscore or a period as a character for selecting text with a double-click. There is no way that I know of other than rolling your sleeves up and hacking the editor code to change it. I doubt that this will be changed any time soon with the impending release of Bolt from Adobe.
On eclipse 3.4.1 Ganymede, it seems to select the nearest boundaries including the '_' (at least in the java file I am using)
What eclipse version are you using ?
This blog even reports that eclipse3.3 does select word as you are expecting it...
vs.