On Wed, 28 Jun 2006, Charles Curley wrote:
On Wed, Jun 28, 2006 at 09:01:00PM -0700, Ross Werner wrote:
notion that you just have to see it in action. I'm not sure what
exactly emacs can do, but vim can't hop through a dozen files
following the flow of code execution just by clicking on method
names. If I want to see all the files that call a certain public
method, with vim I'd likely have to grep and hope I don't get any
false hits.
I know Emacs has this facility; it's called etags. I thought there was
support for tags in vim, and possibly for good old vi.
Are etags automatically generated? So, for example, if I have twenty
methods called "doSomething()" in my project, will etags automatically
determine which one is being called as soon as I type the reference?
With Eclipse it's a simple key combination and never any false
results. If I change the name of a class or a method or a variable,
Eclipse will change every reference in the entire project.
That's cute but hazardous. Suppose I only want to change the name of a
method, and then write a new method with the old name? Done that. Will
it leave overloaded methods of the same name alone?
If you simply change text in the text editor it doesn't do any automatic
changing all over the place for you. You have to explicitly say "Rename
Method" (ctrl-shift-r) and you'll get a dialog box asking for the new
method name and various options (like whether you want it to automatically
change all references, etc). Obviously it can't read your mind and know
you want, but it gives you (in my opinion) just enough warnings and dialog
boxes to make it highly useful but not hazardous. And yes, it leaves
overloaded methods of the same name alone.
Anyhow, this is just barely scratching the surface of what Eclipse is
capable of, much less what a powerful IDE has the potential for. I don't
mean to be all "Eclipse r0x0rz!!" or anything--in my opinion Eclipse sucks
as a general text editor--but it does have very useful features that you
don't get in something more general purpose like emacs or vi.
~ Ross
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