Eclipse surround with quotes and other blocks

Question

I find myself wanting to highlight a string in eclipse and double or single quoting it. I can't seem to find a shortcut for it. In textmate for example if i highlight a string and type either a ' or a " the string will be surrounded with them. The same should work with ) and } i think as well.

I've added a code template for doing it but it doesn't ever appear in the menu and there doesn't seem to be a way to create shortcuts for it either. Note that this should be entirely keyboard driven and not involve any secondary menus, that's my goal anyway.

Solution

Go to Java > Editor > Templates and add a new template, e. g. called quote, as follows:

 "${word_selection}"${cursor}

Then, in the editor, write a text you want to quote, select it, press Ctrl+Space, type quote and hit Return. The highlighted text should be quoted now.

If you don't get template proposals when pressing Ctrl+Space, make sure you have them checked in Java > Editor > Content Assist > Advanced.

Just tried it and it works for me!

Comments

[Mike]

You could also call it " and that way its even closer to what the OP asked! (ie. ctrl + space then " + enter)

[janhink]

True, but now you have to hit Return twice in order for the template to apply. But if you call it "" (two double quotes) it works :)

[Mike]

Really? I tried it with MyEclipse for Spring and I only had to hit Return once for it to apply. Although you do have to be sort of quick, if you wait too long it will just place a quote in place of the string :P

[dstarh]

This works but doesn't really meet the "secondary menus" part. Ideally I'd like to be able to type ctrl+shift+" (or similar) and that's it

[janhink]

@Mike Yep, when I select the " from the templates, two quotes are displayed instead of the original text. When I hit Return for the first time, the cursor skips after the second quote and when I hit it for the second time, the quotes get actually replaced by the whole quoted string.

[dstarh]

I'm going to accept this answer since it's the closest i've seen even though I'm still not thrilled with the solution.

[gustafbstrom]

Agreeing with @dstarh, this is awfully hackish for commonplace functionality in a modern IDE.

[dstarh]

Nearly 7 years later, still missing from a "modern" ide

[ZhekaKozlov]

@howlger Can we add this feature to Eclipse? It should work out-of-the-box

[howlger]

@ZhekaKozlov You can suggest feature requests here, best with an implementation as a Gerrit change (I'm not a committer, but most of my proposals and bugs that I reported have been accepted/fixed).