Tab to select autocomplete item in eclipse?

Question

I can't find either the term autocomplete or intellisense in Preferences->General->Keys in Eclipse 3.6.2.

I don't want to press enter to select an autocomplete item when I write code. Can I configure Eclipse to accept an autocomplete item with the tab button?

Solution 1

Just got it, go to Window>Preferences>General->Keys and look for "Word completion" as said before. Then near the bottom is "Binding" and to the right of it, a box with an arrow, clicking there you can select "Tab" to use Tabulator for autocomplete.

Solution 2

I believe you are looking for "word completion" Left Alt + / though you can change it in "Preferences->General->Keys" to be whatever key combo. Pressing / multiple times cycles through the different suggestions. It's not very intelligent. For example if you have String apple; and double apps; and you type double x = a and then Alt + / eclipse might suggest apple instead of apps, even though apple is an String.

Edit: Looks like it's ctrl + / on some computers.

Solution 3

The autocompletion selection key(s) is editor specific. For instance in Aptana Studio, you could define set of keys for proposal selection. See e.g. Preferences/Aptana Studio/Editors/JavaScript. PyDev shares some code with Aptana Studio, so it has similar capabilities. See "Preferences/PyDev/Editor/Code Completion/Apply completion on *" checkboxes.

Speaking of the Tab key as a selector, it doesn't seem possible w/o extra coding since it has special meaning to focus into proposals window. For these who interested could find Tab handling at org.eclipse.jface.text.contentassist.CompletionProposalPopup.verifyKey(VerifyEvent)

Cheers, Max

Comments

[tom_mai78101]

Isn't the hotkey for focusing into proposals window, F2?

[tom_mai78101]

Beware, if you set the Tab key to "Word Completion", it might be possible that you lose the ability to insert tab characters when typing your source codes.

[Damn Vegetables]

@tom_mai78101 This is stupid... All other IDE's and programming text editors I have used use tab to insert the selected item in the auto-completion list. If someone prefers Enter for that, that is fine, but there should have been some easy setting to change it to tab without this kind of pitfall.