Eclipse Saves The Day (Again!)

September 9, 2004

I found a new “must use” feature in Eclipse, which comes standard but is
turned off by default. Of course, I found it because I was trying to fix a bug in our code.
The bug ended up being similar to this:



if (something != null);

{

i++;

}



Notice that extra semi-colon at the end of the if statement? That burned us.
(Don’t mention the odd “brace on the next line” coding standard that is used the the project I
just joined. I don’t like it either.)



After fixing it, we wondered if Eclipse could show it as a warning. Of course,
Eclipse comes to the rescue again. Under Preferences, select Java | Compiler. Then on the
Style tab set “Empty Statement” from Ignore to Warning. This coding mistake could cause such
large errors, that I really wish this was a default selection. In fact, after turning on this
warning, we immediately found another bug of the exact same kind!



Definitely a bit to remember!