Richard wrote on 09.04.2006 15:53:

Shouldn't Eclipse be able to do that? NetBeans allows you to search for a method
name, and will return all classes implementing that method (as long as you have
the Javadoc included in the project)

Thomas

You can do this in Java 1.5:

   import static java.lang.System.out;
(or import static java.lang.System.*;           )

   out.println(...);

You can't avoid the "out" since println is an instance method and you
need an object to call it on.  (i.e., you can also "println" to a
different PrintWriter or PrintStream, such as System.err or some file or
something else.)

It's called the API documentation.  You do have that, right?  Just click
the "index" link near the top of any page.  Java doesn't have includes
or anything like them --  the compiler always knows the interface of any
class files that are accessible to it, without your taking any special
actions at all.  However, you will be able to see what package the
classes are in so you can write an appropriate import statement if you
wish to do so.

Well, System is a class, out is a static member of that class (out is
PrintStream instance, to be exact), and println is a method of PrintStream.
So I suppose you could say:

 PrintStream out = System.out;

 out.println("stuff, like");

I wouldn't bother though.

You can't import member variables from another class into the current
classes namespace. And even if you could, the above would have to read
something like "import java.lang.System.*"!

Not sure on that one...
lex

Can't be done, sorry. "println" is a method on the PrintStream object
available through the public static final field "out" on the class
"java.lang.System".

You can't call a method on an object without specifiying the object
(except when the code doing it is part of the object).

You can do things to shorten the path, e.g.:

OutputStream o = System.out;
o.println("...");

or
/* near top of file */
import static System.out;
/* ... later */
... out.println("...");

"System" is not a package (nor is "system"). It's a class in the
java.lang package, and as such you don't need to import it (java.lang.*
is always imported implicitly).

In Java 5, you can import its static members using:
import static System.*;
or, less sweeping:
import static System.out;

This makes "out" available as a diret reference in the filed that
imports it.

In Eclipse, you can try Ctrl-H to search, and choose to search for
method names.

In the standard library, you can use the API documenation:
<URL:http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.5.0/docs/api/>
The index has all methods ordered by name.

/L

About the only way I know is via a class declaration:

public class ReportError
{
    String progName = null;

    public ReportError(String prog)
    {
        progName = prog;
    }

    public void trace(String s)
    {
        System.err.println(s);
    }

    public void error(String s)
    {
        System.err.println(progName + ": " + s);
        System.exit(1);
    }
}

Now you can use the new class to shorten what you're writing:

public MainClass
{
    ReportError r = new ReportError("MainClass");

    public static void main(String args[])
    {
        if (args.length() == 0)
            r.error("no argument supplied");
        else
            r.trace("Run starting");
        ....
        p.trace("All done");
    }
}

I use an elaboration of the above for reporting fatal errors and
outputting debugging traces.

You can get fancier if you want, such as passing a debug level to the
constructor to turn the trace() method on or off, or storing tracing
information in a circular buffer so the last few tens of trace lines
get output if a fatal condition occurs. This can be really useful for
debugging a long running, high throughput program that very occasionally
gets sent bad data as part of a sequence of inputs.

Richard,
if your primary motivation for question 1 is typing less, you can have
a look at templates, to be found here :
Window,
Preferences,
Java,
Editor,
Templates
there's a 'sysout' entry there, that I based my 'sop' on. So now, I
type sop , ctrl-space and voila, there you go.
--------------------
Paul Hamaker, SEMM, teaching ICT since 1987
http://javalessons.com