Simply insanely cool...

I'm still having way too much fun writing the extensible Gimp-like image viewer tutorial code (well, if I keep this up I'm just going to have to admit that it's taking on a life of its own...).

And I write a lot of random logging code that looks like:

doSomething (rect.x, rect.y, rect.width, rect.height);

Try this in NetBeans 5.0: Open the options window, go to Editor | Code Templates. Click New to add a new abbreviation. Enter

${RECT}.x, ${RECT}.y, ${RECT}.width, ${RECT}.height

Assign it the abbreviation rr.

Now, in the editor, simply type rr[SPACE]. Like this:

Now press SPACE and the magic happens:

And type a string like bounds. Presto! All of the repetitions of the string change too!

It seems trivial, but I can't remember the last time I was this gaga about an editor feature - I keep having more uses for it. For example, standard NetBeans module boilerplate:

${Clazz} singleton = (${Clazz}) Lookup.getDefault().lookup(${Clazz}.class);
|

(the | character is where to put the caret after I press Enter)

will generate, e.g.,

MyService singleton = (MyService) Lookup.getDefault().lookup(MyService.class); 

or a classic, converting a checked exception to a runtime exception:

IllegalStateException ise = new IllegalStateException (${Exception}.getMessage());
ErrorManager.getDefault().annotate (ise, ${Exception});
throw ise;

and assign it to the abbreviation "ise". I type ise[SPACE] and get

        IllegalStateException ise = new IllegalStateException(e.getMessage());
        ErrorManager.getDefault().annotate(ioe, e);
        throw ise;

with the name of the exception selected so I can correct it. Wow!