Is That Shortcut in Use?

How can I find out whether a particular keyboard shortcut is assigned to an action in the NetBeans IDE? That question was posted by davenull in a comment on my blog entry last month about Hippie Completion.

I will admit up front: the answer I provider here is a hack. As Brian Leonard points out in this IssueZilla entry, the IDE should have better support for this feature.

Let's say you are wondering whether or not Ctrl+Shift+Period is assigned to an action. Select Tools > Options > Keymap. You will see a list of the types of actions:

In order to find out whether Ctrl+Shift+Period is assigned, you need to attempt to assign it to an action. The easiest way to do this is to try to assign it to an action that does not currently have a keystroke assigned.

Expand the entry for Help and select the entry for About and click the Add button:

That brings up the Assign Shortcut dialog, where you can type in Ctrl+Shift+Period. If the keystroke combination you type in is already in use, the IDE will tell you to which action it is assigned. In my installation, that keystroke combination is already assigned: