I have been using Eclipse as an IDE for JAVA and PHP for almost every project that I have done so far. And yet always there is room for exploration in Eclipse IDE. And today I am going to review a latest feature that has been added to the Eclipse, The feature is known as vertical selection

This feature is the mere replication of the Textmate (IDE in Mac). It is very nice and handy at situations when we need the multiple copies of the same lines, rather than copying and pasting the same line over all the lines, we can simply highlight multiple lines at once with vertical selection and write on all of them at once.

Q. Well, How do we do this Vertical Selection ?
Quick Code :

  • Alt + Shift + A to toggle the mode for vertical selection. After this shortcut is executed the cursor changes to the plus sign
  • Select area vertically, position the cursor at the top, begin writing
  • Use Shortcut (Alt+Shift+A) again to toggle the mode.

Description

Use shortcut Alt+shift+A to toggle the mode.

Now just drag the cross pointer downward making a vertical selection, remember while you are doing this the cursor must be positioned at the top so there is enough room for all lines.
After vertical selection has been done it might be similar to the screenshot below.
Eclipse Vertical Selection Feature Demonstration

Now just type in single line, and you will see that the other lines are filled up automatically as you are typing. See the Screenshot below). That’s the feature we were talking about.
Eclipse Vertical Selection Demonstration

For Anyone doing with the HTML Templating and Design might find this feature very as it saves us writing same lines, copy and pasting and thus saves our precious time.