Description Chris West (Faux) 2009-07-07 18:05:15 EDT

I've seen a lot of code that looks like:

StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
sb.append("high" + 5);
sb.append("more" + STUFF + "here");

etc.

Currently, Eclipse will refactor this to e.g.:

StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
StringBuilder stringBuilder = new StringBuilder();
stringBuilder.append("high")
stringBuilder.append(5);
sb.append(stringBuilder.toString());
sb.append("more" + STUFF + "here");

...which isn't exactly great (although correct).

The attached patch will make that refactor result in:

StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
sb.append("high")
sb.append(5);
sb.append("more" + STUFF + "here");

..which is a lot closer to what I'd expect.

It only looks for variableName.append(blah blah blah);, i.e. not in expressions, or with an expression on the left.  It works inside single-line ifs, as the original did.

I've not written code against the Eclipse API before, and sacrificed my normal code style in the name of keeping the patch small (ignoring whitespace), buyer beware.