Description Mohsen Vakilian 2011-12-09 22:25:36 EST

Build Identified: I20111207-2118

When one of the participants of the CodingSpectator study <http://codingspectator.cs.illinois.edu/> made a selection of form "new MyCla" from a statement like "MyClass myClass = new MyClass();" and invoked the Extract Method refactoring, the refactoring tool reported the message below:

>The end of the selection contains characters that do not belong to a statement.

Similarly, when one of our participants tried to invoke the Extract Method refactoring tool on a selection whose structure was similar to the one in the code snippet below, the refactoring tool reported the above error message.

----
public class C {
  void m1() {
    {
    //[
      {
      }
    }
    //]
  }
}
----

Isn't the following message more appropriate in the above two cases?

>The selection does not cover a set of statements or an expression. Extend selection to a valid range using the 'Expand Selection To' actions from the 'Edit' menu.

What are the refactoring tool's criteria for reporting each of the above messages?

The Eclipse refactoring tool sometimes reports the following message, which is similar to the above messages:

>The beginning of the selection contains characters that do not belong to a statement

None of our participants ran into the following problem. However, if a programmer tries to invoke the Extract Method refactoring tool on the selection in the code snippet below, the refactoring tool will report the above error message.

----
public class C {
  void m1() {
    //[
    {
      {
      }
    //]
    }
  }
}
----

Isn't the following error message more appropriate in the above example?

>The selection does not cover a set of statements or an expression. Extend selection to a valid range using the 'Expand Selection To' actions from the 'Edit' menu.