Eclipse Saves The Day (Again!)

I found a new "must use" feature in Eclipse, which comes standard but is turned off by default. Of course, I found it because I was trying to fix a bug in our code. The bug ended up being similar to this:

if (something != null);
{
i++;
}

Notice that extra semi-colon at the end of the if statement? That burned us. (Don't mention the odd "brace on the next line" coding standard that is used the the project I just joined. I don't like it either.)

After fixing it, we wondered if Eclipse could show it as a warning. Of course, Eclipse comes to the rescue again. Under Preferences, select Java | Compiler. Then on the Style tab set "Empty Statement" from Ignore to Warning. This coding mistake could cause such large errors, that I really wish this was a default selection. In fact, after turning on this warning, we immediately found another bug of the exact same kind!

Definitely a bit to remember!