This article is part of a ‘mini series’ about hidden gems, tips and tricks around Eclipse.
The topic of this one is how to ‘fold’ text in the editor.

Folded Functions

With ‘folding’ I can hide/un-hide portions of source in the editor. To use folding, have it enabled in the Window > Preferences:

Enabled Folding in the settings

Little ‘+’ and ‘-‘ in the editor view show up to fold and unfold. The above setting allow to configure what shall be folded/unfolded. Unlike in Visual Studio (C# with the #region … #endregion syntax) it is not possible to fold an arbitrary section. As a workaround I do have ‘Enable folding of preprocessor branches’ enabled. That way I can do the same thing:

Region folding

Move the mouse over a ‘+’ shows a preview what is behind:

Unfold preview

The following shortcuts are very useful to deal with folding:

• Fold everything: <CTRL>+<SHIFT>+<NUM-KEYPAD-DIVIDE>
• Un-fold everything: <CTRL>+<SHIFT>+<NUM-KEYPAD-MULTIPLY>

Happy folding 🙂

Links

• Eclipse Gems, Tips & Tricks: Importing Projects
• Eclipse Gems, Tips & Tricks: Close and Open Projects
• Eclipse Gems, Tips & Tricks: Text Block Selection
• Eclipse Gems, Tips & Tricks: Project Filter
• Eclipse Gems, Tips & Tricks: Black Theme
• Eclipse Gems, Tips & Tricks: Faster Debugger Start
• Eclipse Gems, Tips & Tricks: RT(F)M
• Eclipse Gems, Tips &Tricks: Show in System Explorer
• Eclipse Gems, Tips & Tricks: Open Declaration
• Eclipse Gems, Tips & Tricks: Code Completion
• Eclipse Gems, Tips & Tricks: Highlight Usage and Definition
• Eclipse Gems, Tips & Tricks: Block Comments
• Eclipse Gems, Tips & Tricks: Working Sets