Eclipse 3.7 formatting in class

Question

There is code in Eclipse 3.7:

public class AppResources { private static Image titleIcon; static { AppResources.titleIcon = getIconImage(); } public static Image getTitleIcon() { return AppResources.titleIcon; } } 

Where in Formatter can I say that there should be an empty string before static ?

Answer 1

There is no separate formatting setting for a static block. For formatting purposes, it appears to be treated like any other member variable (as opposed to a function or some other construct).

There is another way to end up with the formatting you want. If you set the format parameter Blank Lines-> Existing Blank Lines-> Number of empty lines to 1, then you can manually add an empty line in front of the static block, and the formatter will not delete it.

Answer 2

As the other answers indicate, this cannot be done for static blocks through the Eclipse formatter. Another way to achieve this would be to search / replace in File Search in Eclipse:

From:

 (^\s*\n)*(^\s*static\s*\{) 

To:

 \n\2 

with Regular Expression enabled