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Asked: 2026-05-10T18:03:07+00:00

I have a rather big number of source files that I need parse and

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I have a rather big number of source files that I need parse and extract all string literals and put them in a file as play old java constant.
For exemple:

Label l = new Label('Cat');

Would become:

Label l = new Label(Constants.CAT);

And in Constants.java I would have:

public final static String CAT = 'Cat';

I do not want the strings to be externalized in a property text file.
One reason is for consistency and code readability.
The other is that our client code uses GWT, which does not support Java property text file mechanism.

I could write some sort of parser (using ant replace task maybe)?
But I wondered if an IDE already does this sort of thing automatically.

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1 Answer

  1. To complete Peter Kelley answer, you might consider for eclipse IDE the AST solution.

    You might then write an AST program which parse your source code and does what you want.

    A full example is available in this eclipse corner article, also more details in the eclipse help.
    And you can find some examples in Listing 5 of the section ‘Implementation of in-place translation’ of Automating the embedding of Domain Specific Languages in Eclipse JDT, alongside multiple examples in GitHub projects.

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