Eclipse 3.5 Copy & Paste Problem

Question

I recently updated my Eclipse to the latest release 3.5 and since then I have a very annoying problem with c&p using the shortcuts.

In an editor (xml, jsp, doesnt matter which one) I try to copy something and paste it somewhere else, nothing happens. When I cut out something and put it somewhere else I sometimes get something else (like a messed up part of my previous selection) or just some whitespaces. This gets even worse when I change lines in between.

First I thought that my keyboard is probably broken but it works just fine in other programms. Then I tried using the contextmenus c&p and there it works. Yesterday I managed to get at least an errormessage when I tried to copy a file in the navigator from one project to another (the message was just "error using copy...bla". no details).

Does anyone else have this problem, or knows how to solve it?

BTW: I am running on Kubuntu 9.04, and have quite some plugins installed (but only from the Galileo Updates Site), like Birt, Mylin, WST, or Subversive.

Answer 1

Problem was solved with newer Eclipse releases. I think >= 3.6. Depending on your distribution there may be a (back)port of this (not on my Xubuntu 11.04) within the repositories.

So a tarball installation of Eclipse 4.0 works perfectly for me. Cut&Paste works and I am lucky that my plugins are compatible to 4.0.

Unfortunately Sublime Text has the same problems.

Answer 2

This is caused by various X clipboard managers doing weird things with the clipboard. (bug report).

In XFCE the clipman applet was rolled in XFCE 4.8, and will be the source of these problems.

To fix this in XFCE - kill xfce4-settings-helper. You will need to use Settings Manager -> Session and Startup -> Session to kill it, as otherwise it may restart automatically.

To prevent this starting next time, you will need to remove it from your startup/login programs in Settings Manager > Session and Startup > Application Autostart.

Answer 3

In the *.java editor page, right click and select open in text editor. Past your snippet there. Your Snippet will show in the *.java page'

Answer 4

I read somewhere that in KDE maybe Klipper / "Klipper on the panel" conflicts with eclipse copy action. It's a tool for clipboard history. Try to remove that! It may solve your problem :-/

For me the xfce4-settings-helper killing worked.

Answer 5

This must be related to the key mapping, since those shortcuts are defined according to context.
(Column "When", in Preferences / General / Keys)

Check if those shortcuts do not work for any editor (do they work for Java editor?)

If they work for some editor, not for other, then some plugin settings must have re-affected them to another command.

Answer 6

I use Eclipse Kepler for PHP development. It's dumb I know.

None of the solutions suggested here has solved this source of frustration. I can confirm the copy function works whether shortcut keys are bound or not. As I can copy from eclipse and paste into any other application. Except eclipse.

My solution. Accidental discovery: Eclipse Kepler will allow you to paste outside the php open and close tags and allow you to click and drag the highlighted block of content into into position.

Acceptable solution for small bits of code. Horribly crippling for larger development environments.