IDEA: "Assign statement to new local variable"?

Question

As a long time Eclipse user, I'm playing around a little bit with IntelliJ IDEA 10. I can't seem to find out how to perform an "Assign statement to new local variable" code completion.

Feature explanation:

I type something like

new BufferedOutputStream(out) 

and then hit Cmd (or Ctrl)+1 and enter, and Eclipse changes the line into:

BufferedOutputStream bufferedOutputStream = new BufferedOutputStream(out); 

At the same time, I can type over "bufferedOutputStream" immediately to rename it (or select from the options "bufferedOutputStream", "outputStream" and "stream" from a dropdown).

I use this feature for absolutely every assignment, and it's an enormous time saver - this must be available in IDEA, too - but where is it hidden?

Answer 1

Refactor | Introduce Variable (Ctrl+Alt+V on Windows). Note that you don't need to select the text if it's the only text in the current line. Then you can change the variable name in-line just like you've described and press Enter to complete editing.

Another way is to use the Postfix Completion:

Type .var (or just .v to select it from the list) and confirm it with Enter.

Answer 2

As CrazyCoder mentions you can use Ctrl+Alt+V. Also instead of selecting the expression, clicking into somewhere in your expression and using Ctrl+W to expand scope is very useful while using introduce refactorings. Extract refactorings are:

• Extract variable: Ctrl+Alt+V
• Extract field: Ctrl+Alt+F
• Extract method: Ctrl+Alt+M
• Extract parameter: Ctrl+Alt+P
• Extract constant: Ctrl+Alt+C

Also, Idea is a polygot editor so you can use these extract refactorings for other file types like js or html also (not all refactorings work in all file types but Ctrl+W works mostly).

There are more extract refactorings which do not have shortcuts which you can access from Refactor|Extract menu (both menu bar and context menu). To quick access all refactorings you can use Ctrl+Alt+Shift+T for a popup menu.

As a last word, I highly encourage you using "Tip of the Day" (Help|Tip of the Day). It is a fast way to learn many helpful features of Idea.