IDE comment keywords

Question

So I only recently discovered the TODO comment. For those of you that don't know, most modern IDE's will recognize this word in a comment and flag the comment line a different colour so It stands out.

EG.

//Need to talk to Bill about refactoring this code

//TODO:Need to talk to Bill about refactoring this code

You may notice in IDE's like Eclipse or Rubymine highlight the TODO comment and some nice other features to do with it.

My question is: What other keywords are there like the TODO? It seems like a much better way of communicating to developers through comments and a feature that should be a bit more widely known in IDE's. Their purpose is to help with development after all..

`FIXME:` works quite similarly to `TODO:` in vim. Not quite an IDE, but still... :) — cHao, Mar 06 '12 at 15:24
Can confirm FIXME works in eclipse too. Sounds nice actually. Thats 2 :D — OVERTONE, Mar 06 '12 at 15:25
Just a minor side note: leave the `:` from the end of the task tags. Many tools add them after the definition which is kind of a noise afterwards (esp. if some of the developers are using it, some of them not - for example, it messes up a bit the *Tasks View* in older Eclipse builds). — rlegendi, Mar 07 '12 at 08:03

rlegendi · Accepted Answer · 2014-10-03T08:59:48.710

I can speak of Eclipse, you can customize it.

Click on Window -> Preferences, and search for General -> Editors -> Structured Text Editors -> Task tags, or for Java -> Compiler -> Task tags (there might be some additional ones like for JavaScript, PHP, StatET, etc.)

TODO, FIXME, XXX

I use some additional ones like:

CHECKME, DOCME, TESTME, PENDING

I personally like to use the DISCUSS/REVIEW tags just to make sure I speak about some issue with someone during a code review or pair programming (e.g., I haven't misunderstood the specification how something should work etc.).

You can also set the priorities assigned to the different task tags there too.

I added ASSUMES to capture non-obvious preconditions. – rimsky Jul 22 '15 at 22:54 — rimsky, Jul 22 '15 at 22:54

helloworld922 · Answer 2 · 2012-03-06T15:36:53.423

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These are known as task tags. In Eclipse they are TODO, FIXME, and XXX.

However, Eclipse allows you to modify the available list of task tags. Go to preferences > Java > Compiler > Task Tags

Here you can modify the available list of task tags, change their priority, and decide if task tags should be case sensitive or not.

edited Mar 06 '12 at 15:36

answered Mar 06 '12 at 15:28

helloworld922

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score 14 · Answer 3 · answered Feb 15 '18 at 00:56

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To add custom TODO tags in IntelliJ go to:

Preferences > Editor > TODO

answered Feb 15 '18 at 00:56

John R Perry

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score 1 · Answer 4 · answered Oct 22 '14 at 13:50

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for enabling/disabling code formatter use: // @formatter:on // @formatter:off

answered Oct 22 '14 at 13:50

noname noname

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Rodrigo · Answer 5 · 2018-02-27T16:45:17.367

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In Eclipse Oxygen 4.7.2 for C/C++ the task tags are configured in Windows -> Preferences -> C/C++ -> Task Tags.

You can also enable searching for task tags as @rlegendi answer.

edited Feb 27 '18 at 16:45

answered Feb 24 '18 at 14:35

Rodrigo

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score 1 · Answer 6 · answered Mar 06 '12 at 15:29

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Patterns like TODO, FIXME are default in NetBeans as ToDo keywords. You can also add any keyword you want in Tools > Options > Miscellaneous > Tasks.

answered Mar 06 '12 at 15:29

user1242756

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I'm aware of this. I was just looking for a list of generally accepted ones or defaults in the indstry – OVERTONE Mar 06 '12 at 15:34

IDE comment keywords

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