Really weird eclipse keyboard behavior/bug?

Question

I am using Helios on Mac Snow Leopard. I don\'t know why but all of a sudden my arrow keys and delete button start not working only on Eclipse (so Eclipse ignores them) but

Answer 1

Note - Just found this fix elsewhere - you can fix this on Mac OSX by force-killing finder. That worked for me perfectly. Didn't need to restart!

Answer 2

Using eclipse Luna (4.4) on Redhat and viewing via Xming (Windows 7, 64-bit), I could not use backspace, arrows, delete or even enter, but alphanumeric worked. This problem was not intermittent, but always there from the start. For me, I found that setting a break-point in the code, running and allowing eclipse to switch perspectives fixed it every time. Hope it helps someone else as the above suggestions (ie switching editors, changing key mappings, refreshing and restarting eclipse) did not work for me.

One interesting diagnostic of the problem I had was that going to the screen where you change the key-mappings, I was able to use the delete key. But not in java files or untitled text files.

Answer 3

For some odd reason, opening the preferences window and closing it right away, solves this problem for me (other solutions here didn't work).

Answer 4

Same weird problem, this worked for me: I just figured out that if I switch editor and then back again, backspace starts working again. (source)

Answer 5

I have encountered this problem for years. It happens so infrequently however, that I almost always forget what I did to solve it. Restarting fixes it most of the time i think, and a few times "refreshing" worked, but nothing works 100% of the time.

In any case, someone on the bug report suggested just putting MacBook in Sleep cycle. This worked like a charm for me, so putting it out there for future reference.

https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=344290#c24

Incidentally, I have experienced similar behavior with other applications, in particular Firefox. My thought is that it has to do with key bindings in general, and any application that provides overrides for defaults in the OS (this is a pretty huge assumption, so take with a correspondingly large grain of salt). I have also had this happen to me in Xcode, but a simple restart of the application fixes, whereas with Eclipse that wasn't sufficient most of the time.

Answer 6

I had the same problem with the "Delete" key in Eclipse 3.7.0 on Windows Vista. Suddenly the key stopped working and I couldn't figure out why. Recently I found a way to fix it when the problem occurs - it works for me every time:

In a code editor window in Eclipse, hoover on some method or variable or what have you, until the popup window appears with "Press 'F2' for focus" in the lower right corner. Click the popup window to switch focus, then click the editor window again so the pop-up disappears, and voilà, the Delete key works again.