Filters

Filter can be set on source files, packages and for a whole project.

A filter set on a package is inherited to the classes in the package but not what may seem as sub packages. The reason is that although packages may have related names there are no such thing as sub packages in Java. The package "com.one.sub" is not more related to the package "com.one" any more than it is related to the package "org.other.pack".

Filter applies in the order; source file, package and finally project filters. Filters defined closer to the source takes precedence over filters higher in the hierarchy, so a filter in a source file overrides a filter on a package, which in turn overrides the project filters.

Project filters applies on the form "a file is monitored if it is included and not excluded". If no inclusion filters are set, a default inclusion of all files is done. After that test, exclusions overrides inclusions, so if a file matches both project inclusion and exclusion patterns it is excluded. These settings can as mentioned earlier, be overridden on a file or package level.

Filters set on the project level defaults to a semi regular expression syntax, similar to that used in search engines. A regular expression is a formal way of specifying a text mathcing criteria. The escape characters that exists by default are [*] and [?]. [*] matches any packages and can for example be used as "com.test.*" which matches any class which full name starts with "com.test.". [?] matches a single character and can be used for example as "com.te?t" which will match the packages "com.test" and "com.text". If regular expressions are enabled by selecting the checkbox below the filter tables, full regular expression patterns can be used as filters. The syntax of the patterns used are the same as the patterns defined in the Java "com.util.regex" package. Please be aware that enabling this option may change the meaning of your previously defined patterns, since several characters has different meanings in regular expressions, for example the dot(.).