How do I create a new class that automatically includes the main method?

Hello, good morning, that is my question, since without the main method the program does not execute. It's to save a little time, thank you.

I don't know any way to do this offhand - more importantly, I don't think it would be very helpful at all.  Most programs have many classes, and only one of them needs to have a main method.  In many case, you don't even need one main method, because it's already written for you as part of a framework that you're using somewhere - e.g. when writing and running a webapp.  None of the classes you write will need a main method, and inserting one in the class will be a useless distraction.  Even if it were generated automatically, it would just distract someone reading the code.  Please, don't do this except for a class that actually needs a main method.

Now having said that, it's possible to generate a simple main method very quickly, if you're using IntelliJ.  When editing the class, just type psvm (for public static void main) and press the tab key.  This immediately produces:
   public static void main(String[] args) {            }
Easy!  I assume Eclipse and other IDEs have something similar.

Of course, to  be useful, you have to put something into the method implementation.  And that can't really be done automatically - you have to decide what you want the main method to do.  That's the important part here.

In Eclipse, when you tell it to create a new class, one of the checkbox items on the creation dialog is whether to create a stub main() method.

I'm thinking that IntelliJ had something similar, but I'm not in a position to check right at the moment.

Interesting.  IntelliJ doesn't seem to offer a checkbox for that - unless I dismissed it long ago and it's afraid to show its face again.  There is an option to edit the template for a new class, and I can use that to insert arbitrary code into new classes.  But not with a checkbox option each time.

Mike Simmons wrote:Interesting.  IntelliJ doesn't seem to offer a checkbox for that - unless I dismissed it long ago and it's afraid to show its face again.  There is an option to edit the template for a new class, and I can use that to insert arbitrary code into new classes.  But not with a checkbox option each time.

Yeah, I did a quick check of the online docs. By that reading, you just get an instance of a template file, without a support dialog. The New Class dialog allows entering the "extends" and "implements" with suggestion as well, which is arguably more useful than the checkbox for "main".

Based on that, I'd check to see if there's an auto-suggest for "main" in IntelliJ, similar to how "syso" can be expanded by Eclipse to "System.out.println()" as discussed in another message thread at the moment.