Eclipse allows you to turn code formatting on and off for a certain section of your code. This is extremely helpful when, say, you want to temporarily comment out a block of code and you end up formatting the file. Eclipse will have mashed up the whole comment block into an unrecognizable mish-mash.
To avoid this, you can surround that code (or comment) block with the following:
// @formatter:off
…
…
your code block
…
…
// @formatter:on
Remember, for this to work, you have to enable these tags in the code formatting preferences.
In Eclipse preferences: Java > Code Style > Formatter. Click on “Edit” button, “Off/On Tags”, check off “Enable Off/On tags”.
You can even select the text you want, the default being “@formatter:off” and “@formatter:on”.
Code on!
Tech Tidbits 