What is the proper style for listing imports in Java?

Question

Is it better to list each individual piece of a package you\'re going to need (see #1) or is it better to just import everything from a package (see #2)?

1

Answer 1

The latter is generally considered "bad form". With tool support, there's no excuse for not listing them individually, and it removes any ambiguity.

Mind you, Eclipse by default uses wildcards for static imports, and explicit imports for normal ones. Not sure why it makes that distinction.

edit: the distinction is obvious in hindsight - static imports often refer to static methods, and you can't unambiguously refer to a static method by name (due to overloading). So if it can't be fully unambiguous, you may as well use a wildcard.