Copy of existing static method body

Reports fragments of Java code which are identical to the existing static methods suggesting to reuse these static methods. Reusing existing methods makes code shorter and more readable.

Locating this inspection

By ID

Can be used to locate inspection in e.g. Qodana configuration files, where you can quickly enable or disable it, or adjust its settings.

JavaExistingMethodCanBeUsed

Via Settings dialog

Path to the inspection settings via IntelliJ Platform IDE Settings dialog, when you need to adjust inspection settings directly from your IDE.

Settings or Preferences | Editor | Inspections | Java | Verbose or redundant code constructs

Example:

  static List<String> readFileAndTrim(Path path) throws IOException {
    List<String> lines = Files.readAllLines(path);
    return lines.stream().map(String::trim).toList();
  }
  
  static List<String> readFileAndTrim(String path) throws IOException {
    Path p = Path.of(path);
    List<String> lines = Files.readAllLines(p);
    return lines.stream().map(String::trim).toList();
  }

Here, the second method is quite similar to the first one, and the first one can be reused in its implementation. After the quick-fix is applied, the result will look like this:

  static List<String> readFileAndTrim(Path path) throws IOException {
    List<String> lines = Files.readAllLines(path);
    return lines.stream().map(String::trim).toList();
  }

  static List<String> readFileAndTrim(String path) throws IOException {
    Path p = Path.of(path);
    return readFileAndTrim(p);
  }

New in 2024.1

Suppressing Inspection

You can suppress this inspection by placing the following comment marker before the code fragment where you no longer want messages from this inspection to appear:

//noinspection JavaExistingMethodCanBeUsed

More detailed instructions as well as other ways and options that you have can be found in the product documentation:

IntelliJ IDEA 2025.2

Inspection Details
By default bundled with:	IntelliJ IDEA 2025.2, Qodana for JVM 2025.2,

Last modified: 18 September 2025