Doing Shift-End using Robot class

Question

I am trying to use the Robot class to do a Shift-End in order to select the text in a window from the cursor to the end of the line. However, the following code only moves the cursor to the end of the line without selecting the text.
robot.keyPress(KeyEvent.VK_SHIFT);
robot.keyPress(KeyEvent.VK_END);
robot.keyRelease(KeyEvent.VK_END);
robot.keyRelease(KeyEvent.VK_SHIFT);
Note that I have been able to make the following code work. So the problem with the code above does not seem to be with the Shift key per se or with the ordering of the statements.
robot.keyPress(KeyEvent.VK_SHIFT);
robot.keyPress(KeyEvent.VK_A);
robot.keyRelease(KeyEvent.VK_A);
robot.keyRelease(KeyEvent.VK_SHIFT);
Any idea how to make the Shift-End work? I am using an XP PC.

Answer 1

My ENTIRE code follows. Not surprisingly, the shiftEnd.actionPerformed gets a nullPointerException during execution. And being new to Java, I get the feeling I might be missing a whole bunch of stuff. For example, do I need to register for events? Do I need to generate a shift-End ActionEvent somehow? It is only the last 4 lines that are at issue here. Everything down to that point accomplishes what I want, i.e., position the mouse in a text window in the upper right-hand corner of my screen, move the cursor to the top of that window, then go down 5 lines. At that point, I want to do the shift-End to select all text in the line.
import java.awt.*;
import java.awt.event.*;
import javax.swing.KeyStroke;
import javax.swing.JTextField;
public class KeyStrokeTest {
/** Creates a new instance of KeyStrokeTest */
public KeyStrokeTest() {
* @param args the command line arguments
public static void main(String[] args)
throws AWTException{
Robot robot = new Robot();
// Position mouse over Test Director test
robot.mouseMove(600,300);
// Press and release left mouse button to set focus in Test Director test
robot.mousePress(InputEvent.BUTTON1_MASK);
robot.mouseRelease(InputEvent.BUTTON1_MASK);
// Go to top of Test Director test
robot.keyPress(KeyEvent.VK_CONTROL);
robot.keyPress(KeyEvent.VK_HOME);
robot.keyRelease(KeyEvent.VK_CONTROL);
robot.keyRelease(KeyEvent.VK_HOME);
// Go down to first line of request
for(int i=0;i<5;i++) {
robot.keyPress(KeyEvent.VK_DOWN);
robot.keyRelease(KeyEvent.VK_DOWN);
robot.delay(1000);
// Do a shift End
KeyStroke keyStroke = KeyStroke.getKeyStroke(KeyEvent.VK_END,KeyEvent.VK_SHIFT);
JTextField textComponent = new JTextField("String");
ActionListener shiftEnd = textComponent.getActionForKeyStroke( keyStroke );
shiftEnd.actionPerformed( null );