Primitive type patterns - an alternative approach (JEP 507)

[Stephen Colebourne]

On Thu, 16 Oct 2025 at 18:29, Gavin Bierman <gavin.bierman at oracle.com> wrote:
> What you suggesting, I believe, is to cast this difference in stone *and* make it concrete in syntax.
> Unfortunately, I think that is a very serious restriction. We may in the future want to define conversions between reference types that *do* change the representation, e.g. think of a conversion from one value class to another (that is not related by subclassing).

The document covers and welcomes the idea that there are type
conversions between value types (the new syntax isn't about primitive
types, it is about type conversion). This is driven from the
observation  that type conversions are significantly more complex
things than type checks, and that distinction is worthy of being
highlighted.

thanks for the comments
Stephen