Sealed types -- updated proposal

[Brian Goetz]

|Here's an update on the sealed type proposal based on recent discussions. |

*Definition.* A /sealed type/ is one for which subclassing is restricted 
according to guidance specified with the type’s declaration; finality 
can be considered a degenerate form of sealing, where no subclasses at 
all are permitted. Sealed types are a sensible means of modeling 
/algebraic sum types/ in a nominal type hierarchy; they go nicely with 
records (/algebraic product types/), though are also useful on their own.

Sealing serves two distinct purposes. The first, and more obvious, is 
that it restricts who can be a subtype. This is largely a 
declaration-site concern, where an API owner wants to defend the 
integrity of their API. The other is that it potentially enables 
exhaustiveness analysis at the use site when switching over sealed types 
(and possibly other features.) This is less obvious, and the benefit is 
contingent on some other things, but is valuable as it enables better 
compile-time type checking.

*Declaration.* We specify that a class is sealed by applying the 
|semi-final| modifier to a class, abstract class, or interface:

|semi-final interface Node { ... } |

In this streamlined form, |Node| may be extended only by named classes 
declared in the same nest. This may be suitable for many situations, but 
not for all; in this case, the user may specify an explicit |permits| list:

|semi-final interface Node permits FooNode, BarNode { ... } |

/Note: |permits| here is a contextual keyword./

The two forms may not be combined; if there is a permits list, it must 
list all the permitted subtypes. We can think of the simple form as 
merely inferring the |permits| clause from information in the nest.

*Exhaustiveness.* One of the benefits of sealing is that the compiler 
can enumerate the permitted subtypes of a sealed type; this in turn lets 
us perform exhaustiveness analysis when switching over patterns 
involving sealed types. Permitted subtypes must belong to the same 
module (or, if not in a module, the same package.)

/Note:/ It is superficially tempting to have a relaxed but less explicit 
form, say which allows for a type to be extended by package-mates or 
module-mates without listing them all. However, this would undermine the 
compiler’s ability to reason about exhaustiveness. This would achieve 
the desired subclassing restrictions, but not the desired ability to 
reason about exhaustiveness.

*Classfile.* In the classfile, a sealed type is identified with an 
|ACC_FINAL| modifier, and a |PermittedSubtypes| attribute which contains 
a list of permitted subtypes (similar in structure to the nestmate 
attributes.)

*Transitivity.* Sealing is transitive; unless otherwise specified, an 
abstract subtype of a sealed type is implicitly sealed (permits list to 
be inferred), and a concrete subtype of a sealed type is implicitly 
final. This can be reversed by explicitly modifying the subtype with the 
|non-final| modifier.

Unsealing a subtype in a hierarchy doesn’t undermine the sealing, 
because the (possibly inferred) set of explicitly permitted subtypes 
still constitutes a total covering. However, users who know about 
unsealed subtypes can use this information to their benefit (much like 
we do with exceptions today; you can catch |FileNotFoundException| 
separately from |IOException| if you want, but don’t have to.)

/Note:/ Scala made the opposite choice with respect to transitivity, 
requiring sealing to be opted into at all levels. This is widely 
believed to be a source of bugs; it is rare that one actually wants a 
subtype of a sealed type to not be sealed. I suspect the reasoning in 
Scala was, at least partially, the desire to not make up a new keyword 
for “not sealed”. This is understandable, but I’d rather not add to the 
list of “things for which Java got the defaults wrong.”

An example of where explicit unsealing (and private subtypes) is useful 
can be found in the JEP-334 API:

|semi-final interface ConstantDesc permits String, Integer, Float, Long, 
Double, ClassDesc, MethodTypeDesc, MethodHandleDesc, DynamicConstantDesc 
{ } semi-final interface ClassDesc extends ConstantDesc permits 
PrimitiveClassDescImpl, ReferenceClassDescImpl { } private class 
PrimitiveClassDescImpl implements ClassDesc { } private class 
ReferenceClassDescImpl implements ClassDesc { } semi-final interface 
MethodTypeDesc extends ConstantDesc permits MethodTypeDescImpl { } 
semi-final interface MethodHandleDesc extends ConstantDesc permits 
DirectMethodHandleDesc, MethodHandleDescImpl { } semi-final interface 
DirectMethodHandleDesc extends MethodHandleDesc permits 
DirectMethodHandleDescImpl // designed for subclassing non-final class 
DynamicConstantDesc extends ConstantDesc { ... } |

*Enforcement.* Both the compiler and JVM should enforce sealing.

*Accessibility.* Subtypes need not be as accessible as the sealed 
parent. In this case, not all clients will get the chance to 
exhaustively switch over them; they’ll have to make these switches 
exhaustive with a |default| clause or other total pattern. When 
compiling a switch over such a sealed type, the compiler can provide a 
useful error message (“I know this is a sealed type, but I can’t provide 
full exhaustiveness checking here because you can’t see all the 
subtypes, so you still need a default.”)

*Javadoc.* The list of permitted subtypes should probably be considered 
part of the spec, and incorporated into the Javadoc. Note that this is 
not exactly the same as the current “All implementing classes” list that 
Javadoc currently includes, so a list like “All permitted subtypes” 
might be added (possibly with some indication if the subtype is less 
accessible than the parent.)

*Auxilliary subtypes.* With the advent of records, which allow us to 
define classes in a single line, the “one class per file” rule starts to 
seem both a little silly, and constrain the user’s ability to put 
related definitions together (which may be more readable) while 
exporting a flat namespace in the public API.

One way to do get there would be to relax the “no public auxilliary 
classes” rule to permit for sealed classes, say: allowing public 
auxilliary subtypes of the primary type, if the primary type is public 
and sealed.

Another would be to borrow a trick from enums; for a sealed type with 
nested subtypes, when you |import| the sealed type, you implicitly 
import the nested subtypes too. That way you could declare:

|semi-final interface Node { class A implements Node { } class B 
implements Node { } } |

​but clients could import Node and then refer to A and B directly:

|switch (node) { case A(): ... case B(): ... } |

We do something similar for |enum| constants today.

​
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://mail.openjdk.java.net/pipermail/amber-spec-experts/attachments/20190109/ab371ad4/attachment-0001.html>