Draft JLS spec for JEP 305: Pattern matching for instanceof

[Gavin Bierman]

Thanks for the feedback Tagir! 

Gavin 

> On 19 Sep 2019, at 11:06, Tagir Valeev <amaembo at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Hello, Gavin!
> 
> Chapter renumbering is somewhat disturbing to us, though not that it's
> totally problematic. E.g. we have comments like this spilled in the
> code:
> 
> // see JLS chapter 16 [1]
> 
> After the renumbering, such references will become ambiguous, or at
> least we would need to specify JLS versions everywhere.
> 
> Isn't it possible to discuss patterns in chapter 19 instead? In this
> case, only existing chapter 19 "Syntax" will be renumbered to chapter
> 20 which looks ok as I never saw the references to this chapter. This
> aligns with the introduction of the "Type inference" chapter in Java
> SE 8. It was introduced as Chapter 18, despite it has relations with
> expressions, so placing it after Chapter 15 would look more logical.
> That time only the "Syntax" chapter was renumbered (from 17 to 18). In
> general JLS chapters are quite self-contained, so the actual order
> looks not that important to me. Preserving the numbering for Chapters
> 16-18 looks more important.
> 
> With best regards,
> Tagir Valeev.
> 
> [1] https://github.com/JetBrains/intellij-community/blob/3b2289a1d445acb39b9a529aa7c1559d31c87b6a/java/java-analysis-impl/src/com/intellij/codeInsight/daemon/impl/analysis/HighlightControlFlowUtil.java#L215
> 
> On Thu, Sep 19, 2019 at 4:30 PM Gavin Bierman <gavin.bierman at oracle.com> wrote:
>> 
>> A draft language spec for JEP 305 (Pattern Matching for instanceof) is available at:
>> 
>> http://cr.openjdk.java.net/~gbierman/jep305/jep305-20190918/specs/patterns-instanceof-jls.html <http://cr.openjdk.java.net/~gbierman/jep305/jep305-20190918/specs/patterns-instanceof-jls.html>
>> 
>> Comments are welcomed on all aspects, but I draw your attention to a couple of things that we’d like your feedback on:
>> 
>> 1. The instanceof operator restricts the type to be a reifiable reference type. The spec currently keeps that restriction for type test patterns too. But should we go further, i.e. will people expect to be able to say the following (given that this *declares* a pattern variable l)?
>> 
>> if (o instanceof List<Integer> l) {
>> …
>> }
>> 
>> 2. We’d like to keep the possibility open for merging of multiple pattern declarations, where it makes sense. For example:
>> 
>> if (a instanceof Foo f || b instanceof Foo f) {
>> … // Like to be able to use f here
>> }
>> 
>> The current spec explicitly calls out cases like these as compile-time errors, to allow for forwards compatibility if we add this feature. But what do you think of this feature? (We have textually multiple declarations of a pattern variable, but they are “merged”, so they are really the same thing…)
>> 
>> 3. [Only for spec nerds] I am proposing to add a new Chapter 16 to discuss patterns (at the moment it’s short, but we’re planning for it to grow). The existing Chapters 16-19 will be renumbered to 17-20. Will this renumbering cause problems for anyone?
>> 
>> 
>> Thanks,
>> Gavin