Draft Spec for Second Preview of Flexible Constructor Bodies (JEP 482)

[Archie Cobbs]

On Thu, May 30, 2024 at 5:08 AM Maurizio Cimadamore <
maurizio.cimadamore at oracle.com> wrote:

> How common is this stuff? This seems to be working today, with some bits
> of javac heroics (some bits of which seem to be working mostly by
> accident). From the perspective of Java developers, wouldn't it be easier
> to say that every class declared in a pre-construction context is static,
> period, and cannot reference anyhing from enclosing contexts? I realize
> this would be an incompatible change, but it seems to me that the status
> quo leaves developers guessing as to whether some code would compile or not.
>

I think doing that would be more surprising. Remember pre-construction
context includes superclass constructor parameters, and developers are
already commonly referring to 2nd enclosing instances in code looking like
this example:

class Outer {
    String getName() {
        return "fred";
    }
    class Inner extends Thread {
        Inner() {
            super(new Runnable() {
                @Override
                public void run() {
                    System.out.println("hello from " +
Outer.this.getName());
                }
            });
        }
    }
}

-Archie

-- 
Archie L. Cobbs
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