The Record Attribute - What does it mean to be a record at runtime?

[Chris Hegarty]

Remi,

A point of clarification ( which I realise may have been ambiguous in my last email ).

> On 10 Nov 2020, at 19:36, forax at univ-mlv.fr wrote:
> ...
> 
> A better option would be to update the VM implementation to only assert
> that the fields of a record-like class are trusted if that class
> contains 1) a structurally sound Record attribute, 2) is a direct
> subclass of j.l.Record, 3) is final, and 4) is non-abstract. This would
> align Core Reflection and the VM in this respect, while the JVMS would
> remain unchanged - it's an implementation detail.
> 
> No, it's pushing the JLS semantics into the JVM.
> 
> What you want to know is if a field is trusted final or not, to disallow the creation of VarHandle, the use Unsafe, etc.
> So the JDK API should ask the VM if a field is trusted final or not instead of asking if the class is a record.

Agreed. The VM exposes a (private) interface to the core JDK libraries to tell whether a field is trusted or not. No issue.  ( I did not mean to say otherwise )

My issue is with how the VM determines whether a field is trusted or not. The VM trusts fields in (among other types) “record” classes. So what is a record class to the VM?   (that is the question that I am trying to resolve) - the answer is not in the JVMS ( which is fine ).

-Chris.