RFR: 8367530: The exhaustiveness errors could be improved [v15]

[Maurizio Cimadamore]

On Tue, 27 Jan 2026 16:43:11 GMT, Jan Lahoda <jlahoda at openjdk.org> wrote:

>> Consider code like:
>> 
>> package test;
>> public class Test {
>>     private int test(Root r) {
>>         return switch (r) {
>>             case Root(R2(R1 _), R2(R1 _)) -> 0;
>>             case Root(R2(R1 _), R2(R2 _)) -> 0;
>>             case Root(R2(R2 _), R2(R1 _)) -> 0;
>>         };
>>     }
>>     sealed interface Base {}
>>     record R1() implements Base {}
>>     record R2(Base b1) implements Base {}
>>     record Root(R2 b2, R2 b3) {}
>> }
>> ``` 
>> 
>> This is missing a case for `Root(R2(R2 _), R2(R2 _))`. javac will produce an error correctly, but the error is not very helpful:
>> 
>> $ javac test/Test.java
>> .../test/Test.java:4: error: the switch expression does not cover all possible input values
>>         return switch (r) {
>>                ^
>> 1 error
>> 
>> 
>> The goal of this PR is to improve the error, at least in some cases to something along these lines:
>> 
>> $ javac test/Test.java 
>> .../test/Test.java:4: error: the switch expression does not cover all possible input values
>>         return switch (r) {
>>                ^
>>   missing patterns:
>>       Root(R2(R2 _), R2(R2 _))
>> 1 error
>> 
>> 
>> The (very simplified) way it works in a recursive (or induction) way:
>> - start with defining the missing pattern as the binding pattern for the selector type. This would certainly exhaust the switch.
>> - for a current missing pattern, try to enhance it:
>>     - if the current type is a sealed type, try to expand to its (direct) permitted subtypes. Remove those that are not needed.
>>     - if the current (binding pattern) type is a record type, expand it to a record type, generate all possible combinations of its component types based on sealed hierarchies. Remove those that are not needed.
>> 
>> This approach relies heavily on our ability to compute exhaustiveness, which is evaluated repeatedly in the process.
>> 
>> There are some cases where the algorithm does not produce ideal results (see the tests), but overall seems much better than what we have now.
>> 
>> Another significant limitation is the speed of the process. Evaluating exhaustiveness is not a fast process, and this algorithm evaluates exhaustiveness repeatedly, potentially for many combinations of patterns (esp. for record patterns). So part of the proposal here is to have a time deadline for the computation. The default is 5s, and can be changed by `-XDexhaustivityTimeout=<timeout-in-ms>`.
>> 
>> There's also an open possibility for select tools to delay the more detailed computation to some late...
>
> Jan Lahoda has updated the pull request incrementally with one additional commit since the last revision:
> 
>   Cleanup.

Looks great -- I have no further comments!

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Marked as reviewed by mcimadamore (Reviewer).

PR Review: https://git.openjdk.org/jdk/pull/27256#pullrequestreview-3715357977