Proposal: Large arrays

[Joseph D. Darcy]

james lowden wrote:
>> I don't think the source compatibility impact is that
>> large actually.  Let's say *all* arrays can potentially
>> be 64-bit now.  The existing code that uses an int
>> expression to index into the array will still index into the
>> same element and negative indexes will still cause an
>> exception.  Now, how should the length field be set? 
>> I'd guess it should saturate to Integer.MAX_VALUE for
>> oversize arrays and a new "long size()" method
>> could be added to return the full length.
>>     
>
> This I'd actually prefer over what I proposed (and, based on the response so far and the previous bug, what others would probably like as well); my main concern was not breaking the int "length" field; I'd slightly prefer the long size to be a field rather than a method, but that may just be due to that being how I'm used to obtaining the array size; if there's a compelling reason to use a method rather than a field for this, I'd be curious to hear it.
>   

Methods should generally be preferred to fields.  A method named "size" 
is used in Collections.

-Joe