Closures, too much or too little?

[Neal Gafter]

The BGGA proposal implements @Shared, but does not allow its use on the control variable of an old-style for loop.  I forgot to put that in the document.


-----Original Message-----
From: Howard Lovatt <howard.lovatt at iee.org>
Sent: Monday, November 23, 2009 6:44 AM
To: tronicek at fit.cvut.cz; coin-dev at openjdk.java.net
Subject: Closures, too much or too little?

Hi Zdenek,

The following example from Josh Bloch illustrates why I would rather
writable captured variables generate an error if you miss off @Shared:

public class Test {

    private static final int N = 10;

    public static void main(String[] args) {

        List<{ => int}> closures = new ArrayList<{ => int}>();

        for (int i = 0; i < N; i++)

            closures.add( { => i } );

        int total = 0;

        for ({ => int} closure : closures)

            total += closure.invoke();

        System.out.println(total);

    }

}

This example is almost certainly an error; therefore I feel a warning is
insufficient, much like "int i = 2.0;" is almost certainly an error and I
would find a warning insufficient for this too. To me the warnings that are
in Java currently are all dubious; they are just a fudge because of some
other problem, e.g. erasure.

With regard to annotations, if people really like the concept that an
annotation should not be like a keyword then make shared a keyword (I am
happy either way). I think Josh Bloch has suggested reusing public, but I
would prefer either shared or @Shared.

 -- Howard.