ARM syntax and new keywords

[Joshua Bloch]

Neal,

On Thu, Nov 26, 2009 at 12:48 PM, Neal Gafter <neal at gafter.com> wrote:

>
> This has nothing to do with closures (there is a separate email list for
> that anyway).


Not yet there isn't.  But I hope there will be soon.


>  The #"name" syntax was added to give a way of using "exotic"
> identifiers that would otherwise be disallowed.  For example, if you have a
> method pre jdk7
>
>  int foobar(int x) { return x + 1; }
>
> and then we add a keyword "foobar" to the language in jdk7, you can still
> use the identifier "foobar" by modifying the source as following
>
>  int #"foobar"(int x) { return x + 1; }
>
> This is even possible for package names, though a bit awkward
>
>  package #"foobar";
>

Bit this is hideous!  Worse than explicit type parameters.  We must not do
anything that actually makes people do this sort of thing.

    Josh