Code review request for 4881419 The type of X[].clone() should be X[]

[Jeroen Frijters]

Martin Buchholz wrote:
> On Sat, Sep 4, 2010 at 02:02, Jeroen Frijters <jeroen at sumatra.nl> wrote:
> 
> 
> 	Sorry to be late with my comment, but as a VM implementer I can't
> really agree with this modification. The return type of X[].clone() is
> clearly Object, not X{]. That illusion is a javac compiler trick. IMHO
> it belongs in the JLS not in the Object.clone() documentation.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I agree there is a little bit of cheating going on, but I don't agree
> that the return type of X[].clone() is a "javac compiler trick".  In
> some sense all compile-time types are javac-created illusions.

Here's what javac generates:

public static void main(java.lang.String[])
  Code:
   0:   aload_0
   1:   invokevirtual   #2; //Method "[Ljava/lang/String;".clone:()Ljava/lang/Object;
   4:   checkcast       #3; //class "[Ljava/lang/String;"
   7:   iconst_0
   8:   ldc     #4; //String
   10:  aastore
   11:  return

If you read this from the VM perspective (is there any other ;-)), you see that the VM needs to provide a public clone method on the type String[] that returns Object.

The previous text made this obvious, with the change, you explicitly need to understand the (external) fact that the text is talking about javac behavior, not a feature of the VM (or class library).

I agree that the change makes life easier for the Java developers that use Javac (i.e. the Java programming language), but since the JVM tries to be a more hospitable environment to multiple languages, I don't agree in favoring the Java programming language like this in the API docs.

Regards,
Jeroen