RFR: 8342206: Convenience method to check if a constant pool entry matches nominal descriptors

[Adam Sotona]

On Tue, 11 Feb 2025 16:36:24 GMT, Chen Liang <liach at openjdk.org> wrote:

>> src/java.base/share/classes/java/lang/classfile/constantpool/Utf8Entry.java line 95:
>> 
>>> 93:      * @since 25
>>> 94:      */
>>> 95:     boolean equalsSymbol(ClassDesc desc);
>> 
>> Ambiguity of class internal name vs. descriptor serialization might be confusing:
>> 
>> classEntry.equalsSymbol(classDesc) != classEntry.name().equalsSymbol(classDesc)
>> 
>> I think it should be more highlighted to avoid mistakes.
>
> I think the best way to avoid these confusions is, in addition to specifying in the docs, renaming the methods on `Utf8Entry` to include the word "descriptor", like `equalsDescriptorString`, but I fear this method name might be too long.
> 
> If the `equalsDescriptorString` on `Utf8Entry` is too inconvenient, a remedy may be to add `matches(String, ClassDesc)` or `matches(String, MethodTypeDesc)` to NameAndTypeEntry and/or MemberRefEntry.

I think it is clearly OK to add the non-ambiguous methods, however this one probably should be brought to the mailing list for discussion. We already did some spins related to the ClassDesc serialization ambiguity in the API and there was never clear output. One of the option might be to exclude the ambiguous methods from this PR.

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PR Review Comment: https://git.openjdk.org/jdk/pull/23548#discussion_r1951261649