What is a language construct? (was Re: Comment on state of Project Jigsaw)

[Alex Buckley]

On 1/5/2012 12:22 PM, Alex Buckley wrote:
> The various ClassFile attributes proposed by Jigsaw (Module,
> ModuleRequires, etc) should have no impact on tools which only know
> about pre-52.0 ClassFiles.

Actually I can strengthen this sentence: the various attributes should 
have no impact on tools, period. (Or "full stop", as some would say.) 
They can be ignored by _any_ ClassFile reader which doesn't care about 
module information, whether it's from 1996 and reads 45.3 or it's from 
2013 and reads 52.0.

> 2) Setting of super_class to 0 no longer means "my supertype is an Object".

To phrase this better: it no longer means "my superclass is Object (if 
I'm a class), or my superinterface is represented as Object (if I'm an 
interface)".

Alex