Straw man section 7: Method References

[Stephen Colebourne]

2009/12/14 David Goodenough <david.goodenough at linkchoose.co.uk>:
> Having reread the FCM spec, I can not see that what I am createing is
> not a Method Reference.  Its content might be populated with a literal
> syntax, but it has to be generated somehow, and I am not really that
> bothered by how it is generated, as long as it can be in a clean and
> checkable way (checkability being the vital component, cleanliness
> being merely desirable).
>
> In fact one of the destinctions that I get from reading the FCM docs is
> that they are more than just a Field (or Method).  Section A3 for instance
> talks about a class which contains the object that this Method/Field is
> bound do, and I would be using a very similar method.

Field literals are of the type reflect.Field.
Method literals are of the type reflect.Method.
Method references are of the function type.

One of the issues with FCM was how to use the same syntax to refer to
objects of two different types. I understand this concern drives the
omission of field/method literals (which are undoubtably useful, but
optional for the Lambda requirements).

Stephen