Straw man section 7: Method References

[David Goodenough]

On Monday 14 December 2009, Stephen Colebourne wrote:
> 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
> 
Well its the Method or Field Reference that I am interested in, not the
way in which it is generated.  Obviously it needs to be generated somehow
in a compiler checkable way, but I do not mind how.  So what I need to
do is understand how it is proposed that they are generated and then
then how what is proposed might be extended to Field References.

David