Lambdas and serialization

[Maurizio Cimadamore]

On 19/10/10 14:41, Alessio Stalla wrote:
> On Tue, Oct 19, 2010 at 3:30 PM, Paul Benedict<pbenedict at apache.org>  wrote:
>    
>> Will the wrapper be serializable if the SAM interface is? That's a
>> good question, but I imagine it has to be because it is implementing
>> the interface.
>>
>> public interface MySamType extends Serializable {
>>   void doSomething(int x);
>> }
>>      
> Sorry, I was unclear with the expression "be serializable": what I
> really meant is not if it will merely implement java.io.Serializable,
> rather if it will actually be serialized by an ObjectOutputStream
> without any exception in all cases where a "regular" instance of the
> SAM would have been serialized without exceptions, and deserialized in
> the same conditions as well. That's imho a desirable feature to have,
> but it places a possibly non-trivial burden on the implementation.
>
>    
Good point. The short answer to this question is: it depends on how 
lambda expressions are translated by the compiler. If the compiler uses 
anonymous inner classes to translate away lambda expression, then the 
answer is yes. If lambda expressions are to be translated away by using 
method handles, then I *guess* the answer is no, as it seems like 
MethodHandle are not serializable (Remi or John might know more about 
this though).

Maurizio