Method Pointers

[Brian Goetz]

Yes, that was one of the many (sucking) options considered.  (This one 
sucks for several reasons: (a) it teases the user into thinking we have 
first-class intersection types, and would be introducing an irregularity 
about the syntax of types; (b) is pretty verbose (you'd have to write 
out the whole target type, including type parameters.)


As I said, we've examined a lot of syntax candidates, and have not yet 
found one that is very satisfying.  I will write them up when I have the 
time -- and what's wrong with the ones we've considered -- and at that 
point it will be constructive to brainstorm for new ideas on this front.


On 2/26/2012 11:11 PM, Greg Dennis wrote:
> Have you considered allowing a cast to an intersection of types, e.g.
> allowing a cast to "(Runnable&  Serializable)"? It's not the most succinct
> option, but it avoids the creation of the garbage class, and the concept of
> an intersection type already exists in generics.
>
> Greg
>
>
>
>
>> Date: Sun, 26 Feb 2012 18:48:57 -0500
>> From: Brian Goetz<brian.goetz at oracle.com>
>> Subject: Re: Method Pointers
>> To: Sam Pullara<sam at sampullara.com>
>> Cc: lambda-dev at openjdk.java.net
>> Message-ID:<4F4AC4E9.6090109 at oracle.com>
>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
>>
>> I would call this the "do nothing" option (which is certainly an
>> option), because we already support this as part of the basic SAM
>> conversion.  You can use a cast to select a specific target type, and if
>> the target type is serializable then the lambda will be.  But, it still
>> is in the sucky category as a use-site serialization opt-in because it
>> requires the user to create a class just so they make a lambda
>> serializable (and if this were the only option, which it currently is,
>> the result would be an application has many otherwise useless "garbage"
>> classes like this one.)
>>
>>
>> On 2/26/2012 6:43 PM, Sam Pullara wrote:
>>> Since we are going to support it when the interface is Serializable, why
>> not just require that you do something like:
>>>
>>> interface SerializableRunnable extends Runnable, Serializable {}
>>>
>>> and then cast it to that at the call site. Is this an option that sucks?
>>>
>>> Sam
>>>
>>> On Feb 26, 2012, at 3:29 PM, Brian Goetz wrote:
>>>> Another use-site opt-in would be explicit serialization support.  While
>>>> we plan to do at least as well as inner classes -- a lambda is
>>>> serializable if its target type is -- we'd like to do better, and
>>>> provide a way of opting in.  This largely turns out to be a syntactic
>>>> problem -- what is the syntactic form of the opt-in.  (Lots of
>>>> suggestions have been made, and so far they all suck.  I will open this
>>>> to suggestions at a future time, but until then, please hold your fire.)
>>
>