JEP 186: Collection Literals

[Brian Goetz]

There's not a perfect venue, but this is good enough for the current 
purpose: to discuss the /content/ of the JEP.  Actually discussing the 
/language feature/ proposed would come later, once the JEP is approved 
and funded.

This is a /research JEP/, whose goal is to explore the design space and 
come up with a proposal.  But, this JEP is merely in the /Posted/ state, 
meaning it is in circulation for initial review and consensus building 
around the goal, which is to /explore/ the feature.  I'll take the 
vigorous discussion so far as evidence that there is interest in 
exploring the feature, but let's not get ahead of ourselves.

Details on the process here: http://openjdk.java.net/jeps/1

On 1/14/2014 10:49 AM, Paul Benedict wrote:
> Question to Paul Sandoz: collection literals really have no connection to
> lambda-dev, right? If that's the case, should all discussion move to
> coin-dev or another list?
>
>
> On Tue, Jan 14, 2014 at 9:46 AM, Paul Sandoz <paul.sandoz at oracle.com> wrote:
>
>>
>> On Jan 14, 2014, at 3:34 PM, "Millies, Sebastian" <
>> Sebastian.Millies at softwareag.com> wrote:
>>
>>> I would certainly expect it to be an immutable list, and I believe the
>> proposal of having collection literals makes most sense in the context of
>> persistent collections. This would be in keeping with evolving Java towards
>> a more functional and parallel-friendly programming style, which entails
>> embracing immutability. In contrast, what's to be gained from a shorter
>> version of Arrays.asList() ?  -- Sebastian
>>>
>>
>> Note that Arrays.asList creates a List implementation that cannot be
>> structurally modified; it cannot grow or shrink and is essentially a view
>> over the array passed (directly or indirectly) to it. That is why one sees
>> annoying code like:
>>
>>    new ArrayList<>(Arrays.asList(1, 2, 3, 4));
>>
>> or:
>>
>>    new ArrayList<Integer>() {{ add(1); add(2); add(3); }};
>>
>> --
>>
>> One reason why i pause for thought about immutability is List is not a
>> particularly a good interface for an immutable list of elements.
>>
>> Paul.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>
>