Question About MethodHandles.findSpecial

[Fredrik Öhrström]

John Rose skrev:
> On May 5, 2009, at 12:25 PM, Fredrik Öhrström wrote:
>
>   
>>> or invocation of private methods, see section 7.7 of the JVM spec.
>>> Rémi
>>>       
>> Thanks! A MethodHandle pointing to a private method makes sense.
>> Still the javadoc for findSpecial explicitly mentions the  
>> constructor so
>> is there any reason for executing a constructor through a  
>> MethodHandle?
>>     
>
> Well, there is a strong reason for method invocation via  
> invokespecial.  To avoid burdensome workarounds, you need it if your  
> dynamic language is going to extend Java classes.  The topic was  
> discussed on jvm-languages:
>    http://groups.google.com/group/jvm-languages/browse_thread/thread/319982bfe1be9487/
>
>   
I do not doubt that findSpecial is useful for a lot of reasons,
but I was asking about the constructor call.  The javadoc says:

     Produce an early-bound method handle for
     a virtual method, or a handle for a constructor,
     as if called from an |invokespecial| instruction from |caller|.

So my question was, and still is, :-) , why would you
call a constructor through a MethodHandle?

//Fredrik