java.lang.constant.ClassDesc and TypeDescriptor for hidden class??

[forax at univ-mlv.fr]

> De: "Peter Levart" <peter.levart at gmail.com>
> À: "Remi Forax" <forax at univ-mlv.fr>, "mandy chung" <mandy.chung at oracle.com>
> Cc: "John Rose" <john.r.rose at oracle.com>, "Brian Goetz"
> <brian.goetz at oracle.com>, "valhalla-dev" <valhalla-dev at openjdk.java.net>
> Envoyé: Mardi 14 Avril 2020 11:28:52
> Objet: Re: java.lang.constant.ClassDesc and TypeDescriptor for hidden class??

> On 4/13/20 10:05 PM, [ mailto:forax at univ-mlv.fr | forax at univ-mlv.fr ] wrote:

>>> That's my summary why I went with option c'. The preference is "slightly".

>>> Any other thought?
>> I think c' is good for GetClassSignature where throwing an exception is not
>> something you can do, but for the Java side, Class.descriptorString(), i prefer
>> to follow the adage "the blow early, blow often" because we can throw an
>> exception as fast as we detect an error.

> But what if there was no error? I find conservative API helpful only as long as
> it doesn't prevent me from doing valid things or make me jump through hoops to
> achieve them.

>> Consistency between C and Java is a great ideal but not at the price of delaying
>> the error reporting on the Java side.

> You punish the programmer before (s)he even made an error on the assumption that
> (s)he probably would have made it.

> This feels like "Minority Report".
:) 

I think part of the issue here is that we don't agree about what descriptorString() is, 
The javadoc of TypeDescriptor.descriptorString() said that 
"[it] ... must be either a field type descriptor (JVMS 4.3.2) or method type descriptor (JVMS 4.3.3)" 

So it should be a *valid* descriptor, the problem with option c' is not valid because it changes the semantics of descriptorString(). 

Moreover, the javadoc of Class.descriptorString() explicitly reference Class.forName() and said that descriptorString() that is an incomplete dual of Class.forName(), 
so again, returning a non valid descriptor to have it to fail to resolve later is in my opinion non conform to the described semantics. 

So yes, you can print a non valid descriptor but that's not the point, the point is that there is no valid descriptor for a hidden class because you can not resolve a hidden class back to an equivalent runtime class. 

> Regards, Peter

regards, 
Rémi