[lworld] RFR: 8247357: Flattenable field concept needs some cleanup

[John Rose]

On Jun 10, 2020, at 1:12 PM, Frederic Parain <frederic.parain at oracle.com> wrote:
> 
> John,
> 
> Thank you for looking at these changes.
> 
> “is_inline” might be confusing in the sense that it can be interpreted
> as a property of the field layout. And “is_declared_inline” shares the
> same issue (could be interpreter as a field modifier).
> What the is_inline() methods really do, is to answer the question: 
> is the type of this field an inline type? So, it’s a type question,
> and not a layout question. And sometimes, we use is_inline to perform
> checks that are not related to the layout, but to the properties of
> the type (like null-freeness).
> 
> To prevent the confusion, I would propose to change “is_inline” to
> “is_inline_type”, so the it would be obvious that the test is about
> the type of the field.
> 
> And to have similar names, we would follow your suggestion and
> rename “is_flattened” to “is_allocated_inlined"
> 
> So: 
> 	if(fd->is_inline_type()) {        // -> clearly a type test
> 
> and
>        if(fd->is_allocated_inline()) {   // -> clearly a layout test
> 
> 
> Would these new names address the concerns you have?

Yes, that’s great.  Tiny tweak:  I suggest “is_allocated_inline”,
or “is_inline_allocated” since the word “inline” can function
as an adverb.  (I’m not sure, but I think you are suggesting
“inlined” for “inline”.)