[External] : Re: Revisiting default values

[John Rose]

> On Jun 30, 2021, at 8:39 AM, Brian Goetz <brian.goetz at oracle.com> wrote:
> 
> Now, let's talk more about null.  Null is a *reference* that refers to no object.  For a flattened/direct object (P.val), null cannot be in the value set (it's the wrong "kind"), though we can arrange for a primitive to behave like null in various ways.  It's not clear whether this helps or hurts the mental model, since it is distorting what null is.

This is a good point, if we can hold onto it.

Null is a magic one-off boojum that lives in
the space of reference types but makes
field references and method calls “softly
and suddenly vanish away”.

Having P.val.default.m() throw an NPE (under
default exclusion rules TBD) makes the null
 boojum arise from a non-reference value,
but only just long enough to make the method
call go away.  (Boo—)

Dan’s proposals for default exclusion is
loads from uninitialized variables (such as
fresh array elements) amount to another
boojum-like behavior, of making loads
go away (unless the variable has been
stored into previously).  Again, it’s not
directly associated with a reference,
but it is null-like, and perhaps NPE
is the right way to signal the fault.

Of course, our familiar null does not show
complete boojum behavior, because you can
read, write, and print null without yourself
vanishing away.  Likewise, even if we do
some sort of default exclusion, perhaps we
will allow defaults to flow in the same
(limited) paths that nulls can flow.  And
in that case, the #nonewnulls crowd would
expect that only the one value null would
appear, whenever such a value were
converted to a reference.

Maybe, in some of these schemes, null
is not a primitive, but boojums and boxes
are the primitives, and null is a (safely)
boxed boojum?

— John