PROPOSAL: Method and Field Literals

[Stephen Colebourne]

brucechapman at paradise.net.nz wrote:
> the proposal would then be incomplete if you did not extend it to cover type
> literals as well, both as type literals per se and allowing them as annotation
> element values. Currently class literals cannot represent instantiations of a
> generic type. If we allow field and method literals of generic types, but don't
> address the lack of a generic type literal, we haven't gone far enough.

I agree that Java should have type literals, but I think that they are a
separate Coin. Feel free to start writing ;-)

> Following that line of reasoning, and that the type literal doesn't have a
> obvious place to put the # consistently with field and method literals, maybe
> the solution is to use # in a bounding form like these
> #ArrayList<String>#
> #PrintWriter.out#
> #ArrayList<String>.add(String)#
> 
> but that might not play nicely with recent discussions about the nature of the
> LHS when # is used as a dereferencer, and with the FCM/BGGA stuff that it would
> be good to be considerate of.

Fan (http://fandev.org) uses a postfixed #

ArrayList<String>#

The way to think of this is like the root of a URL, where the suffixes
for Field/Method are like URL doc-internal references.

Stephen