Static fields in specialized classes

Stephen Colebourne scolebourne at joda.org
Tue Oct 14 14:46:33 UTC 2014


On 13 October 2014 19:19, Brian Goetz <brian.goetz at oracle.com> wrote:
> Consider:
>
> class Foo<any T> {
>     public final static int x = System.currentTimeMillis();
> }
>
> Regardless of whether our implementation is by specialization or erasure (or
> both), logically there is just *one* field 'x' for any instantiation Foo<T>.

Just to note that I support this view of the world. I think the
alternatives would be surprising.

> Except for access through instances (yechh).  Here, the compiler needs to
> rewrite any references to f.x (where f is an instance of a specialization of
> Foo) to Foo.x, and we're done.

There are a number of these edge cases in the Java language which are
almost never used and which Java the language would be far better off
without. Another is C style array locations, such as int
splitAndParse[](String str).

It seems entirely feasible to be more aggressive on these. Deprecate
in 9 (with warnings) and remove in 10. Isn't it time to take out some
of the garbage?

Stephen


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