PROPOSAL: Method and Field Literals (original) (raw)

Schulz, Stefan schulz at e-Spirit.de
Thu Mar 12 02:55:23 PDT 2009

Bruce wrote:

If that line of reasoning is followed (and I agree it is worth pursuing) then 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.

Isn't this rather something to complement reification of generic types? I think this is out of scope for the given proposal, but maybe I am wrong and it's just a snap.

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# #PrintWriter.out# #ArrayList.add(String)#

Well, one could reuse the class keyword: ArrayList#class

Stefan

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