PROPOSAL: Return 'this' (original) (raw)

Marek Kozieł develop4lasu at gmail.com
Wed Mar 25 16:24:38 PDT 2009

W dniu 26 marca 2009 00:04 użytkownik Neal Gafter <neal at gafter.com> napisał:

I would expect these methods to be erased to void-returning methods, and the duplication of the receiver to occur on the caller's side in the generated code.

I know that this is some solution, but proposal in this form can be extended to work with (backward) covariant return types in future:

 static class A {
         public this test() {   }
 }
 static class B extends A {
         public this A test() {  }
 }

So there's no need for any kind of special auto-covariant type or anything.  You'd need extra a rule that a method declared to return this can only be overridden by (and can only override) a method similarly declared to return this.  You need to say how such methods are recorded in class files (an additional classfile Attribute on the method?).  How are they treated by reflection?  How do they appear in the javadoc API?  How should they appear in javadoc?  How do they appear in the program model API for annotation processing?

Everything would be same as: static class A { public A test() { return this; } } static class B extends A { public B test() { return this; } }

But I'm opened to any suggestions.

-- Pozdrowionka. / Regards. Lasu aka Marek Kozieł

http://lasu2string.blogspot.com/

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