For further consideration... (original) (raw)

Mark Thornton mthornton at optrak.co.uk
Mon Mar 30 14:32:02 PDT 2009

David Goodenough wrote:

5 years as near to indefinitely as matters). I need compiler checkability for field references now.

Define an annotation

@interface @fieldReference { String name(); }

class MyClass { @fieldReference("myField") static FieldRef FIELD_REF;

static {
   // use reflection to set initialise static fields with

@fieldReference annotations } }

You could use an annotation processor to verify that the @fieldReference named valid fields and was attached to a suitable reference field. There are probably other ways of doing this, but it does give you the compile time check you want without requiring a language change.

Regards Mark Thornton

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