Classes, specializations, and statics (original) (raw)

Brian Goetz brian.goetz at oracle.com
Fri Feb 19 00:54:53 UTC 2016

Based on the example above, I think we need to be more explicit about how the method is handled. There are really two different sets of statics that need to be handled by the class initialization: A) common statics (shared across all instantiations) B) specialized statics In addition to the statics, there is also common (and maybe specialized?) code that is run as part of .

There is a reasonable model to collapse these back into one concept; treat "common statics" as specialized statics on the all-erased parameterization, with a clause that restricts them to that parameterization. Not clear whether we actually want to represent it that way or not, but its a useful mental model that doesn't require the creation of a third thing. (Since Class[Foo] and ParamType[Foo,erased*] describe the same class, this is also fully binary compatible with existing classes.)

Which means we can do a similar thing with , if we want. I'll wave my hands because we've not yet talked much about conditional members, but it basically looks like this:

<where T*=erased*> () { /* common static init code / / specializable init code */ }

() { /* specializable init code */ }

Or not.

Where will the initialization code for both kinds of statics be? The existing method?

We have two choices:

Either way, as you say, we have to ensure that the common init runs exactly once.

When using *static, are we only discussing {get,put}? Or is this also proposing invokestatic changes to allow specialized static methods?

Methods too.

All of the technical details aside, is this something we really want to expose to the users? They're going to have a hard time understanding why Foo (or Foo<ValueType) gets specialized statics_ _while Foo & Foo share the erased version.

I think this is mostly a matter of coming up with the right syntax, which makes it clear that statics can be per-class or per-specialization. There are a whole pile of related specialization-related syntax issues, I'll try to get them all in one place.

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