Re: Annotation syntax in the JLS?

From:
=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Arne_Vajh=F8j?= <arne@vajhoej.dk>
Newsgroups:
comp.lang.java.programmer
Date:
Sun, 12 Apr 2009 20:31:26 -0400
Message-ID:
<49e287cd$0$90266$14726298@news.sunsite.dk>
Tom Anderson wrote:

On Sun, 12 Apr 2009, Arne Vajh?j wrote:

Tom Anderson wrote:

Stupid question - where's the definition of the syntax, at the
lexical level, of annotations in the JLS? I mean the application of
annotations, specifically to classes - the rules that make this:

@Foo
public class Bar {}

legal.

There's nothing in chapter 3 about them, and nothing in the relevant
bits of chapter 9 about syntax.

I came across something weird the other day, where the Eclipse and
Sun compilers seem to differ over whether a comma is permitted after
the last item in a literal array of classes that's used as an
annotation value. Normally, java permits the bonus comma after the
last item:

int[] a = new int[] {1, 2, 3,}; // legal

But javac seemed to be rejecting this:

import org.junit.Suite;

@Suite.SuiteClasses({
    Foo.class,
    Bar.class, // illegal!
})
public class MySuite {}

I'm a bit puzzled over the lexical status of the structure comprising
the curly brackets and their contents (the comma, and why a "new
Class[]" isn't needed), and would like to see what the letter of the
law is, but can't find it.


Section 9.7 has:

   NormalAnnotation:
       @ TypeName ( ElementValuePairsopt )

   ElementValuePairs:
       ElementValuePair
       ElementValuePairs , ElementValuePair

   ElementValuePair:
       Identifier = ElementValue

   ElementValue:
       ConditionalExpression
       Annotation
       ElementValueArrayInitializer

   ElementValueArrayInitializer:
       { ElementValuesopt ,opt }

   ElementValues:
       ElementValue
       ElementValues , ElementValue


Aha, yes, thank you! Not sure how i missed that.

Grammar is not be strong side but I assume you code is a single
ElementValuePair where Identifier is default and ElementValue is an
ElementValueArrayInitializer.


Indeed. And the production for ElementValueArrayInitializer does admit a
trailing comma: the production for ElementValues doesn't, but
ElementValueArrayInitializer has that ,opt in it.

Or at least i think it does. The typesetting in the HTML there is a bit
wacky - the comma in question is set as part of the opt subscript,
rather than at the same level as the ElementValues, but i *think* that's
a mistake; chapter 2, which defines the grammar notation, doesn't give
any meaning to a comma-separated double opt subscript, so i assume it
can't actually be that.


The PDF is a bit more readable.

I think that the opt subscript means that the preceding item is
optional.

So according to the grammar your trailing comma should be legal.

And indeed javac gives an error on the construct, but the Eclipse
compiler accepts it.

Arne

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