Re: Perl Pro but Java Newbie: Need nudge in proper direction for my favorite Perl routine in Java

From:

Lew <noone@lewscanon.com>

Newsgroups:

comp.lang.java.programmer

Date:

Sun, 14 Sep 2008 21:12:41 -0400

Message-ID:

<isGdnRzH9JISK1DVnZ2dnUVZ_sCdnZ2d@comcast.com>

/usr/ceo wrote:

I'm thinking that the "compile"-phase of Java is what resolves the
different objects in your example above. My "approach" moves it from
compile to runtime. So it seems.

Mark Space wrote:

I'm getting out of my depth here but I think the answer is yes. The
Java compiler has a few tricks it can do to save typing. That var-arg
statement is one -- it's just implemented with arrays at runtime.

At compile-time, actually. You can call a vararg method with an explicit
array. (Call a vararg foo( Object ...) with an int array argument to really
confuse matters.)

Same with enum, which in Java are just a shorthand class declaration.

One could take issue with the "just" part of that. There is a whole lot of
under-the-hood action for enums that doesn't happen for "just" any class.
Support for 'switch' cases is an example.

There might be a few other cases where the compiler will implicitly call
"new" for you. Autoboxing comes to mind. I can't think of any others
right now in addition to the aforementioned enums and var-agrs.

Autoboxing doesn't necessarily call 'new' - it could use the equivalent of
Integer.valueOf(). In practice, much autoboxing magic probably gets inlined
and optimized to heck and gone.

BTW, if you take NetBeans for a test drive, be sure to use a recent
version. I think 6.1 is the most recent. Lots of nice improvements in
recent months.

6.1 is the most recent NB release version. There's a beta of 6.5 available
with lots of nifty features.

--
Lew