Re: Spot The Error
On 02/20/2011 01:31 PM, Lars Enderin wrote:
OK. I wasn't thinking straight. May I be excused now?
I haven't actually created any interfaces myself--just worked with
them,without much thoughts about terminology.
(Interfaces compile to .class files, however...)
There are many terms in Java that overload a language-specific terminology,
e.g., "reference", "class", "interface", on terms with wider meanings. In a
discussion on the language /per se/, a presumption of the language-specific
meanings would naturally prevail.
Because we are a community that questions the /status quo/ at every turn, one
may challenge the Java implementors on that extrinsic detail. Why did they
pick the misleading file suffix ".class"? Wouldn't ".bcode" or ".obj" or ".o"
or ".pcode" have been more informative?
In any event, the naming of a bytecode (what the JLS calls "binary compiled
form") file is outside the scope of the Java language itself, ergo irrelevant
to the discussion of the language-specific terminology.
"Each host determines how packages, compilation units, and subpackages are
created and stored, and which compilation units are observable (??7.3) in a
particular compilation."
JLS ??7.2
It is, I agree, entirely relevant in the wider domain of discourse.
--
Lew
Honi soit qui mal y pense.