A JDK enhancement proposal suggests using hyphenated key phrases to indicate new options within the Java language, with the objective of making certain compatibility and readability in new key phrases as appropriate key phrase tokens change into more and more scarce.
The draft JDK enhancement proposal for key phrase administration notes that new options within the Java language typically require new key phrases, however new key phrases danger breaking current applications. For balancing readability and compatibility, a brand new kind of key phrase might be used, specifically a hyphenated key phrase that may be a compound of identifiers and pre-existing key phrases. Examples cited have been non-final, break-with, and short-circuit.
A key phrase is a sequence of ASCII letters—corresponding to class, else, and int—that builders will not be allowed to make use of as identifiers in Java applications. Java makes use of a small set of key phrases to indicate elementary language options. The key phrase administration proposal doesn’t suggest any new Java syntax parts or Java syntax optimizations for ease of implementation by compiler builders. The proposal has the next objectives:
- Exploring syntactic choices for Java language designers to indicate new options.
- Solving a “perpetual” drawback of key phrase tokens being scare and costly, leaving language designers to constrain or corrupt the Java programming mannequin to suit out there key phrases.
- Advising language designers on the fashion of key phrase suited to completely different options.
The proposal notes that Java designers face a problem in that key phrases conceived for Java 1.zero options are hardly ever appropriate for brand new options. The proposal does carry dangers in that some builders might not like hyphenated key phrases, whereas others might settle for the concept however dislike hyphenated recommendations that emerge for explicit language options. This danger is predicted to decrease over time.
The key phrase proposal at the moment doesn’t goal a particular model of Java the place it could be included. The proposal follows intently one other JDK enhancement proposal to introduce data and sealed varieties in Java.
