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I am curious about Java-11 in general, but specifically JEP:323 which plans to add the var declaration to Lambda operation variables.

The motivation behind this feature is discussed nicely here. Consider the following quote from the article:

// #1 - Legal
ITest divide = (@ATest var x, final var y) ->  x / y;
/* #2 Modifiers on Old-Style implicit paramaters => Illegal */
ITest divide = (@ATest x, final y) ->  x / y;

The usage of the final modifier is clear to me and is in line with immutability best practices.

However, I am not sure about the annotations. What is the great benefit of being able to annotate a lambda implicit parameter?

Can you provide a de-facto, beneficial example of using annotations on a lambda operation variable? Not as a matter of opinion, but as an actual example of code which is more readable or efficient when using this feature.

Naman
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Rann Lifshitz
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1 Answers1

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What is the great benefit of being able to annotate a lambda implicit parameter?

The usage of annotations within lambda statement should be similar to any other attribute on a non-lambda statement. This could be to make use of:

  • reflection and infer some information about the annotated object at runtime.
  • also at compile time to depict behaviors such as generated source code or other hints for tools

A use case stated in the JEP-323 itself(reiterating myself of not being sure if that's what you're looking forward to) - 

(@Nonnull var x, @Nullable var y) -> x.process(y)

where the annotations can be used by the libraries to determine a value check over x and y. In that, you know x.process(y) can certainly not throw a NullPointerException without even placing an explicit null check for x now which is same as any other explicitly annotated non-lambda parameter.

Notably, this is one of the benefits of bringing in the uniformity of allowing var for the formal parameters of an implicitly typed lambda expression.

Naman
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