[JSR308] Can we agree on our goals? (annotations on blocks)

[Eugene Kuleshov]

Gary,

  I just wanted to point out that with Tom's suggestion you won't be 
able to easily say if annotated block represent a single loop or a 
sequence of statements. Also, user can add another statement to the 
block added for annotating loop without noticing it.

  regards,
  Eugene


Gary T. Leavens wrote:
> Hi Eugene, and all,
>
> Just a minor correction to your post.  JML doesn't need to restrict
> users to only putting annotations on loop statements.  Indeed it could
> be useful to annotate any statement.  The only reason I mentioned
> loops explicitly is becuase that is more important to us than other
> statements.  I would, however, prefer to be able to annotate all
> kinds of Java statements.
>
> While I'm at it, Tom's suggestion of annotating only blocks would be
> acceptable for our purposes in JML.  My only objection to it is that
> it's a bit irregular to only have annotations on declaration statements
> and block statements.  But it would work for our use cases and has a
> certain appeal (i.e., it's simple, and as Tom noted, it clearly
> delimits the scope of the annotation).
>
> On Thu, 1 Feb 2007, Eugene Kuleshov wrote:
>
>> Tom Ball wrote:
>>>>  Tom, does block nodes [in javac AST] have information about type 
>>>> of the parent, i.e. if/else/for/try/catch/etc ?
>>> No node has any knowledge of its parents, as javac's AST is a 
>>> directed acyclic graph.  I'm not sure parent information is useful 
>>> anyway since loop statements don't necessarily have blocks -- they 
>>> have child statements which may or may not be blocks.
>>>
>>> However, I was suggesting putting a block around the statement(s) to 
>>> be annotated:
>>>
>>>    @DoForever {
>>>        for (;;) {
>>>           ...
>>>        }
>>>    }
>>>
>>> No parent node knowledge is needed here, whereas it would be a 
>>> serious compiler whack to support something like "for (;;) 
>>> @DoForever { ... }". IMHO, I think the former is easier to read.
>> Yes, but "for (;;) @DoForever { ... }" meant postfix annotation 
>> linked to the "for" not to the block. This is sensitive for tools 
>> like JML, because they need to be able to restrict annotation on the 
>> loop only, but in your suggestion nothing would stop user from doing 
>> something like this:
>>
>>  @DoForever {
>>      for (;;) {
>>         ...
>>      }
>>      doSomethingElse();
>>  }
>>
>> On the other hand the following code would be valid (restricting 
>> block to not change instance state for this particular scope):
>>
>>  @Readonly {
>>      doSomething();
>>      doSomethingElse();
>>  }
>>
>> regards,
>> Eugene