The Java(TM) Language Specification [Paperback]

James Gosling (Author), Guy L., Jr. Steele (Author), Bill Joy (Author)

Book Description

Series: Java (Addison-Wesley) | Publication Date: September 12, 1996

Second Edition now available!Written by the inventors of the technology, The Java Language Specification is the definitive technical reference for the Java programming language. It provides complete, accurate, and detailed coverage of the entire language and its syntax. If you want to know the precise meaning of Java's constructs, this is the source for you. The book specifies all of Java's syntax and semantics. It contains both lexical and syntactic grammars for the language, including a LALR(1) grammar. It describes all aspects of the language as checked by a Java compiler, including the semantics of all types, statements, and expressions. It also covers all aspects of the Java execution model, including exceptions, threads, and binary compatibility. In addition, the book gives specifications for all the types defined in the core packages of Java's Application Programming Interface (API): java.lang, java.io, and java.util. 0201634511B04062001

Editorial Reviews

From the Inside Flap

About the Java SeriesThe Java Series books provide definitive reference documentation for Java programmers and end users. They are written by members of the Java team and published under the auspices of JavaSoft, a Sun Microsystems business. The World Wide Web allows Java documentation to be made available over the Internet, either by downloading or as hypertext. Nevertheless, the worldwide interest in Java technology led us to write and publish these books to supplement all of the documentation at our Web site.Our editor Mike Hendrickson and his team have done a superb job of navigating us through the world of publishing. Within Sun, the support of James Gosling, Ruth Hennigar, Jon Kannegaard, and Bill Joy ensured that this series would have the resources it needed to be successful. In addition to the tremendous effort by individual authors, many members of the JavaSoft team have contributed behind the scenes to bring the highest level of quality and engineering to the books in the Series. A personal note of thanks to my children Christopher and James for putting a positive spin on the many trips to my office during the development of the Series.

Lisa Friendly
Series Editor

PrefaceJava was originally called Oak, and designed for use in embedded consumer-electronic applications by James Gosling. After several years of experience with the language, and significant contributions by Ed Frank, Patrick Naughton, Jonathan Payne, and Chris Warth it was retargeted to the Internet, renamed Java, and substantially revised to be the language specified here. The final form of the language was defined by James Gosling, Bill Joy, Guy Steele, Richard Tuck, Frank Yellin, and Arthur van Hoff, with help from Graham Hamilton, Tim Lindholm and many other friends and colleagues.

Java is a general-purpose concurrent class-based object-oriented programming language, specifically designed to have as few implementation dependencies as possible. Java allows application developers to write a program once and then be able to run it everywhere on the Internet.

This book attempts a complete specification of the syntax and semantics of the Java language and the core packages java.lang, java.io, and java.util of its Application Programming Interface. We intend that the behavior of every language construct is specified here, so that all implementations of Java will accept the same programs. Except for timing dependencies or other non-determinisms and given sufficient time and sufficient memory space, a Java program should compute the same result on all machines and in all implementations.

We believe that Java is a mature language, ready for widespread use. Nevertheless, we expect some evolution of the language in the years to come. We intend to manage this evolution in a way that is completely compatible with existing applications. To do this, we intend to make relatively few new versions of the language, and to distinguish each new version with a different filename extension. Java compilers and systems will be able to support the several versions simultannously, with complete compatibility.

Much research and experimentation with Java is already underway. We encourage this work, and will continue to cooperate with external groups to explore improvements to Java. For example, we have already received several interesting proposals for parameterized types. In technically difficult areas, near the state of the art, this kind of research collaboration is essential.

We acknowledge and thank the many people who have contributed to this book through their excellent feedback, assistance and encouragement: Particularly thorough, careful, and thoughtful reviews of drafts were provided by Tom Cargill, Peter Deutsch, Paul Hilfinger, Masayuki Ida, David Moon, Steven Muchnick, Charles L. Perkins, Chris Van Wyk, Steve Vinoski, Philip Wadler, Daniel Weinreb, and Kenneth Zadeck. We are very grateful for their extraordinary volunteer efforts.

We are also grateful for reviews, questions, comments, and suggestions from Stephen Adams, Bowen Alpern, Glenn Ammons, Leonid Arbuzov, Kim Bruce, Edwin Chan, David Chase, Pavel Curtis, Drew Dean, William Dietz, David Dill, Patrick Dussud, Ed Felten, John Giannandrea, John Gilmore, Charles Gust, Warren Harris, Lee Hasiuk, Mike Hendrickson, Mark Hill, Urs Hoelzle, Roger Hoover, Susan Flynn Hummel, Christopher Jang, Mick Jordan, Mukesh Kacker, Peter Kessler, James Larus, Derek Lieber, Bill McKeeman, Steve Naroff, Evi Nemeth, Robert O'Callahan, Dave Papay, Craig Partridge, Scott Pfeffer, Eric Raymond, Jim Roskind, Jim Russell, William Scherlis, Edith Schonberg, Anthony Scian, Matthew Self, Janice Shepherd, Kathy Stark, Barbara Steele, Rob Strom, William Waite, Greg Weeks, and Bob Wilson. (This list was generated semi-automatically from our e-mail records. We apologize if we have omitted anyone.)

The feedback from all these reviewers was invaluable to us in improving the definition of the Java language as well as the form of the presentation in this book. We thank them for their diligence. Any remaining errors in this book-we hope they are few-are our responsibility and not theirs.

We thank Francesca Freedman and Doug Kramer for assistance with matters of typography and layout. We thank Dan Mills of Adobe Systems Incorporated for assistance in exploring possible choices of typefaces.

Many of our colleagues at Sun Microsystems have helped us in one way or another. Lisa Friendly, our series editor, managed our relationship with Addison-Wesley. Susan Stambaugh managed the distribution of many hundreds of copies of drafts to reviewers. We received valuable assistance and technical advice from Ben Adida, Ole Agesen, Ken Arnold, Rick Cattell, Asmus Freytag, Norm Hardy, Steve Heller, David Hough, Doug Kramer, Nancy Lee, Marianne Mueller, Akira Tanaka, Greg Tarsy, David Ungar, Jim Waldo, Ann Wollrath, Geoff Wyant, and Derek White. We thank Alan Baratz, David Bowen, Mike Clary, John Doerr, Jon Kannegaard, Eric Schmidt, Bob Sproull, Bert Sutherland, and Scott McNealy for leadership and encouragement.

The on-line Bartleby Library of Columbia University, at URL: cc.columbia/acis/bartleby/ was invaluable to us during the process of researching and verifying many of the quotations that are scattered throughout this book. Here is one example:

They lard their lean books with the fat of others' works.
-Robert Burton (1576-1640)We are grateful to those who have toiled on Project Bartleby, for saving us a great deal of effort and reawakening our appreciation for the works of Walt Whitman.

We are thankful for the tools and services we had at our disposal in writing this book: telephones, overnight delivery, desktop workstations, laser printers, photocopiers, text formatting and page layout software, fonts, electronic mail, the World Wide Web, and, of course, the Internet. We live in three different states, scattered across a continent, but collaboration with each other and with our reviewers has seemed almost effortless. Kudos to the thousands of people who have worked over the years to make these excellent tools and services work quickly and reliably.

Mike Hendrickson, Katie Duffy, Simone Payment, and Rosa Aimee Gonzalez of Addison-Wesley were very helpful, encouraging, and patient during the long process of bringing this book to print. We also thank the copy editors.

Rosemary Simpson worked hard, on a very tight schedule, to create the index. We got into the act at the last minute, however; blame us and not her for any jokes you may find hidden therein.

Finally, we are grateful to our families and friends for their love and support during this last, crazy, year.

In their book The C Programming Language, Brian Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie said that they felt that the C language "wears well as one's experience with it grows." If you like C, we think you will like Java. We hope that Java, too, wears well for you.

James Gosling - Cupertino, California
Bill Joy - Aspen, Colorado
Guy Steele - Chelmsford, Massachusetts
July, 1996

0201634511P04062001

From the Back Cover

Second Edition
now available! Written by the inventors of the technology, The Java Language Specification is the definitive technical reference for the Java programming language. It provides complete, accurate, and detailed coverage of the entire language and its syntax. If you want to know the precise meaning of Java's constructs, this is the source for you.

The book specifies all of Java's syntax and semantics. It contains both lexical and syntactic grammars for the language, including a LALR(1) grammar. It describes all aspects of the language as checked by a Java compiler, including the semantics of all types, statements, and expressions. It also covers all aspects of the Java execution model, including exceptions, threads, and binary compatibility. In addition, the book gives specifications for all the types defined in the core packages of Java's Application Programming Interface (API): java.lang, java.io, and java.util. 0201634511B04062001

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 825 pages
• Publisher: Addison Wesley Publishing Company (September 12, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0201634511
• ISBN-13: 978-0201634518
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7.2 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,852,161 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars For the guts of Java, there's nothing better..., October 17, 2005

By 

Thomas Duff "Duffbert" (Portland, OR United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Java™ Language Specification, The (3rd Edition) (Paperback)

Are you the type that has to know the "why" and "how" behind how a language behaves? Then this is the book you need... The Java Language Specification, Third Edition by James Gosling, Bill Joy, Guy Steele, Gilad Bracha. Provided you're buying it for the right reason, there's nothing close to it.

Contents: Introduction; Grammars; Lexical Structure; Types, Values, and Variables; Conversions and Promotions; Names; Packages; Classes; Interfaces; Arrays; Exceptions; Execution; Binary Compatibility; Blocks and Statements; Expressions; Definite Assignment; Threads and Locks; Syntax; Index

So why do I say "for the right reason"? Because if you pick it up expecting something else, you'll be highly disappointed. This is *not* a tutorial of the language, nor is it an easy-to-read conversation or discussion of Java. Instead, it's a computer engineering level coverage of how Java is structured and how it works, from the people who wrote it. As such, you're going to find information in here that you'll have a hard time getting elsewhere. You'll find out how the nitty-gritty of how things like classes and interfaces work, and how they *should* be structured. If you're just getting started in Java, you'll likely be over your head by the second chapter. The target of this type of writing would be people who are Java journeymen, and who have gotten to the point where they need to know some of the theory behind features and structure. You'll also need a book like this if you write development tools that target the Java environment. Armed with this book and a solid background in Java, you'll be able to produce software that behaves just as developers would expect.

Don't let the depth and complexity of the material steer you away from the book if you're ready to go deeper with Java. Just don't pick up the book expecting to learn Java for the first time. There are better books out there for that purpose. But if you need to understand the guts of Java, this is it.

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Best Java book for experienced programmers., September 18, 1996

By A Customer

This review is from: The Java(TM) Language Specification (Paperback)

Never buy Internet/Programming books by the pound. If you already know how programming languages and compilers work (maybe you've written a compiler or two..) and you want evaluate Java as a language or you want to develop your Java programming "head" in addition to your "C" "head" and your assembler "head", this is the resource. This is learning the beauty of the Java language by drinking from the firehose, not slodging through the mud. The book is mercifully concise, Emily Dickinson would be proud.

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Must-have for the Java system developer, July 27, 2005

By 

wiredweird "wiredweird" (Earth, or somewhere nearby) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Java™ Language Specification, The (3rd Edition) (Paperback)

This is it, the complete and authoritative definition of the Java programming language. This edition covers the Java language up to 1.5, so it gives a full description of generics and type parameters, boxing and unboxing, enums, annotation, and all the latest. If you develop Java language tools - debuggers, compilers, etc. - you simply must have this book. If you care about Java details that much, you must have the newest edition.

The typical programmer, someone who uses Java for application development, probably won't find much of interest in this book. This isn't a programmer's how-to manual. Nearly nothing describes how to use the language features. The code samples just illustrate language syntax and subtleties. There's nearly no discussion of the Java APIs, not even the java.lang.* packages or language-dependent reflection features. These are not flaws in this reference manual - this simply isn't a book meant to serve those needs.

Despite its 650+ pages, this really is a concise, precise definition of the Java 1.5 programming language. If you care about the internals of Java or about OO lnaguages in general, then this book is for you.

//wiredweird