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Java 13 PDF

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Java 13 PDF

Uploaded by

Sergio Pacheco
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© © All Rights Reserved
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BROUGHT TO YOU IN PARTNERSHIP WITH

Java 13
WRITTEN BY SIMMON RITTER
AZUL SYSTEMS

We are now well into the new six-month release cadence of the JDK and, The opening quotes must be followed by a line terminator. Text blocks can-
with the release of JDK 13, it is clearly working well. not be used on a single line, thus the following code would generate an error:

One thing that is obvious is that, whilst the overall rate of change for the String smallBlock = \"\"\"Only one line\"\"\";

Java platform has increased, individual releases will have fewer new
A simple piece of HTML can now be assigned to a String like this:
features. This is the case with JDK 13, which includes only five JDK En-
hancement Proposals (JEPs) and 76 new core library elements (of which String htmlBlock = " " "

nearly half are simple additions to the java.io package). <html>


<body>
Note: This is correct as of August 18, 2019, since JDK 13 has not yet <p>My web page</p>

been released. </body>


<html>
Let's start with a change to the language syntax, in the form of text " " ";

blocks (JEP 355). Java has always suffered a little from the way strings
are defined. A string starts with a double-quote and ends with a dou-
ble-quote, which is fine, except that the string cannot span more than

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the JDK was such that the decision was made to remove it before release.
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Text blocks are a different solution to the same challenge. A text block
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There are a couple of subtleties that you need to be aware of in using The --release flag is newer but can be replaced with --source . To run
text blocks. the application, we need to enable the preview features:

The positioning of the closing quotes is significant because it deter- java --enable-preview TextBlock

mines how incidental whitespace is handled. In the example above, the


There are three new methods in the String class that complement this
closing quotes are aligned with the indentation of the HTML text. In
language change. We now have:
this case, the compiler will remove the indentation spaces resulting in
a string like this: • formatted() : This formats the string using the string itself as

the format string and is equivalent to calling format(this,


<html>
args) .
<body>
<p>My web page</p> • stripIndent() : This removes incidental spaces from the string.
</body>
This is useful if you are reading multi-line strings and want to ap-
<html>
ply the same elimination of incidental whitespace that happens
with an explicit declaration.
If we moved the closing quotes closer to the left-hand margin, this would
change the number of indentation spaces removed. If we moved it two • translateEscapes(): This returns the string with escape sequenc-
spaces to the left, we would add two indentation spaces to each line of es (e.g. \r ) translated into the appropriate Unicode value.
the string. Moving it all the way to the left-hand margin would result in
What's interesting about these methods is that they have instantly been
the retention of all the indentation spaces. Moving the quotes further to
deprecated, meaning they could be removed in a future version of the
the right has no effect and will not add more indentation spaces.
JDK. This seems a bit odd at first, to add a method and also deprecate it

In the above example, the closing quotes are placed on their own line; in at the same time. However, because these relate directly to a language

addition to controlling the amount of incidental space eliminated, this preview feature, which may be changed or removed, it makes perfect

will also add a newline to the end of the generated string. If this is not sense. There is a new proposal to add an annotation, @PreviewFeature ,

required, the closing quotes can be placed directly after the end of the that would make this situation easier to handle.

text. However, it is then not possible to control incidental space. This can
There is another (small) language change in JDK 13, covered by JEP 354.
be done explicitly using the indent() method of String .
This applies to the switch expression feature that was included in JDK 12

Regular Java language escape sequences work as expected and double as the first-ever preview feature. Here, we have a perfect example of why

quotes do not need to be escaped unless you want a sequence of three, preview features are an excellent idea.

in which case, at least one of them must be escaped (if you want, you
Until JDK 12, a switch could only be used as a statement, where it
can escape two or three of the quotes or the second or the third; just
performed an action but did not return a result. In JDK 12, a switch can
escaping the first probably makes the most sense, though).
now be used as an expression, meaning it returns a result that can be
assigned to a variable. There were also several changes to the syntax of
Jim Laskey and Stuart Marks have written a very useful Programmer's
case statements within the switch expressions. Let's use the example
Guide to Text Blocks. This provides more detail of the feature with a
from the JEP to understand how this works.
variety of examples. It is thoroughly recommended.

A common idiom for switch expressions is to use one variable to deter-


Text blocks are provided as a preview feature, which means they are not
mine how to assign a value to another variable.
included in the relevant Java Language Specification. The benefit of this
is that users can test the feature and provide feedback. The feedback int numberOfLetters;
may lead to changes in the feature or the feature even being deleted, if
necessary. If the feature was immediately made part of the Java SE stan- switch(dayOfWeek) {
case MONDAY:
dard it would be a lot harder to make changes. It is important to realize
case FRIDAY:
that preview features are not a form of beta. These are fully implement-
case SUNDAY:
ed features that are still subject to change. numberOfLetter = 6;
break;
As preview features are not part of the specification, it is necessary to
case TUESDAY
explicitly enable them for both compilation and runtime. To compile, we numberOfLetter = 7;
need to use two additional command-line flags: break;
case THURSDAY
javac --enable-preview --release 13 TextBlock.java
Code block continues on next Column

3 BROUGHT TO YOU IN PARTNERSHIP WITH


JAVA 13

case SATURDAY Feedback from the Java community indicated that overloading the use
of break to indicate the value to return could be confusing. The Java
numberOfLetter = 8;
language also allows the use of break (and continue ) with a label to
break;
case WEDNESDAY perform a form of goto . JEP 354 changes the use of break , in this case,
numberOfLetter = 9; to yield , so, in JDK 13, our code becomes:
break;
default: int numberOfLetters = switch (dayOfWeek) {

throw new IllegalStateException("Huh?: " + day); case MONDAY:

}; case FRIDAY:
case SUNDAY:

In this example, we're using the value dayOfWeek to assign a value to yield 6;
case TUESDAY
numberOfLetters . Due to the way the switch statement works, the
yield 7;
code is more error-prone than is ideal. Firstly, if we neglect to include a
case THURSDAY
break statement for each case label group, the default is to fall-through case SATURDAY
to the next label group. This can lead to some subtle and hard to find yield 8;
bugs. Secondly, we must make an assignment in each case label group. case WEDNESDAY

In this case, we would get a compiler error if we forgot, but it is still not yield 9;
default:
ideal. Our code is also quite verbose, since each value of dayOfWeek
throw new IllegalStateException("Huh?: " + day);
must have its own case label.
};

Using the new case-statement syntax, we get much cleaner, less er-
Here, we can see the benefit of preview features that allow a change like
ror-prone code:
this to be made easily before committing the syntax to the standard.
int numberOfLetters = switch (dayOfWeek) {
JDK 13 also includes three JEPs that relate to the virtual machine.
case MONDAY, FRIDAY, SUNDAY -> 6;
case TUESDAY -> 7;
JEP 350: Dynamic CDS Archive. This is an extension to the application
case THURSDAY, SATURDAY -> 8;
case WEDNESDAY -> 9; class data sharing functionality (AppCDS) that was contributed by
default -> throw new IllegalStateException("Huh?: Oracle to OpenJDK 10. Prior to that, it was included in the Oracle JDK
" + day); as a commercial feature. This extension allows the dynamic archiving of
}; classes at the end of the execution of a Java application. The archived
classes include all loaded application classes and library classes that are
Now, we need to make the assignment only once (from the return value
not present in the default, base-layer CDS archive. This also eliminates
of the switch expression) and can use a comma-separated list for the
the need to perform a training run of an application. Using AppCDS prior
case labels. Since we don't use a break statement, we also eliminate the
to this was a multi-step process involving the creation of a list of relevant
problem of fall-through.
classes and using this list to generate the archive to be used for subse-
The syntax of the switch expression allows the use of the older-style quent runs. Now, all that is required is a single run of an application with
syntax so, in JDK 12, we can write it like this: the -XX:ArchiveClassesAtExit flag providing the location where the
archive will be written.
int numberOfLetters = switch (dayOfWeek) {
case MONDAY: JEP 351: ZGC: Uncommit unused memory. ZGC is an experimental
case FRIDAY:
low-latency garbage collector that was introduced in JDK 11. ZGC's
case SUNDAY:
original design did not allow for memory pages to be returned to the
break 6;
case TUESDAY operating system when they were no longer required, e.g. when the
break 7; heap shrinks and the memory is unused for an extended period of time.
case THURSDAY For environments such as containers, where resources are shared be-
case SATURDAY tween a number of services, this can limit the scalability and efficiency
break 8;
of the system.
case WEDNESDAY
break 9;
The ZGC heap consists of a set of heap regions called ZPages. When
default:
ZPages are emptied during a GC cycle, they are returned to the ZPage-
throw new IllegalStateException("Huh?: " + day);
Cache. ZPages in this cache are organized in order of those used least
};
recently. In JDK 13, the ZGC will return pages that have been identified

4 BROUGHT TO YOU IN PARTNERSHIP WITH


JAVA 13

as unused for a sufficiently long period of time to the operating system. • The type-specific Buffer classes of java.nio now have abso-
This allows them to be reused for other processes. Uncommitting lute (as opposed to relative) bulk get and set methods. They,
memory will never cause the heap size to shrink below the minimum as well as the base abstract Buffer class, include a slice()
size specified on the command line. If the minimum and maximum heap method to extract part of the buffer.
sizes are set to the same value, no memory will be uncommitted. • MappedByteBuffer has a force() method that will force a

write of a section of the buffer to its backing store.


JEP 353: Reimplement the legacy Socket API. Both the java.net.
• java.nio.FileSystem adds three new overloaded forms of new-
Socket and java.net.ServerSocket API implementations date back
FileSystem() to access the contents of a file as a file system.
to JDK 1.0. The implementation of these APIs uses several techniques
• There's an interesting new method in javax.annotation.pro-
(such as using the thread stack as the IO buffer) which make them
cessing.ProcessingEnvironment --- isPreviewEnabled() .
inflexible and hard to maintain. JDK 13 provides a new implementation,
This will tell you whether the preview features (discussed earlier)
NioSocketImpl , which no longer requires native code, thus simplifying
are enabled. The reason this is interesting is that the annotation,
the act of porting to multiple platforms. It also makes use of the existing
@PreviewFeature , will not be available until JDK 14.
buffer cache mechanism (eliminating the use of the thread stack for this
purpose) and uses java.util.concurrent locks rather than synchro- • Element-specific types in javax.lang.model.element all get

nized methods. This will make it simpler to integrate with fibers, which the asType() method. This returns a pseudo-type.

are being provided as part of Project Loom when that is integrated with • DocumentBuilderFactory and SAXParserFactory in ja-

the JDK. vax.xml.parsers get three new methods to create name-

space-aware instances.
As mentioned previously, JDK 13 includes only 76 new APIs in the core
class libraries. These cover the following areas: As you can see, JDK 13 does not have a large number of new features
and APIs. However, it continues to deliver the incremental evolution of
• Updates to Unicode support. Java, ensuring it remains the most popular programming language on
• Three new methods in String to support text blocks already the planet.
described.

Written by Simmon Ritter, Deputy CTO at Azul Systems


Simon joined Sun Microsystems in 1996 and started working with Java technology from JDK 1.0; he has
spent time working in both Java development and consultancy. Having moved to Oracle as part of the Sun
acquisition, he managed the Java Evangelism team for the core Java platform. Now at Azul, he continues to
help people understand Java as well as Azul’s JVM technologies and products. Simon has twice been awarded
Java Rockstar status at JavaOne and is a Java Champion. He currently represents Azul on the JCP Executive
Committee and on the Java SE Expert Group.

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