I understand that annotations are immutable, however, arrays in Java are by themselves not immutable. After running a test I notice that the array returned from an annotation parameter can be mutated but it does not effect the source array:
@Target({ElementType.TYPE})
@Retention(RetentionPolicy.RUNTIME)
@interface ArrayAnnotation {
String[] value() default {};
}
@ArrayAnnotation({"foo"})
public class Main {
public static void main(String[] args) {
ArrayAnnotation test = Main.class.getAnnotation(ArrayAnnotation.class);
String[] test0 = test.value();
test0[0] = "bar";
System.out.println(test0[0]);
String[] test1 = test.value();
System.out.println(test1[0]);
}
}
This prints:
bar
foo
What is going on behind the scenes here? Is there simply an array copy happening during each call to value()
, or is it something more complex?
Is there simply an array copy happening during each call to value(), or is it something more complex?
Yes, the array is copied.
Annotations are a special kind of interface
type. (JLS)
They are implemented by some Proxy
classes at runtime.
You can debug it if you set breakpoint at Proxy.newProxyInstance()
.
Invocations on annotation are intercepted by AnnotationInvocationHandler
which copies arrays:
if (result.getClass().isArray() && Array.getLength(result) != 0)
result = cloneArray(result);