Extending @Annotations

I’ve been thinking for years (as I’m sure many programmers do): “If I designed a language, what would it be like”. As time goes on, I’ve come up with many ideas, but I find it interesting that several aspects have stayed the same:

• C/C++/Java style syntax
• Light weight
• VM driven
• Possibly even Java byte codes
• Network friendly (move objects round a’la RMI / Serialization)

Last night I was thinking about it again, and particularly about Java annotations. I know many who hate annotation because they have been baddly abused already. I personally love them, but not everywhere, and not for everything. My main problem with annotations is that the actual meta-data, and the code that drives them are completely separate. What I want are: compile time annotations. Something more like:

@Target(ElementType.METHOD)
public @class CachedResult {
    public void run(Node target) {
        if(target instanceof MethodNode) {
            MethodNode method = (MethodNode)target;
            if(method.getParameterTypes().length > 0) {
                throw new IllegalArgumentException("Bla!!!");
            }
            
            ClassNode clazz = method.getDeclaringClass();
            
            String name = method.getName();
            String fieldName = generateFieldName(name);
            
            FieldNode node = clazz.createField(method.getReturnType(), fieldName);
            method.setName("_cached_" + name);
            method.setAccess(AccessModifiers.PRIVATE);
            
            MethodNode cacher = clazz.createMethod(method.getReturnType(), name);
            StringBuilder code = new StringBuilder();
            code.append("if(").append(fieldName).append(" == null) {");
            code.append(fieldName).append(" = _cached_").append(name).append("();");
            code.append("}");
            code.append("return ").append(fieldName).append(";");
            
            cacher.eval(code.toString());
        } else {
            throw new IllegalArgumentException("Bla!!!");
        }
    }
    
    ...
}

The above “annotation” would cause the compiler to rename the annotated method to “_cached_<methodname>”. The method would be invoked once and the result would be put in a field, which would be returned from then on. It’s a simple enough trick which would make life just that little bit easier. It’s also not terribly complex to put in a compiler. It’s simply a DOM style API for accessing the classes, fields and methods, and then being able to “eval” code into a method (also not challenging). The result: you can add new tricks to the compiler really easily.

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