Question

According to the doc and to this answer I should be having “Override” (or something similar) in the following code:

import java.lang.reflect.*;
import java.util.*;
import static java.lang.System.out;
class Test { 
  @Override
  public String toString() { 
    return "";
  }
  public static void main( String ... args ) { 
    for( Method m : Test.class.getDeclaredMethods() ) { 
      out.println( m.getName() + " " + Arrays.toString( m.getDeclaredAnnotations()));
    }
  }
}

But, I’m getting an empty array.

$ java Test
main []
toString []

What am I missing?

Answer 1

Because the @Override annotation has Retention=SOURCE, i.e. it is not compiled into the class files, and is therefore not available at runtime via reflection. It’s useful only during compilation.