Question

Does Java have anything like any of the following

• macros
• a way to iterate over all private fields
• something like smalltalk symbols-ie something for quick comparison of static strings?

note I’m trying to emulate enums for blackckbery
(and a little worried about speed for a simple string-> int dictionary ) which I’m fairly sure doesn’t have them
please try not to include code-just references I would like to code it up myself.

Reflection seems interesting is it that difficult to use simply? can you access field names with it? can you use it with a normal blackbery java program?

Answer 1

• What exactly do you mean by macro? If you’re talking about preprocessing macros, then there is no such thing. Java doesn’t have a preprocessor (but nothing stops you from using an external one in your build process).
• Reflection can be used to iterate over the fields and methods of a class, but it’s not really a first-class construct and meant for advanced development (usually inside a library)
• Some use of Smalltalk symbols maps pretty cleanly onto enums, others do not. Note that enum is basically some nice syntactic sugar for the type-safe enum pattern that can be implemented in pre-Java 5 as well.