Question

Suddenly I’ve realized that I can write

class Person {
     def String name
}

My question is – what is the difference between code provided above and classic:

class Person {
   String name
}

Why first form even exists?

Answer 1

There’s no difference. Adding def to the beginning of a type definition does nothing. However, it is allowed by the parser.

One way to check stuff like this, is to fire up the groovyConsole, and run the AST Browser (which for the script)

class Person {
     def String name
}

Shows:

public class Person extends java.lang.Object { 

    private java.lang.String name 

}