Java 16 New Features

After looking into the new features in Java 15, let’s continue with my series of Java new features with Java 16.

OpenJDK has been migrated to GitHub!

Source code is in https://github.com/openjdk/ now.

JEP 394: Pattern Matching for instanceof

This feature was entered in Java 14 and 15 and it’s now fully supported. In summary, we can do things like this:

if (obj instanceof String s) {
    // can use s here
} else {
    // can't use s here
}

JEP 395: Records

This feature was entered in Java 14 and 15 and it’s now fully supported. In summary, we can write POJO classes simply doing:

public record Person(String name, int age) { 
    Person {
        if (age < 18) {
            throw new IllegalArgumentException("Too young!");
        }
    }
};

JEP 390: Warnings for Value-Based Classes

Java will output warnings when bad practices are committed. For example, compile-time synchronization warnings depend on static typing, while runtime warnings can respond to synchronization on non-value-based class and interface types, like Object.

Double d = 20.0;
synchronized (d) { ... } // javac warning & HotSpot warning
Object o = d;
synchronized (o) { ... } // HotSpot warning

JEP 397: Sealed Classes (Second Preview)

This is on preview, so to use it, you need to supply the --enable-preview when running Java.

This feature was entered in Java 15 as preview and it has been extended with the following refinements:

  • Specify the notion of a contextual keyword, superseding the prior notions of restricted identifier and restricted keyword in the JLS. Introduce the character sequences sealed, non-sealed, and permits as contextual keywords.
  • As with anonymous classes and lambda expressions, local classes may not be subclasses of sealed classes when determining the implicitly declared permitted subclasses of a sealed class or sealed interface.
  • Enhance narrowing reference conversion to perform stricter checking of cast conversions with respect to sealed type hierarchies.

Garbage Collector enhancements

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