Written by the inventors of the technology, The Java™ Language Specification, Third Edition, is the definitive technical reference for the Java™ programming language. If you want to know the precise meaning of the language's constructs, this is the source for you.

The book provides complete, accurate, and detailed coverage of the Java programming language. It provides full coverage of all new features added since the previous edition, including generics, annotations, asserts, autoboxing, enums, for-each loops, variable arity methods, and static import clauses.

James Gosling is a Fellow and Chief Technology Officer of Sun's Developer Products group, the creator of the Java programming language, and one of the computer industry's most noted programmers. He is the 1996 recipient of Software Development's "Programming Excellence Award." He previously developed NeWS, Sun's network-extensible window system, and was a principal in the Andrew project at Carnegie Mellon University, where he earned a Ph.D. in computer science.

Bill Joy is a cofounder of Sun Microsystems, where he led the company's technical strategy until September 2003, working on both hardware and software architecture. He is well known as the creator of the Berkeley version of the UNIX® operating system, for which he received a lifetime achievement award from the USENIX Association in 1993. He received the ACM Grace Murray Hopper Award in 1986. Joy has had a central role in shaping the Java programming language. He joined KPCB as Partner in January 2005.

Gilad Bracha is Computational Theologist at Sun Microsystems, and a researcher in the area of object-oriented programming. Prior to joining Sun, he worked on Strongtalk,™ the Animorphic Smalltalk System. He holds a B.S. in mathematics and computer science from Ben Gurion University in Israel and a Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Utah.

Download The Java™ Language Specification, Third Edition

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Preface:

The Java programming language was originally called Oak, and was designed for use in embedded consumer-electronic applications by James Gosling. After several years of experience with the language, and significant contributions by Ed Frank, Patrick Naughton, Jonathan Payne, and Chris Warth it was retargeted to the Internet, renamed, and substantially revised to be the language specified here. The final form of the language was defined by James Gosling, Bill Joy, Guy Steele, Richard Tuck, Frank Yellin, and Arthur van Hoff, with help from Graham Hamilton, Tim Lindholm, and many other friends and colleagues.

The Java programming language is a general-purpose concurrent class-based object-oriented programming language, specifically designed to have as few implementation dependencies as possible. It allows application developers to write a program once and then be able to run it everywhere on the Internet.

This book attempts a complete specification of the syntax and semantics of the language. We intend that the behavior of every language construct is specified here, so that all implementations will accept the same programs. Except for timing dependencies or other non-determinisms and given sufficient time and sufficient memory space, a program written in the Java programming language should compute the same result on all machines and in all implementations.

We believe that the Java programming language is a mature language, ready for widespread use. Nevertheless, we expect some evolution of the language in the years to come. We intend to manage this evolution in a way that is completely compatible with existing applications. To do this, we intend to make relatively few new versions of the language. Compilers and systems will be able to support the several versions simultaneously, with complete compatibility.

Much research and experimentation with the Java platform is already underway. We encourage this work, and will continue to cooperate with external groups to explore improvements to the language and platform. For example, we have already received several interesting proposals for parameterized types. In technically difficult areas, near the state of the art, this kind of research collaboration is essential.

We acknowledge and thank the many people who have contributed to this book through their excellent feedback, assistance and encouragement:

Particularly thorough, careful, and thoughtful reviews of drafts were provided by Tom Cargill, Peter Deutsch, Paul Hilfinger, Masayuki Ida, David Moon, Steven Muchnick, Charles L. Perkins, Chris Van Wyk, Steve Vinoski, Philip Wadler, Daniel Weinreb, and Kenneth Zadeck. We are very grateful for their extraordinary volunteer efforts. ...

Visit The Java™ Language Specification Website

The Java™ Series:

The Java™ Programming Language
Ken Arnold, James Gosling and David Holmes
ISBN 0-201-70433-1

The Java™ Language Specification Third Edition
James Gosling, Bill Joy, Guy Steele and Gilad Bracha
ISBN 0-321-24678-0

The Java™ Virtual Machine Specification Second Edition
Tim Lindholm and Frank Yellin
ISBN 0-201-43294-3

The Java™ Application Programming Interface,
Volume 1: Core Packages
James Gosling, Frank Yellin, and the Java Team
ISBN 0-201-63452-X

The Java™ Application Programming Interface,
Volume 2: Window Toolkit and Applets
James Gosling, Frank Yellin, and the Java Team
ISBN 0-201-63459-7

The Java™ Tutorial: Object-Oriented Programming for the Internet
Mary Campione and Kathy Walrath
ISBN 0-201-63454-6

The Java™ Class Libraries: An Annotated Reference
Patrick Chan and Rosanna Lee
ISBN 0-201-63458-9

The Java™ FAQ: Frequently Asked Questions
Jonni Kanerva
ISBN 0-201-63456-2

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