Java annotation: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 02:13, 2 February 2008

Revision as of 02:19, 2 February 2008

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* Information for the compiler — used by the compiler to detect errors or suppress warnings.

* Compiler-time and deployment-time processing — annotation processor can process annotation information to generateproduce code,new XMLsource files,code and soother forthfiles.

* Runtime processing — some annotations are available to be examined at runtime.

Annotations can be applied to a program's declarations of classes, fields, methods, and other program elements. UnlikeAnnotations tagsdo addednot todirectly Javaaffect documentationprogram andsemantics, processedbut withthey toolsdo suchaffect asthe [[XDoclet]],way Java annotationsprograms are completelytreated accessibleby totools theand programmerlibraries, whilewhich can in turn affect the softwaresemantics isof the running usingprogram. Annotations can be read from source files, class files, or reflectively at [[reflectionrun (programming)|reflection]]time.

==History==