I thought this was interesting… In Java, a block scoped variable may conflict with a local variable declared later in method scope, but not previously (as shown below):

class A{
  public static void main(String args[]){
    {int k = 5;}
    int k = 12; //this is OK
    {int k = 22;}//this is not....
  }
}

This is not the same as C++ where this compiles happily:

int main(){
  {int i;}
  int i;
  {int i;}
  return 0;
}

Usually C++ has the more obscure behavior….

I just noticed that java enums allow protected member variables and methods. Why is this interesting? Can you think of any code that might actually make use of a protected member in an enum (as opposed to private)? Example after the jump (warning, not practical…).
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Providing a robust, maintainable, and interactive interface to your C/C++ application can be a challenge, but I’ve found that a combination of SWIG, Java, and JRuby (or Jython if you prefer) makes for a very powerful combination.
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DVSL is a fairly small, little known, product associated with the Velocity project over at Apache which takes the best part of XSLT: XPATH, and replaces the verbose and frustrating scripting of XSLT with a java-based template language instead.
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Rhino is a JavaScript/ECMAscript implementation in Java. Using the new java1.6 scripting API you can now easily embed JavaScript into your Java applications. I thought I’d try writing yet another implementation of the net_tool application using Rhino. Originally this was going to be a single article, but it turns out to be a two-fer.
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So apparently the hex to binary in 4 languages portion of this web page is what gets the most google hits and who am I to argue? So without further ado, hex to binary in Java as well…

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Most people are aware of java annotations by now, but I’m not sure everyone knows about @Override. They really should.

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If you want to parse a custom language in java then Javacc is your tool. At the moment this is probably more a reminder to myself than a great article for anyone else to read, but as you find it useful feel free to take a look. More after the link…
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In my most recent development effort at work I decided to take a look at the new kid on the block for building java projects: Maven 2. After 6 months or so of use I’m now preparing to use ant instead. Details after the link.
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CUP lists being able to use your own Symbol class as a big selling point of the latest version, but they don’t say much about how to do it. In addition there is actually a fairly annoying bug in the code. Of course you may ask “Why not use javacc?” Good question. Anyway, without further ado… Read more