Question on java.lang.Thread and "final static int" constants

[Steven Augart]

java.lang.Thread defines the integer constants MIN_PRIORITY, 
NORM_PRIORITY, MAX_PRIORITY.

The JDK 1.1.8 documentation simply defines them semantically, without 
giving numbers.  The book "The Java Class Libraries Second Edition, 
Volume 1" explicitly defines them as 1, 5, and 10.  The JDK 1.4.2 docs 
explicitly define them as 1, 5, and 10 in an appendix.

So, for the purposes of GNU Classpath's AWT code 
(--portable-native-sync), is it reasonable to assume that they are, 
indeed, 1, 5, and 10, or should the implementation check the values at 
run time and cache the results?  Since the Java language spec 
expicitly allows the java source-to-byte-code compiler to inline the 
values of static final constants, presumably the values can never 
change in the future, without breaking Write-Once-Run-Everywhere (or 
perhaps it should be compile-once-run-everywhere :)).




--
Steven Augart

Jikes RVM, a free, open source, Virtual Machine:
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