Written by the inventors of the technology, The JavaTM Language
Specification, Second Edition is the definitive technical reference
for the JavaTM programming language. If you want to know the premise
meaning of the language's constructs, this is the source for you.
The book provides complete, accurate, and detailed coverage of the
syntax and semantics of the Java programming language. It describes
all aspects of the language, including the semantics of all types,
statements, and expressions, as well as threads and binary compatibility.
James Gosling is a Fellow and Vice President at Sun Microsystems, 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 founder and Vice President of Research at Sun Microsystems,
where he has led the company's technical strategy, 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.
Guy L. Steele Jr. is a Distinguished Engineer at Sun Microsystems, where he
is responsible for the specification of the Java programming language as well
as research in parallel algorithms. He is well known as the co-creator of the
Scheme programming language and for his reference books for the C programming
language (with Samuel Harbison) and for the Common Lisp programming language.
Steele received the ACM Grace Murray Hopper Award in 1988 and was named an ACM
Fellow in 1994.
Gilad Bracha is Computational Theologist at Sun Microsystems, and a researcher
in the area of object-oriented programming languages. Prior to joining Sun, he
worked on StrongtalkTM, the Animorphic Smalltalk System. He holds a B.Sc. in
Mathematics and Computer Science from Ben Gurion University in Israel and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Utah.
With the publication of The Java Language Specification,
James Gosling, Bill Joy, and Guy Steele provide the definitive technical
reference for the Java programming language. It provides complete, accurate,
and detailed coverage of the entire language and its syntax. If you want to
know the precise meaning of Java's constructs, this is the source.
Comments and errata to jls@java.sun.com.
You may print this book once. The printed version of this draft book may not be photocopied without the express written permission of Sun. For the complete copyright notice, see Copyright.
The following is The Java Language Specification, version 1.0, by James Gosling, Bill Joy, and Guy Steele. The printed book is published by Addison-Wesley and is currently available in booksto
res. The online version is available below.
This book contains the most definitive specification of the syntax and semantics of the Java language and core packages java.lang ,
java.io and java.util of its Application Programming Interface. The intention is that the behavior of every language construct is specified here, so that all implementations of Java will accept the same programs.
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Changes for Java 1.1
- Originally published as Appendix D from
The Java Programming Language by Ken Arnold.
Clarifications and Amendments to The Java Language Specification.
The Java Language Specification maintenance information.
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