Modifying final fields in Java

Question

Let\'s start with a simple test case:

import java.lang.reflect.Field;

public class Test {
  private final int primitiveInt = 42;
  private final Integer wra         


        

Answer 1

This is not an answer, but it brings up another point of confusion:

I wanted to see if the issue was compile-time evaluation or whether the reflection was actually allowing Java to get around the final keyword. Here's a test program. All I added was another set of getter calls, so there's one before and after each changeField() call.

package com.example.gotchas;

import java.lang.reflect.Field;

public class MostlyFinal {
  private final int primitiveInt = 42;
  private final Integer wrappedInt = 42;
  private final String stringValue = "42";

  public int getPrimitiveInt()   { return this.primitiveInt; }
  public int getWrappedInt()     { return this.wrappedInt; }
  public String getStringValue() { return this.stringValue; }

  public void changeField(String name, Object value) throws IllegalAccessException, NoSuchFieldException {
    Field field = MostlyFinal.class.getDeclaredField(name);
    field.setAccessible(true);
    field.set(this, value);
    System.out.println("reflection: " + name + " = " + field.get(this));
  }

  public static void main(String[] args) throws IllegalAccessException, NoSuchFieldException {
    MostlyFinal test = new MostlyFinal();

    System.out.println("direct: primitiveInt = " + test.getPrimitiveInt());
    test.changeField("primitiveInt", 84);
    System.out.println("direct: primitiveInt = " + test.getPrimitiveInt());

    System.out.println();

    System.out.println("direct: wrappedInt = " + test.getWrappedInt());
    test.changeField("wrappedInt", 84);
    System.out.println("direct: wrappedInt = " + test.getWrappedInt());

    System.out.println();

    System.out.println("direct: stringValue = " + test.getStringValue());
    test.changeField("stringValue", "84");
    System.out.println("direct: stringValue = " + test.getStringValue());
  }
}

Here's the output I get (under Eclipse, Java 1.6)

direct: primitiveInt = 42
reflection: primitiveInt = 84
direct: primitiveInt = 42

direct: wrappedInt = 42
reflection: wrappedInt = 84
direct: wrappedInt = 84

direct: stringValue = 42
reflection: stringValue = 84
direct: stringValue = 42

Why the heck does the direct call to getWrappedInt() change ?