Why collection literals?

Question

From the various online articles on Java 7 I have come to know that Java 7 will be having collection literals¹ like the following:

List

        

Answer 1

Answer to question 2:

final List piDigits = [3, 1, 4, 1, 5, 9, 2, 6, 5, 3, 5, 9];

gives you an immutable list.

The whole idea of this proposal that the subtype cannot be specified. The compiler chooses a suitable implementation depending on the collection on the right-hand side.

Read the details here: Proposal: Collection Literals

Answer to question 1: yes it would have. It's a matter of style.