Java String pool and type casting

Question

My question is in regard to the way Java handles String literals. It\'s quite clear from the Java Language Specs (JLS) that String literals are being implicitly interned - in ot

Answer 1

Casting to Object is not allowed in a compile time constant expression. The only casts permitted are to String and primitives. JLS (Java SE 7 edition) section 15.28:

> - Casts to primitive types and casts to type String

(There's actually a second reason. object isn't final so cannot possibly by considered a constant variable. "A variable of primitive type or type String, that is final and initialized with a compile-time constant expression (§15.28), is called a constant variable." -- section 4.12.4.)