Enhanced for loop compiling fine for JDK 8 but not 7

Question

Consider the following code snippet, I stumpled upon after some refactoring, when checkin why the build server reported a broken build but it was fine in my IDE:

<         


        

Answer 1

Although I think the other answers are correct, let me be devil's advocate and offer the opposite view.

Obviously JDK 7 parses the foreach loop in such a way that the variable 'text' is also in scope after the ':'. To test this, I wrote the following method. It compiles and runs just fine in Java 1.7:

public static void main(String[] args) {
    for (String text : new String[] {text = "hello", text, text, text})
        System.out.println(text);
}

Although others have said this is a bug in jdk 1.7 (and it probably is), I couldn't find anywhere in the JLS that specifically says the variable just declared is not in scope after the ':'. If it's not a bug, then Java 8 breaks compatibility.