Difference between Color.red and Color.RED

Question

What\'s the real difference between definitions for setXxx(Color.red) and setXxx(Color.RED)?

I\'ve found the following explanation on the w

Answer 1

Java defined some color constant names in lowercase, which violated the naming rule of using uppercase for constants. Heres the code for the color red:

public final static Color red = new Color(255, 0, 0); 

Later on they made the same colors but in uppercase.

public final static Color RED = red;

So there is really no difference. They are all the same, as you can tell by the code.

public final static Color red = new Color(255, 0, 0);
public final static Color RED = red;

Hope this helps!

Answer 2

There's the code itself:

public final static Color red = new Color(255, 0, 0);

public final static Color RED = red;

The upper case letters were introduced in JDK 1.4 (to conform to its naming convention, stating that constants must be in upper-case).

In essence, there are no difference at all (except letter casing).

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If I want to really be brave, Oracle might go wild and remove constants that is lower-cased, but then that would break all other code that's written pre-JDK 1.4. You never know, I would suggest sticking to uppercase letters for constants. It first has to be deprecated though (as mentioned by Andrew Thompson).

Answer 3

There is really no difference. See the Color class:

/**
 * The color red.  In the default sRGB space.
 */
public final static Color red       = new Color(255, 0, 0);

/**
 * The color red.  In the default sRGB space.
 * @since 1.4
 */
public final static Color RED = red;