10. Advanced Puzzlers

The puzzles in this chapter concern advanced topics, such as nested classes, generics, serialization, and binary compatibility.

Puzzle 86: Poison-Paren Litter

Can you come up with a legal Java expression that can be made illegal by parenthesizing a subexpression, where the added parentheses serve only to document the order of evaluation that would take place in their absence?

Solution 86: Poison-Paren Litter

It seems that inserting a pair of parentheses serving only to document the existing order of evaluation should have no effect on the legality of a program. Indeed, this is true in nearly all cases. In two cases, however, inserting a seemingly innocuous pair of parentheses can make a legal Java program illegal. ...

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