Book Image

Learning Java Lambdas

By : Toby Weston
Book Image

Learning Java Lambdas

By: Toby Weston

Overview of this book

In this short book, we take an in-depth look at lambdas in Java, and their supporting features. The book covers essential topics, such as functional interfaces and type inference, and the key differences between lambdas and closures. You will learn about the background to functional programming and lambdas, before moving on to understanding the basic syntax of lambdas and what differentiates these anonymous functions from standard anonymous classes. Lastly, you'll learn how to invoke lambdas and look at the bytecode generated. After reading this book, you'll understand lambdas in depth, their background, syntax, implementation details, and how and when to use them. You'll also have a clear knowledge of the difference between functions and classes, and why that's relevant to lambdas. This knowledge will enable you to appreciate the improvements to type inference that drive a lot of the new features in modern Java, and will increase your understanding of method references and scoping.
Table of Contents (10 chapters)

Example 3


The Example 3 class uses a Java lambda with our waitFor method. The lambda doesn't do anything other than return true. It's equivalent to example 1.

public class Example3 {
    // simple lambda
    void example() throws InterruptedException {
        waitFor(() -> true);
    }
}

The bytecode is super simple this time. It uses the invokedynamic opcode to create the lambda at line 3 which is then passed to the invokestatic opcode on the next line.

 void example() throws java.lang.InterruptedException;
     Code:
        0: invokedynamic #2, 0 // InvokeDynamic #0:isSatisfied:   
           ()LCondition;
        5: invokestatic #3 // Method WaitFor.waitFor:(LCondition;)V
        8: return

The descriptor for the invokedynamic call is targeting the isSatisfied method on the Condition interface (line 3.).

What we're not seeing here is the mechanics of invokedynamic. The invokedynamic opcode is a new opcode to Java 7, it was intended to provide...