I am currently teaching students as a tutor programming conventions. I've told them that they can find most conventions in the Oracle Code Conventions.
In my last tutorial a student asked if:
public static void main(String args[])or
public static void main(String[] args)is written by convention or if there is a difference. I have never seen the first version before, so I'm very sure that the second one is a convention. But I don't have a source for that.
Can you give me a source (preferably from oracle, like the page I've linked above) that makes clear which of both is convention?
Equivalence of both expressions
I know that both expressions are equivalent:
The JLS 7, p. 292 states:
An array type is written as the name of an element type followed by some number of empty pairs of square brackets []. but also on p. 293:
The [] may appear as part of the type at the beginning of the declaration, or as part of the declarator for a particular variable, or both.For example: byte[] rowvector, colvector, matrix[];This declaration is equivalent to: byte rowvector[], colvector[], matrix[][];But this doesn't help for the convention-quesiton.
So they are identical (not specs, but here is a source). They produce the same bytecode in a small example, so I'm very sure that they are also identical in praxis.