On Dec 18, 2015, at 12:46 AM, Tao Mao <yiyeg...@gmail.com> wrote: > > > On Thu, Dec 17, 2015 at 9:34 PM, Mandy Chung <mandy.ch...@oracle.com> wrote: > > > On Dec 17, 2015, at 6:05 PM, Tao Mao <yiyeg...@gmail.com> wrote: > > On line 38, can we also add "through a chain of strong, soft, and weak > > references." to the above, which I think is the case? > > > > Yes it is and this is not strictly needed. For phantom reference case, this > can be left “unqualified” as it’s basically a chain of any reference type. > > Strictly speaking, any reference type but phantom reference.
This wording (for weak references, with similar wording for others): At that time it will atomically clear all weak references to that object and all weak references to any other weakly-reachable objects from which that object is reachable through a chain of strong and soft references. exists to require that an implementation ensures that, after a reference has been cleared, it is no longer possible for an application to recover the former referent of that reference via a sequence of references of the same or greater strength as that reference. It can be shown by induction that the same reference type as that being cleared doesn't need to be mentioned in order to achieve that effect. Adding the cleared reference type to the chain list might impose a stronger requirement on implementations. However, we don't think an implementation can usefully take advantage of any difference, so in the case of phantom references we opted for shorter wording.
