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From: markspace <markspace@nospam.nospam>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.java.programmer
Subject: Re: literals and keywords
Date: Sat, 28 Dec 2013 08:59:49 -0800
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On 12/28/2013 8:15 AM, Stefan Ram wrote:
>    Does it matter?
>
>    Can you find any program, where one can observe the difference?
>    E.g., some program that does compile because they are not keywords,
>    but would not compile when they were keywords, or vice versa?
>    Or are there any other observable consequences of this difference?
>

Yes, it matters, or they wouldn't make a distinction.  We talked about 
this already:  literals can be used in expressions, keywords can't.  The 
observable difference is in the implementation of the JLS.

<http://docs.oracle.com/javase/specs/jls/se7/html/jls-15.html#jls-15.8>

You can write "int i = 1 + 2;" but you can't write "Object o = for + 
try;" because that section of the JLS says so.  Read it.