'Why was the double colon operator chosen for Java 8? [duplicate]

Prior to Java 8, my observation was that the de facto standard for referring to member methods was by using the # symbol (such as Object#toString()). Then along came Java 8 which instead chose the :: operator for method references for seemingly no reason.

Has there been an official explanation or justification for why :: in particular was chosen?

javasyntaxoperatorsjava-8


Solution 1:[1]

You could find an "official explanation or justification" from Brian Goetz. You should read the complete discussion but this is an extract :

The :: infix syntax:

   ClassName::methodName 
   ClassName<T>::methodName 
   ClassName::<U>genericMethodName

works acceptably well. Some people like it, and some people hate it -- just like #. There's never going to be a perfect syntax for anything that makes everyone jump up in unison and say "yeah, that's it!" But :: is OK, and using up :: here is far better than using up #. (And, while this might look a little weird to C++ programmers, the overlap between the Java and C++ developer bases at this point is small enough that I don't think we should be too worried about that.)

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