Instantiating enums

Question

Hi!
I am curious why javac generates public constructors of enum classes making it possible to instatiate an enum using reflection. Here's an example:
// EnumX.java
public enum EnumX { A, B }// EnumTest.java
import java.util.EnumSet;
public class EnumTest {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        try {
            EnumX e1;
            // e1 = new EnumX("C", 0);     // enum types may not be instantiated 
            e1 = EnumX.class.getConstructor(String.class, int.class)
                    .newInstance("C", 0);  // no problem here
            System.out.println(e1);        // prints C
            for (EnumX e : EnumSet.of(e1)) {
                System.out.println(e);     // prints A
        } catch (Exception e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
}Is it my misunderstanding of specification or a bug in compiler?
Jurek

Answer 1

javac did that because that's what the spec required at the time. Since then jsr201 has addressed this issue. Enum constructors will be private, and will not be callable via reflection. This change will be in beta2.