Why "null" value is impossible in "switch(val) {case null: }" for enums?

Question

I'm wondering why Java 5.0 does not allow null values
as options in switch statement:
If type E is "enum" then the following language construction is
not allowed:
E val;
switch(val) {
   case A:
     break;
   case B:
       break;
   case null:   // this is not allowed
        break;
}Can somebody explain me why Java does not support it? I beleave that
some serious reasons were for that.
As we know enum types can have "null" values and in case I use nulls
for my enumerations the code with "switch" statement becomes quite urgly because it is necessary to handle 2 separate execution paths:
null and not null.
Thanks

Answer 1

I really don�t know too much about 1.5, but I can tell you that for 1.4 the switch receives as a parameter an int or anything that can be casted automatically to an int. Therefore you can�t never use null cause int, char, short, byte can�t never take as a value null.