Can transient keywords mark a method?

Question

In a java class java.util.Locale, I find that the keyword transient marked a method.

 public final class Locale     implements Cloneable, Serializable {     private static class LocaleNameGetter         implements sun.util.LocaleServiceProviderPool.LocalizedObjectGetter     {          public transient String getObject(LocaleNameProvider localenameprovider, Locale locale, String s, Object aobj[])         {             if(!$assertionsDisabled && aobj.length != 2)                 throw new AssertionError();             int i = ((Integer)aobj[0]).intValue();             String s1 = (String)aobj[1];             switch(i)             {             case 0: // '\0'                 return localenameprovider.getDisplayLanguage(s1, locale);              case 1: // '\001'                 return localenameprovider.getDisplayCountry(s1, locale);              case 2: // '\002'                 return localenameprovider.getDisplayVariant(s1, locale);             }             if(!$assertionsDisabled)                 throw new AssertionError();             else                 return null;         } 

Can someone tell me why can this be?

Answer 1

No it can't, it's only valid for fields. You seem to get your source from .class by decompiling. This is the decompiler bug, if you take a look at java.lang.reflect.Modifier src you will see that transient and varargs have the same value

public static final int TRANSIENT        = 0x00000080; ... static final int VARARGS   = 0x00000080; 

for a field 0x00000080 means transient, for a method (your case) it means varargs. This is how getObject looks like in java.util.Locale src

public String getObject(LocaleNameProvider localeNameProvider,                         Locale locale,                          String key,                         Object... params) {   <-- varargs 

In .class (bytecode) varargs is represented by Object[] as the last parameter + modifier bit 7 = 1 (0x80). I guess the decompiler is old and simply does not know about varargs which is since Java 1.5 so it printed it as transient.