Is it legal to put annotation after access modifier in Java 7? Or Java 8?

Question

This is usual code:

@Autowire
private Service service;

But with Java 7 this also works (and shorter):

private @Autowire Service service;

Is that legal in Java 8 (have same semantic)? Is that bad coding practice?

Answer 1

According to documentation

In Java 7 :

Annotations can be applied to declarations: declarations of classes, fields, methods, and other program elements. When used on a declaration, each annotation often appears, by convention, on its own line.

As of the Java SE 8 release, annotations can also be applied to the use of types. :

Class instance creation expression:

new @Interned MyObject();

Type cast:

myString = (@NonNull String) str;

implements clause:

class UnmodifiableList<T> implements
    @Readonly List<@Readonly T> { ... }

Thrown exception declaration:

void monitorTemperature() throws
    @Critical TemperatureException { ... }