[java] Where is the documentation for the values() method of Enum?

I declare an enum as :

enum Sex {MALE,FEMALE};

And then, iterate enum as shown below :

for(Sex v : Sex.values()){
    System.out.println(" values :"+ v);
}

I checked the Java API but can't find the values() method? I'm curious as to where this method comes from?

API link : https://docs.oracle.com/javase/8/docs/api/java/lang/Enum.html

This question is related to java enums

The answer is


Run this

    for (Method m : sex.class.getDeclaredMethods()) {
        System.out.println(m);
    }

you will see

public static test.Sex test.Sex.valueOf(java.lang.String)
public static test.Sex[] test.Sex.values()

These are all public methods that "sex" class has. They are not in the source code, javac.exe added them

Notes:

  1. never use sex as a class name, it's difficult to read your code, we use Sex in Java

  2. when facing a Java puzzle like this one, I recommend to use a bytecode decompiler tool (I use Andrey Loskutov's bytecode outline Eclispe plugin). This will show all what's inside a class


The method is implicitly defined (i.e. generated by the compiler).

From the JLS:

In addition, if E is the name of an enum type, then that type has the following implicitly declared static methods:

/**
* Returns an array containing the constants of this enum 
* type, in the order they're declared.  This method may be
* used to iterate over the constants as follows:
*
*    for(E c : E.values())
*        System.out.println(c);
*
* @return an array containing the constants of this enum 
* type, in the order they're declared
*/
public static E[] values();

/**
* Returns the enum constant of this type with the specified
* name.
* The string must match exactly an identifier used to declare
* an enum constant in this type.  (Extraneous whitespace 
* characters are not permitted.)
* 
* @return the enum constant with the specified name
* @throws IllegalArgumentException if this enum type has no
* constant with the specified name
*/
public static E valueOf(String name);