News and views from members of the Java team at Oracle
There is a distinction between the _semantics of a given pattern_ and _what a given construct might do with that pattern_. The construct (instanceof, switch) gets first crack at having an opinion, and then may choose to evaluate whether the pattern matches something. The place where we have been most tempted to use this flexibility is with "null", because null ruins everything…
More at https://mail.openjdk.java.net/pipermail/amber-spec-experts/2021-April/002945.html.