java 声明包,为什么java源文件需要包声明？

I think I am failing to understand java package structure, it seemed redundant to me that java files have a package declaration within, and then are also required to be present in a directory that matches the package name. For example, if I have a MyClass.java file:

package com.example;

public class MyClass {

public static void main(String[] args) {

System.out.println("Hello, World");

}

}

Then I would be required to have this file located in com/example, relative to the base directory, and I would execute java com.example.MyClass from the base directory to run it.

Why wouldn't the compiler be able to infer the package name by looking at the directory structure? For example, if I compiled the file from the base directory javac com\example\MyClass.java, I am not understanding why the MyClass.java wouldn't implicity belong to the com.example package.

I understand there is a default package, but it still seems that the package declaration in the source file is redundant information?

解决方案

As you (implicitly) acknowledged, you are not required to declare the name of a package ... in the case if the default package.

Ignoring that quibble ... the reason for this seeming redundancy is that without the requirement for a package declaration, the meaning of Java source code would be ambiguous. For example, a source file whose pathname was "/home/steve/project/src/com/example/Main.java" could have 7 different fully qualified names ... depending on how you compiled the code. Most likely, only one of those will be the "correct" one. But you wouldn't be able to tell which one is correct by looking at (just) the source code file.

It should also be noted that the Java language specification does not require you to organize the source code tree according to the packages. That is a requirement of a (large) family of Java compilers, but a conformant compiler could be written that did not require this. In that eventuality, the package declaration would not be duplicative.