serialVersionUID naming convention

Question

Is there any viable reason why serialVersionUID field is not named SERIAL_VERSION_UID?

According to the docs for java.io.Serializable:

A serializable class can declare its own serialVersionUID explicitly by declaring a field named "serialVersionUID" that must be static, final, and of type long:

ANY-ACCESS-MODIFIER static final long serialVersionUID = 42L;

While referring Java Naming Conventions all static final (constants) fields should be capitilized having its fragments separated with an underscore.

Derogative

That's the way the serialization API is written ;) – Hopefully

Answer 1

Probably because serialVersionUID was defined in the Java serialization API before such conventions existed.

I found a document published by Sun in 1997 called Java Code Conventions that says in Section 9 on page 16 "The names of variables declared class constants and of ANSI constants should be alluppercase with words separated by underscores (“”)."_

So my guess is that Sun just didn't enforce their own standards on their own code.

Showalter

Don't think so, serialVersionUID was introduced in Java 1.5 – Derogative

@WojtekOwczarczyk. It was introduced along with Serialization in Java 1.1. – Gilmagilman