Represents a construct that can be annotated. A construct is either an element or a type. Annotations on an element are on a declaration, whereas annotations on a type are on a specific use of a type name. The terms directly present, present, indirectly present, and associated are used throughout this interface to describe precisely which annotations are returned by the methods defined herein.

In the definitions below, an annotation A has an annotation type AT. If AT is a repeatable annotation type, the type of the containing annotation is ATC.

Annotation A is directly present on a construct C if either:

A is explicitly or implicitly declared as applying to the source code representation of C.
Typically, if exactly one annotation of type AT appears in the source code of representation of C, then A is explicitly declared as applying to C. If there are multiple annotations of type AT present on C, then if AT is repeatable annotation type, an annotation of type ATC is implicitly declared on C.
A representation of A appears in the executable output for C, such as the RuntimeVisibleAnnotations or RuntimeVisibleParameterAnnotations attributes of a class file.

An annotation A is present on a construct C if either:

A is directly present on C.
No annotation of type AT is directly present on C, and C is a class and AT is inheritable and A is present on the superclass of C.

An annotation A is indirectly present on a construct C if both:

AT is a repeatable annotation type with a containing annotation type ATC.
An annotation of type ATC is directly present on C and A is an annotation included in the result of calling the value method of the directly present annotation of type ATC.

An annotation A is associated with a construct C if either:

A is directly or indirectly present on C.
No annotation of type AT is directly or indirectly present on C, and C is a class, and AT is inheritable, and A is associated with the superclass of C.

Since: 1.8

@jls 9.6 Annotation Types
@jls 9.6.3.3 @Inherited