Difference in static & dynamic code dispatching to field or getter

gistfile1.groovy

import groovy.transform.*

//@CompileStatic
class Person {
  String name
  private List<Person> friends

  String friendNames() {
    friends.collect { it.name }.join(", ")
  }
}

assert new Person(name: "Rob").friendNames() == ""

Without @CompileStatic the code works as friends on line 9 dispatches to getFriends(). With @CompileStatic it dispatches direct to the private field and results in an NPE.

Interestingly if I change from friends.collect { it.name } to friends.name the dispatch changes!

Tried it in 2.3.8 and 2.4.0-beta-4 with the same result.

I've updated the gist now as apparently this is nothing to do with the presence of a getter. It's simply that dynamically compiled Groovy allows for calling certain GDK methods (all of them? only iterators?) on null.

I think I've run in to this and reported a bug. I'll try to look it up.

My problem was different indeed, it was http://jira.codehaus.org/browse/GROOVY-7098 . Fixed in 2.3.8 already .