Java in a Nutshell, 5th Edition

Name

Retention

Synopsis

A meta-annotation of this type specifies how long the annotated annotation type should be retained. The value( ) of this annotation type is one of the three RetentionPolicy enumerated constants. See RetentionPolicy for details. If an annotation type does not have an @Retention meta-annotation, its default retention is RetentionPolicy.CLASS.

Figure 10-80. java.lang.annotation.Retention

public @interface Retention {
// Public Instance Methods
     RetentionPolicy value( );  
}