Fantasy names using Java JShell

I’ve been a big fan of the Java JShell from the early beginning. I was even the first one on the mailing list besides the people from Oracle. I’m working on a weekend/side project involving JavaFX and JShell API now for a couple of days and something was bothering me.

The project I’m working on is targetted at teaching kids to learn Java Programming in a fun way. But automaticly generated variable names called $1, $2, $3 etc are not ‘fun’ enough! Luckily I found the following method in the API:

JShell shell = JShell.builder()
                .tempVariableNameGenerator(new CustomNameGenerator())
                .build();

The name generator has to implement Supplier<String>, with a single method get(), very easy! The generator I’ve made generates semi-random fantasy character names. This is what I’ve ended up with:

-> 10 + 10
|  Expression value is: 20
|    assigned to temporary variable baiduth of type int

-> baiduth * 2
|  Expression value is: 40
|    assigned to temporary variable bleibriss of type int

-> System.out.println(bleibriss + baiduth)
60

-> 

Much better! If you’re interested in the project I’m working on, teaching kids Java with the JShell API and JavaFX, keep an eye out. When I have something worth showing I’ll push it to GitHub so everyone can enjoy it!