calls with more than 255 arguments

[Jochen Theodorou via dev <de...@grails.apache.org>]

Hi all,

I wanted to ask if having calls with more than 255 arguments is 
something to consider for Grails. Because right now Groovy supports that 
sometimes, but not really or only indirectly. 255 is a JVM limit for the 
number of parameters you can have, so any target taking more needs to 
involve varargs.
the cases I am wondering about are probably not people actually writing 
255 arguments in a method calls, But something like m(*l) for example, 
where l is a list/array with more than 255 elements.

Thanks for the feedback
Jochen

Re: calls with more than 255 arguments

[James Daugherty via dev <de...@grails.apache.org>]

The original mail said characters instead of arguments.  Apologies

On Sun, Oct 11, 2026 at 9:37 AM James Daugherty <jd...@jdresources.net>
wrote:

> Hi Jochen,
>
> Thank you for reaching out on this. Although our codebase has ellipsis
> usages where people might pass more than 255 characters, supporting more
> than 255 isn't a practical use case.  I think we could easily restrict to
> 255.
>
> -James
>
> On Fri, Oct 9, 2026 at 1:33 PM Jochen Theodorou via dev <
> dev@grails.apache.org> wrote:
>
>> Hi all,
>>
>> I wanted to ask if having calls with more than 255 arguments is
>> something to consider for Grails. Because right now Groovy supports that
>> sometimes, but not really or only indirectly. 255 is a JVM limit for the
>> number of parameters you can have, so any target taking more needs to
>> involve varargs.
>> the cases I am wondering about are probably not people actually writing
>> 255 arguments in a method calls, But something like m(*l) for example,
>> where l is a list/array with more than 255 elements.
>>
>> Thanks for the feedback
>> Jochen
>>
>

Re: calls with more than 255 arguments

[James Daugherty via dev <de...@grails.apache.org>]

Hi Jochen,

Thank you for reaching out on this. Although our codebase has ellipsis
usages where people might pass more than 255 characters, supporting more
than 255 isn't a practical use case.  I think we could easily restrict to
255.

-James

On Fri, Oct 9, 2026 at 1:33 PM Jochen Theodorou via dev <
dev@grails.apache.org> wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> I wanted to ask if having calls with more than 255 arguments is
> something to consider for Grails. Because right now Groovy supports that
> sometimes, but not really or only indirectly. 255 is a JVM limit for the
> number of parameters you can have, so any target taking more needs to
> involve varargs.
> the cases I am wondering about are probably not people actually writing
> 255 arguments in a method calls, But something like m(*l) for example,
> where l is a list/array with more than 255 elements.
>
> Thanks for the feedback
> Jochen
>