Description Mario Cormier 2004-02-13 17:11:35 EST

Starting with JDK1.2, it is possible to declare explicitely which fields you 
want to see serialized by defining an array of ObjectStreamField objects 
describing these fields.  The prototype for this special field is:

   private static final ObjectStreamField[] serialPersistentFields = { ... };

If you specify as a Java compiler option that you want to flag unused private 
types as a warning, this field is invariably flagged.  I believe the behavior 
should be similar to the one for the 'serialVersionUID' field, which is not 
flagged even if it is never explicitely read by the code.