Documentation Comment Specification for the Standard Doclet (JDK 21)

This document specifies the form of documentation comments recognized by the standard doclet for the javadoc tool in JDK 21, used to generate HTML documentation for an API.

In the context of the javadoc tool, the interpretation of the content of a documentation comment is up to doclet that is used to process the comment. Other doclets may accept the same syntax as the standard doclet, or they may support an alternate syntax. However, due to support in many tools, the syntax supported by the standard doclet has become a de facto standard.

General Syntax

Documentation comments are recognized only when placed immediately before module, package, class, interface, constructor, method, enum member, or field declarations. Documentation comments placed in the body of a method are ignored. Only one documentation comment per declaration statement is recognized.

The overall form of a documentation comment is an initial main description, followed by a series of block tags, which provide additional information about the declaration to which the comment applies. Descriptive text may include inline tags and HTML content, as described below. Leading asterisks at the beginning of each line, and any preceding whitespace, are ignored.

It is possible to have a comment with only block tags and no main description.

For historical reasons, the documentation comment for a package may instead be provided in a file called package.html in a source directory for the package. In this case, the documentation comment is the content of the <body> tag, and all references to Java types (for example, in @see tags) must be fully qualified. The standard doclet also allows additional documentation to be provided in files such as overview.html. The rules for such content are the same as for package.html.

Main Description

The main description in a documentation comment is the content from the beginning of the comment, up to the first block tag, if there are any, or to the end of the comment, if there are none. Leading and trailing whitespace is ignored. If there is no such content, the main description is said to be missing.

The main description cannot continue after any block tags.

The first sentence of the main description should be a summary sentence that contains a concise but complete description of the declared entity.

Block Tags

Block tags are of the form @identifier content and give additional details to be incorporated into the generated documentation. Each block tag must appear at the beginning of a line, ignoring leading asterisks, whitespace characters, and the initial comment delimiter (/**). This means you can use the @ character elsewhere in the text and it will not be interpreted as the start of a tag. If you want to start a line with the @ character and not have it be interpreted, then use the HTML entity @. The content of a block tag is any text following the tag up to, but not including, either the next block tag, or the end of the documentation comment. The content can span multiple lines.

There can be any number of block tags; some types of tags can be repeated while others cannot.

Inline Tags

Inline tags are of the form {@identifier content} and provide details within the context of the enclosing description. They may generally appear wherever descriptive text and HTML is permitted, although some inline tags may only be used at the beginning of the main description.

Some inline tags may contain free-form text. When such text explicitly contains braces, the braces must be "balanced", implying an equal number of appropriately nested left brace and right brace characters, so that the closing brace of the inline tag can be determined. No other lexical analysis of the text is performed; in particular, there is no special consideration of characters like ', ", \, and @.

Lines beginning with @ that are enclosed within an inline tag are not considered as beginning a block tag.

When the text content is HTML, it may be possible to use entities { and } to represent unbalanced braces.

HTML Content

HTML content is not formally checked, although some tools may provide some amount of checking to help catch common errors.

In order to be able to generate documentation that conforms to the appropriate standards, the following considerations should be taken into account when using HTML constructs in a documentation comment:

HTML constructs should be written in HTML 5.
To support properly structured headings within the pages of generated documentation, headings in the documentation comments for module, package, and type declarations (including nested types) should start at <h2> and increase accordingly as needed; likewise, headings in the documentation comments for constructors, methods, fields and other members should start at <h4>. In standalone HTML files, such as in a doc-files subdirectory, headings should start at <h1>.
To avoid the possibility of a conflict with the unique identifiers used to identify positions within the generated documentation for the declaration of program elements, the values of user-defined id attributes should contain a character (such as -) that is not a valid character in a Java identifier.

Leading Asterisks

When a documentation comment is read, leading asterisks (*) on each line are discarded, and blanks and tabs that precede the initial asterisks (*) are also discarded. If you omit the leading asterisk on a line, then the leading whitespace is no longer removed so that you can paste code examples directly into a documentation comment inside a <pre> tag with its indentation preserved. Spaces are interpreted by browsers more uniformly than tabs. Indentation is relative to the left margin (rather than the separator /** or <pre> tag).

Escape Sequences

The following escape sequences are supported wherever text, entities and HTML may appear, to represent characters that would otherwise be inconvenient or difficult to represent:

@@, to represent @, to prevent it from being interpreted as part of the introduction of a block or inline tag,
@/, to represent /, as part of *@/ to represent */, to avoid prematurely terminating the enclosing comment,
@*, to represent *, where it would otherwise be discarded at the beginning of a line.

Escape sequences are context-sensitive, and can only be used where the use of the escaped character by itself would have a different syntactic interpretation. In other situations, these character sequences are taken literally, without additional interpretation.

Escape sequences cannot be used in inline tags that contain literal text; this includes {@code}, {@literal}, {@snippet}, and user-defined tags.

References

References are the constructs in a documentation comment that refer to elements in the surrounding declarations. Depending on the context, they may refer to modules, packages, classes and interfaces, constructors, methods, annotation members, fields, enum members, parameters, record components and the names of exceptions that may be thrown by a method or constructor.

The most general form of a reference is:

module/package.class#member

This form is used by the @see, {@link} and {@linkplain} tags.

Leading components can be omitted when they can be inferred from the surrounding context. Trailing components can be omitted when they are not required. Generally, the reference is evaluated in the scope in which the documentation comment exists. In particular, import statements for the compilation unit are taken into account when evaluating class and interface names.

The class may be any top-level or nested class or interface.

The member may be any constructor, method, annotation member, field or enum member, but not a nested class or interface. As in Java source code, a constructor is identified by using the name of its class. The name of a constructor or method should normally be followed by the list of its parameter types, enclosed in parentheses, although the parameter types and parentheses can be omitted if the method or constructor is not overloaded and the name is not also that of a field or enum member in the same class or interface. When a parameter list is given, whitespace characters may appear between tokens in the parameter list; whitespace characters may not appear elsewhere in the reference. When the reference is to a member of the same class as that containing the documentation comment, all parts of the reference up to and including the # may be omitted, although the '#' may be retained for clarity.

Parameterized types may be used in the class and member parts of the reference; annotations may not be used anywhere in the reference. Whitespace characters may occur between tokens within the parameter list for a constructor or method. A trailing / can be added to a name to refer to a module in the presence of a package or class with the same name.

Note: you cannot refer to the declaration of a specific parameter or record component with this form.

An alternative form is provided to generate references to arbitrary URI fragments in the generated documentation such as headings in documentation comments. This form uses a double hash mark (##) as separator:

module/package.class##fragment

fragment is interpreted as URI fragment within the page documenting the specified program element.

Other tags, such as @param, @throws, and @serialField may only provide support for the specific kinds of references that are relevant to each tag. See the description of individual tags for more details.

Comment Inheritance

Class and Interface Inheritance

Comment inheritance occurs in all possible cases of inheritance from classes and interfaces:

When a method in a class overrides a method in a superclass
When a method in an interface overrides a method in a superinterface
When a method in a class implements a method in an interface

In the first two cases, the standard doclet generates the subheading "Overrides" in the documentation for the overriding method. A link to the method being overridden is included, whether or not the comment is inherited.

In the third case, when a method in a specified class implements a method in an interface, the standard doclet generates the subheading "Specified by" in the documentation for the overriding method. A link to the method being implemented is included, whether or not the comment is inherited.

Method Comment Inheritance

The standard doclet allows method comment inheritance in classes and interfaces to fill in missing text or to explicitly inherit method comments. Constructors, fields, and nested classes do not inherit documentation comments.

Note: The source file for an inherited method must be on the path specified by the -sourcepath option for the documentation comment to be available to copy. Neither the class nor its package needs to be passed in on the command line.

Fill in Missing Text

When a main description, or @return, @param, or @throws tag is missing from a method comment, the information is copied from the method it overrides or implements (if any).

When an @param tag for a particular parameter is missing, the comment for that parameter is copied from the method further up the inheritance hierarchy. When an @throws tag for a particular exception is missing, the @throws tag is copied only when that exception is declared.

Explicit Inheritance

Insert the {@inheritDoc} inline tag in a method main description or @return, @param, or @throws tag comment. The corresponding inherited main description or tag comment is copied into that spot.

Method Comments Algorithm

If a method does not have a documentation comment, or has an {@inheritDoc} tag, then the standard doclet uses the following algorithm to search for an applicable comment. The algorithm is designed to find the most specific applicable documentation comment, and to give preference to interfaces over superclasses:

Look in each directly implemented (or extended) interface in the order they appear following the word implements (or extends) in the type declaration. Use the first documentation comment found for this method.
If Step 1 failed to find a documentation comment, then recursively apply this entire algorithm to each directly implemented (or extended) interface in the same order they were examined in Step 1.
When Step 2 fails to find a documentation comment and this is a class other than the Object class, but not an interface:
1. If the superclass has a documentation comment for this method, then use it.
2. If Step 3a failed to find a documentation comment, then recursively apply this entire algorithm to the superclass.

Standard Tags

The following sections describe the standard block and inline tags supported by the standard doclet.

Note: The standard doclet also supports user-defined tags conforming to the same general syntactic rules.

@author

@author name-text

Adds an "Author" entry with the specified name text to the generated documents when the -author option is used. A documentation comment can contain multiple @author tags. You can specify one name per @author tag or multiple names per tag. In the former case, the standard doclet inserts a comma (,) and a space between names. In the latter case, the entire text is copied to the generated document without being parsed. Therefore, you can use multiple names per line if you want a localized name separator other than a comma.

Introduced in JDK 1.0.

{@code}

{@code text }

Equivalent to <code>{@literal text }</code>.

Displays text in code font without interpreting the text as HTML markup or nested Javadoc tags. This enables you to use regular angle brackets (< and >) instead of the HTML entities (< and >) in documentation comments, such as in parameter types (<Object>), inequalities (3 < 4), or arrows (->). For example, the documentation comment text {@code A<B>C} displayed in the generated HTML page unchanged as A<B>C. This means that the <B> is not interpreted as bold and is in code font. If you want the same functionality without the code font, then use the {@literal} tag.

Introduced in JDK 1.5.

@deprecated

@deprecated deprecated-text

This tag is used in conjunction with the @Deprecated annotation to indicate that this API should no longer be used (even though it may continue to work). The standard doclet moves deprecated text ahead of the main description, placing it in italics and preceding it with a bold warning.

The first sentence of deprecated text should tell the user when the API was deprecated and what to use as a replacement. The standard doclet copies the first sentence to the summary section and index. Subsequent sentences can also explain why it was deprecated. You should include an {@link} tag that points to the replacement API.

Introduced in JDK 1.0.

{@docRoot}

{@docRoot}

Represents the relative path to the generated document's (destination) root directory from any generated page. This tag is useful when you want to include a file, such as a copyright page or company logo, that you want to reference from all generated pages. Linking to the copyright page from the bottom of each page is common.

This {@docRoot} tag can be used both on the command line and in a documentation comment. This tag is valid in all documentation comments: overview, module, package, class, interface, constructor, method and field, including the text portion of any tag (such as the @return, @param and @deprecated tags).

For example, on the command line, where the header, footer, or bottom are defined:

javadoc -bottom '<a href="{@docRoot}/copyright.html">Copyright</a>'.

When you use the {@docRoot} tag this way in a make file, some makefile programs require a special way to escape for the brace {} characters. For example, the Inprise MAKE version 5.2 running on Windows requires double braces: {{@docRoot}}. It also requires double (rather than single) quotation marks to enclose arguments to options such as the -bottom option (with the quotation marks around the href argument omitted).

For example, in a documentation comment:

/**
 * See the <a href="{@docRoot}/copyright.html">Copyright</a>.
 */

This tag is needed because the generated documents are in hierarchical directories, as deep as the number of subpackages. The expression <a href="{@docRoot}/copyright.html"> resolves to <a href="../../copyright.html"> for java/lang/Object.java and <a href="../../../copyright.html"> for java/lang/ref/Reference.java.

Introduced in JDK 1.3.

@exception

@exception exception-name description

This tag is equivalent to the @throws tag, which is now the recommended form.

Introduced in JDK 1.0.

@hidden

@hidden

Hides a program element from the generated API documentation. This tag may be used when it is not otherwise possible to design the API in a way that such items do not appear at all.

Introduced in JDK 9.

{@index}

{@index word description }
{@index "phrase" description }

Declares that a word or phrase, together with an optional short description, should appear in the index files generated by the standard doclet. The index entry will be linked to the word or phrase that will appear at this point in the generated documentation. The description may be used when the word or phrase to be indexed is not clear by itself, such as for an acronym.

Introduced in JDK 9.

{@inheritDoc}

{@inheritDoc}

Inherits (copies) documentation from the nearest inheritable class or implementable interface into the current documentation comment at this tag's location. This enables you to write more general comments higher up the inheritance tree and to write around the copied text.

This tag is valid only in these places in a documentation comment:

In the main description of a method. In this case, the main description is copied from a class or interface up the hierarchy.
In the text arguments of the @return, @param, and @throws tags of a method. In this case, the tag text is copied from the corresponding tag up the hierarchy.

See Method Comment Inheritance for a description of how comments are found in the inheritance hierarchy. Note that if this tag is missing, then the comment is or is not automatically inherited according to rules described in that section.

Introduced in JDK 1.4.

{@link}

{@link reference label }

Inserts an inline link with a visible text label that points to the documentation for the specified module, package, class, or member name of a referenced class. This tag is valid in all documentation comments: overview, module, package, class, interface, constructor, method and field, including the description part of any tag, such as the @return, @param and @deprecated tags.

This tag is similar to the third form of the @see tag. The main difference is that the {@link} tag generates an inline link rather than placing the link in the "See Also" section. The {@link} tag begins and ends with braces to separate it from the rest of the inline text. If you need to use the right brace (}) inside the label, then use the HTML entity notation }.

There is no limit to the number of {@link} tags allowed in a sentence.

For example, here is a comment that refers to the getComponentAt(int, int) method:

Use the {@link #getComponentAt(int, int) getComponentAt} method.

From this code, the standard doclet generates the following HTML (assuming it refers to another class in the same package):

Use the <a href="Component.html#getComponentAt(int,int)">getComponentAt</a> method.

The previous line appears on the web page as:

Use the getComponentAt method.

Introduced in JDK 1.2.

{@linkplain}

{@linkplain reference label }

Behaves the same as the {@link} tag, except the link label is displayed in plain text rather than code font. Useful when the label is plain text. For example,

Refer to {@linkplain #add() the overridden method}.

is displayed as:

Refer to the overridden method.

Introduced in JDK 1.4.

{@literal}

{@literal text }

Displays text without interpreting the text as HTML markup or nested Javadoc tags. This enables you to use angle brackets (< and >) instead of the HTML entities (< and >) in documentation comments, such as in parameter types (<Object>), inequalities (3 < 4), or arrows (->). For example, the documentation comment text {@literal A<B>C} displays unchanged in the generated HTML page in your browser, as A<B>C. The <B> is not interpreted as bold (and it is not in code font). If you want the same functionality with the text in code font, then use the {@code} tag.

Introduced in JDK 1.5.

@param

@param parameter-name description
@param <type-parameter-name> description

Adds a parameter with the specified parameter name followed by the specified description to the "Parameters" section. The description may continue onto multiple lines. This tag is valid only in a documentation comment for a method, constructor, or class. The parameter name can be the name of a parameter in a method or constructor, or the name of a type parameter of a class, method, or constructor. Use angle brackets (< >) around such a parameter name to indicate the use of a type parameter.

Example of a type parameter of a class:

/**
 * @param <E> Type of element stored in a list
 */
public interface List<E> extends Collection<E> { ... }

Example of parameters, including type parameters, of a method:

/**
 * @param string  the string to be converted
 * @param type    the type to convert the string to
 * @param <T>     the type of the element
 * @param <V>     the value of the element
 */
<T, V extends T> V convert(String string, Class<T> type) { ... }

Introduced in JDK 1.0.

@provides

@provides service-type description

This tag may only appear in the documentation comment for a module declaration, and serves to document an implementation of a service provided by the module. The description may be used to specify how to obtain an instance of this service provider, and any important characteristics of the provider.

Introduced in JDK 9.

@return

@return description
{@return description }

As a block tag, adds a "Returns" section with the given description, providing details about the values that may be returned by the method.

As an inline tag, provides content for the first sentence of a method's main description, and a "Returns" section, as if @return description were also present. In the default English locale, the first sentence is Returns description .

This tag is valid only in a documentation comment for a method. As an inline tag, it may only occur at the beginning of a method's main description.

Introduced as a block tag in JDK 1.0, and as an inline tag in JDK 16.

@see

Adds a "See Also" heading with a link or text entry that points to a reference. A documentation comment can contain any number of @see tags, which are all grouped under the same heading. The @see tag has three variations. The form to reference other program elements is the most common. This tag is valid in all documentation comments. For inserting an inline link within a sentence to a package, class, or member, see {@link}.

@see "string"

Adds a text entry for string. No link is generated. The string may be a reference to information which is not available by URL. The standard doclet distinguishes this from the other cases by searching for a double quotation mark (") as the first character.

@see <a href="url">label</a>

Adds a link as defined by the url. The URL may be a relative or absolute URL. The standard doclet distinguishes this from other cases by searching for a less-than symbol (<) as the first character.

@see reference label

Adds a link with a visible text label that points to the documentation for the specified program element that is referenced.

reference can refer to any valid program element. If this element is in the documented classes, then the standard doclet creates a link to it.

To create links to external referenced classes, use the -link option. External referenced classes are classes that are not passed into the javadoc tool on the command line. Links in the generated documentation to external referenced classes are called external references or external links. For example, if you run the standard doclet on only the java.awt package, then any class in java.lang, such as Object, is an external referenced class. Use the -link and -linkoffline options to link to external referenced classes. The source comments of external referenced classes are not available to the javadoc command run.

Use either of the other two @see tag forms to refer to the documentation of a name that does not belong to a referenced class.

label is text to be used as the link label and is optional for references to program elements. If no label is provided for an element reference, a default is generated, based on the target of the reference. Use the label when you want the text to be different from the auto-generated text. For references to URI fragments a label must be provided. The label can contain whitespace characters.

Introduced in JDK 1.0.

@serial

@serial field-description
@serial include
@serial exclude

Used in the documentation comment for a default serializable field. See Documenting Serializable Fields and Data for a Class.

An optional field description should explain the meaning of the field and list the acceptable values. When needed, the description can span multiple lines. The standard doclet adds this information to the serialized form page.

If a serializable field was added to a class after the class was made serializable, then a statement should be added to its main description to identify at which version it was added.

The include and exclude arguments identify whether a class or package should be included or excluded from the serialized form page. They work as follows:

A public or protected class that implements Serializable is included unless that class (or its package) is marked with the @serial exclude tag.
A private or package-private class that implements Serializable is excluded unless that class (or its package) is marked with the @serial include tag.

For example, the javax.swing package is marked with the @serial exclude tag in package-info.java. The public class java.security.BasicPermission is marked with the @serial exclude tag. The package-private class java.util.PropertyPermissionCollection is marked with the @serial include tag.

The @serial tag at the class level overrides the @serial tag at the package level.

Introduced in JDK 1.2.

@serialData

@serialData data-description

Uses the data description value to document the types and order of data in the serialized form. This data includes the optional data written by the writeObject method and all data (including base classes) written by the Externalizable.writeExternal method.

The @serialData tag can be used in the documentation comment for the readObject, writeObject, readExternal, writeExternal, readResolve, and writeReplace methods.

Introduced in JDK 1.2.

@serialField

@serialField field-name field-type field-description

Documents an ObjectStreamField component of the serialPersistentFields member of a Serializable class. Use one @serialField tag for each ObjectStreamField component.

Introduced in JDK 1.2.

@since

@since since-text

Adds a "Since" heading with the specified since-text value to the generated documentation. The text has no special internal structure. This tag is valid in any documentation comment: overview, module, package, class, interface, constructor, method, or field. This tag means that this change or feature has existed since the software release specified by the since-text value, for example: @since 1.5.

For Java platform source code, the @since tag indicates the version of the Java platform API specification, which is not necessarily when the source code was added to the reference implementation. Multiple @since tags are allowed and are treated like multiple @author tags. You could use multiple tags when the program element is used by more than one API.

Introduced in JDK 1.1.

@snippet

{@snippet attributes }
{@snippet attributes :
body }

Includes a fragment, or "snippet", of example code in the generated documentation. The code may be provided inline within the tag by specifying a body and/or in an external file, specified in the attributes. Within the content, markup tags can be placed in line comments to identify regions within the text and instruct how to present the text in these regions.

Additional details about the snippet can be given as attributes, in the form of name=value pairs, placed after the initial tag name. An attribute name is always a simple identifier. An attribute value may be an identifier, unsigned integer, or enclosed in either single or double quote characters; no escape characters are supported. An attribute value and the preceding = may be omitted when the presence of the attribute name is sufficient. Attributes are separated from the tag name and from each other by whitespace characters, such as space and newline.

A snippet may specify an id attribute, which can be used to identify the snippet in both the API and the generated HTML, and which may be used to create a link to the snippet. In the generated HTML, the id will be placed on the outermost element that is generated to represent the snippet.

Code fragments are typically Java source code, but they may also be fragments of properties files, source code in other languages, or plain text. A snippet may specify a lang attribute, which identifies the kind of content in the snippet. For an inline snippet, the default value is java. For an external snippet, the default value is derived from the extension of the name of the file containing the snippet's content.

Inline snippets

An inline snippet contains the content of the snippet within the tag itself.

The content of the snippet, which is included in the generated documentation, is the text between the first newline after the colon (:) and the closing curly brace (}).

There is no need to escape characters such as <, >, and & with HTML entities, nor is there any need to escape documentation comment tags.

Surrounding whitespace is stripped from the content using String::stripIndent.

There are two limitations on the content of inline snippets:

The character sequence */ cannot be used anywhere within the content, because the */ would terminate the enclosing documentation comment. This includes use of /* ... */ comments, or within a // comment, or within string literals, such as those used to represent regular expressions. This restriction applies to all content in documentation comments; it is not specific to the @snippet tag.
The content of an inline snippet can only contain balanced pairs of curly-brace characters. The overall inline tag is terminated by the first right brace that matches the opening brace. This restriction applies to all inline tags; it is not specific to the @snippet tag.

External snippets

An external snippet refers to a separate class or file that contains the content of the snippet.

In an external snippet the colon, newline, and subsequent content can be omitted.

Unlike inline snippets, external snippets have no limitations on their content. In particular, they may contain /* ... */ comments.

The location of the external code can be specified either by class name, using the class attribute, or by a short relative file path, using the file attribute. In either case the file can be placed in a package hierarchy rooted in a snippet-files subdirectory of the directory containing the source code with the {@snippet ...} tag. Alternatively, the file can be placed on an auxiliary search path, specified by the --snippet-path option to the javadoc tool. The use of snippet-files subdirectories is similar to the use of doc-files subdirectories for auxiliary documentation files.

The file for an external snippet may contain multiple regions, to be referenced in different snippet tags, appearing in different parts of the documentation.

Hybrid snippets

A hybrid snippet is both an internal snippet and an external snippet. It contains the content of the snippet within the tag itself, for the convenience of anyone reading the source code for the class being documented, and it also refers to a separate file that contains the content of the snippet.

It is an error if the result of processing a hybrid snippet as an inline snippet does not match the result of processing it as an external snippet.

Markup tags

Markup tags define regions within the content of a snippet. They also control the presentation of the content, for example highlighting parts of the text, modifying the text, or linking to elsewhere in the documentation. They can be used in internal, external, and hybrid snippets.

Markup tags begin with @name, followed by any required arguments. They are placed in // comments (or the equivalent in other languages or formats), so as not to unduly interfere with the body of the source code, and also because /* ... */ comments cannot be used in inline snippets. Such comments are referred to as markup comments.

Multiple markup tags can be placed in the same markup comment. The markup tags apply to the source line containing the comment unless the comment is terminated with a colon (:), in which case it is as if the tags were present on the immediately following line. The latter syntax may be useful if the markup comment is particularly long, or if the syntactic format of the content of a snippet does not permit comments to appear on the same line as non-comment source. Markup comments do not appear in the generated output.

Because some other systems use meta-comments similar to markup comments, comments that begin with @ followed by an unrecognized name are ignored as markup comments and will appear in the generated output. If the name is recognized, but there are subsequent errors in the markup comment, then an error is reported. The generated output in such cases is undefined, with respect to the output generated from the snippet.

Regions

A region is an optionally-named range of lines that identifies the text to be displayed by a snippet. They also define the scope of actions such as highlighting or modifying the text.

The beginning of a region is marked by either

@start region=name, or
an @highlight, @replace, or @link tag that specifies region or region=name. You can omit the name if it is not needed by the matching @end tag.

The end of a region is marked by @end or @end region=name. If a name is given then the tag ends the region started with that name. If no name is given then the tag ends the most recently started region that does not already have a matching @end tag.

There are no constraints on the regions created by different pairs of matching @start and @end tags. Regions can even overlap, although we do not expect such usage to be common.

Highlighting

@highlight — highlight text within a line or region
- substring — the literal text to be highlighted
- regex — a regular expression for the text to be highlighted
- region — a region to define the scope in which to find the text to be highlighted
- type — the type of highlighting, such as bold, italic, or highlighted

To highlight content on a line or in a range of lines, use @highlight followed by arguments that specify the scope of the text to be considered, the text within that scope to be highlighted, and the type of the highlighting.

If region or region=name is specified then the scope is that region, up to the corresponding @end tag. Otherwise, the scope is just the current line.

To highlight each instance of a literal string within the scope, specify the string with substring=string where string can be an identifier or text enclosed in single or double quotes. To highlight each instance of text matched by a regular expression within the scope, use regex=string. If neither of these attributes are specified then the entire scope is highlighted.

The type of highlighting can be specified with the type parameter. Valid type names are bold, italic, and highlighted. The name of the type is converted to a CSS class name whose properties can be defined in the system stylesheet or overridden in a user-defined stylesheet.

Modifying the displayed text

@replace — replace text within a line or region
- substring — the literal text to be replaced
- regex — a regular expression for the text to be replaced
- region — a region to define the scope in which to find the text to be replaced
- replacement — the replacement text

It is often convenient to write the content of a snippet as code that can be accessed and validated by external tools, but to display it in a form that does not compile. For example, it may be desirable to include import statements for illustrative purposes along with code that uses the imported types. Or, it may be desirable to display code with an ellipsis or some other marker to indicate that additional code should be inserted at that point. This can be done by replacing parts of the content of the snippet with some replacement text.

To replace some text with replacement text, use @replace followed by arguments that specify the scope of the text to be considered, the text within that scope to be replaced, and the replacement text.

If region or region=name is specified then the scope is that region, up to the corresponding @end tag. Otherwise, the scope is just the current line.

To replace each instance of a literal string within the scope, specify the string with substring=string where string can be an identifier or text enclosed in single or double quotes. To replace each instance of text matched by a regular expression within the scope, use regex=string. If neither of these attributes are specified then the entire scope is replaced.

Specify the replacement text with the replacement parameter. If a regular expression is used to specify the text to be replaced then $number or $name can be used to substitute groups found in the regular expression, as defined by String::replaceAll.

To delete text, use @replace with an empty replacement string. To insert text, use @replace to replace some no-op text placed where the replacement text should be inserted. The no-op text might be a '//' marker, or an empty statement (;).

Linking text

@link — link text within a line or region
- substring — the literal text to be linked
- regex — a regular expression for the text to be linked
- region — a region to define the scope in which to find the text to be linked
- target — the target of the link, expressed in one of the forms suitable for an {@link ...} tag
- type — the type of link: one of link (the default) or linkplain

To link text to declarations elsewhere in the API, use @link followed by arguments that specify the scope of the text to be considered, the text within that scope to be linked, and the target of the link.

If region or region=name is specified then the scope is that region, up to the corresponding @end tag. Otherwise, the scope is just the current line.

To link each instance of a literal string within the scope, specify the string with substring=string where string can be an identifier or text enclosed in single or double quotes. To link each instance of text matched by a regular expression within the scope, use regex=string. If neither of these attributes are specified then the entire scope is linked.

Specify the target with the target parameter. The form of its value is the same as used by the standard inline {@link ...} tag.

Introduced in JDK 18.

@spec

@spec URL title

Identifies an external specification in terms of its URL and title. The URL may be absolute or relative. Relative URLs will be evaluated against a "base URL".

All tags specifying the same URL must provide the same corresponding title; conversely, tags with different URLs must have different titles.

Introduced in JDK 20.

{@summary}

{@summary text }

Identify the summary of an API description, as an alternative to the default policy to identify and use the first sentence of the API description. The tag only has significance when used at the beginning of a main description. In all cases, the tag is rendered by simply rendering its content.

Introduced in JDK 10.

{@systemProperty}

{@systemProperty property-name }

Identify property-name as the name of a system property. The name should be a "dotted identifier". In particular, it must not contain whitespace characters, or characters such as }. No other content is permitted in the tag; the possibility of additional content is reserved for future use. The tag can be used in all documentation comments.

Introduced in JDK 12.

@throws

@throws exception-name description

Adds an exception with the specified name followed by the specified description to the "Throws" section.

exception-name should refer to an exception that might be thrown by the method, and should either be the name of an exception class or a type variable. This tag is valid only in the documentation comment for a method or constructor.

A documentation comment may use multiple @throws tags for the same or different exceptions.

To ensure that all checked exceptions are documented, when an @throws tag does not exist for an exception in the throws clause, the standard doclet adds that exception to the generated output (with no description) as if it were documented with the @throws tag.

The @throws documentation is copied from an overridden method to a subclass only when the exception is explicitly declared in the overridden method. The same is true for copying from an interface method to an implementing method. You can use the {@inheritDoc} tag to force the @throws tag to inherit documentation.

The @exception tag is equivalent to this tag, although the @throws form is now recommended.

Introduced in JDK 1.2.

@uses

@uses service-type description

This tag may only appear in the documentation comment for a module declaration, and serves to document that a service may be used by the module. The description may be used to specify the characteristics of the service that may be required, and what the module will do if no provider for the service is available.

Introduced in JDK 9.

{@value}

{@value format field-reference }

Displays the value of a static field with a compile-time constant value.

The format string may be omitted, in which case a default format will be used, appropriate to the type of the field. If the format string is given, it must either begin with a percent character (%) or be enclosed in double-quote characters ("). It must contain exactly one percent character. The string must conform to the definition of a format string, as specified in the documentation for java.util.Formatter. The conversion specified in the format string must be appropriate for the type of the constant value.

When the {@value} tag is used without a field_reference argument in the documentation comment of a static field, it displays the value of that constant:

/**
 * The value of this constant is {@value}.
 */
public static final String SCRIPT_START = "<script>"

When used with a field-reference argument in any documentation comment, the {@value} tag displays the value of the specified constant:

/**
 * Evaluates the script starting with {@value #SCRIPT_START}.
 */
public String evalScript(String script) {}

Introduced in JDK 1.4; format added in JDK 20.

@version

@version version-text

Adds a "Version" subheading with the specified version-text value to the generated documents when the -version option is used. This tag is intended to hold the current release number of the software that this code is part of, as opposed to the @since tag, which holds the release number where this code was introduced. The version-text value has no special internal structure.

A documentation comment can contain multiple @version tags. When it makes sense, you can specify one release number per @version tag or multiple release numbers per tag. In the former case, the standard doclet inserts a comma (,) and a space between the names. In the latter case, the entire text is copied to the generated document without being parsed. Therefore, you can use multiple names per line when you want a localized separator other than a comma.

Introduced in JDK 1.0.

Where Tags Can Be Used

The following table summarizes which tags can be used in which contexts.

Contexts in which tags may be used
Tag	Module	Package	Type	Constructor	Method	Field	Other
`@author`	✓	✓	✓				✓
`{@code}`	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓
`@deprecated`	✓		✓	✓	✓	✓
`{@docRoot}`	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓
`@exception`				✓	✓
`@hidden`			✓		✓	✓
`{@index}`	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓
`{@inheritDoc}`					✓
`{@link}`	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓
`{@linkplain}`	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓
`{@literal}`	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓
`@param`			✓	✓	✓
`@provides`	✓
`@return`					✓
`@see`	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓
`@serial`		✓	✓			✓
`@serialData`					*
`@serialField`						*
`@since`	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓
`{@snippet}`	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓
`{@summary}`	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓
`{@systemProperty}`	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓
`@throws`				✓	✓
`@uses`	✓
`{@value}`	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓
`@version`	✓	✓	✓				✓

Notes:

Methods includes members of annotation interfaces.
Fields includes members of enum classes.
Other includes the Overview page, which is not tied to any declaration, and HTML files in doc-files subdirectories of a package directory. The Overview page is typically specified with an option to the javadoc command.
@serialData can only be used in the documentation comment for the readObject, writeObject, readExternal, writeExternal, readResolve and writeReplace methods.
@serialField can only be used in the documentation comment for the serialPersistentFields field.