You may be interested to note another argument for the Spec Report
recommendations in 15.8.5 in disallowing parenthesized expressions to
represent variables (the way it was in the first edition JLS). Try
compiling this code with Sun's 1.4-beta2 compiler:

class Foo {
  private int i;
  class Inner {
    Inner() {
      int j = (i)++;
    }
  }
}

An exception has occurred in the compiler (1.4.0-beta2). Please file a
bug at the Java Developer Connection
(http://java.sun.com/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi) after checking the Bug
Parade for duplicates. Include your program and the following diagnostic
in your report. Thank you.
java.lang.InternalError: store unsupported:
com.sun.tools.javac.v8.comp.Items$StackItem@ef9f1d
        at com.sun.tools.javac.v8.comp.Items$Item.store(Items.java:203)
...

This code compiled successfully under javac 1.3, although it was
rejected by 1.1 according to the rules of the first edition JLS. It
looks as though the checks for a parenthesized expression representing a
variable were changed in 1.4 in such a manner to once again cause a
compiler failure. Meanwhile, following the recommendation of the Spec
Report, and eliding the (), produces an example which will successfully
compile in all JDK versions from 1.1 on, including 1.4. This argues
once again that the special casing needed to support parenthesized
expressions as variables is not worth the effort, since the compilation
is unambiguous without the ().