A DESCRIPTION OF THE REQUEST :
It would be very useful if Java supported a method in Class that allowed one to get a pointer to a method without using a String for the name:

  Class<X> cls = X.class;
  Method meth = cls.getMethod(getColor);

This could then be compile-time checked to see that the method 'getColor' actually exists for the class X.

The example that I have is as follows: my application uses 'DataAccessor' objects to contain things stored in the database. A Person object might have methods 'getFirstName', 'getLastName', 'getPhone', etc.

I have a SortTable class that can display collections of DataAccessors given a List<String> of method names. I would like the compiler to tell me that I misspelled 'getFristName', instead of waiting until runtime to give me a NoSuchMethodException.

JUSTIFICATION :
See above

EXPECTED VERSUS ACTUAL BEHAVIOR :
EXPECTED -
See above