A DESCRIPTION OF THE PROBLEM :
According to JLS 15.29 Constant Expressions, "Constant expressions of type String are always "interned" so as to share unique instances, using the method String.intern". This is also mentioned in JLS 3.10.5 String Literals for the specific case of String literals.

Annotations require specified strings to be Constant Expressions, therefore it would be expected for the methods in the annotations returned by the Reflection API to return String instances that are interned.

STEPS TO FOLLOW TO REPRODUCE THE PROBLEM :
- Add an annotation to a member with a string field. Its value could be, for example, a reference to a static final String field.
- Get the annotation on the member
- Get the string field from the annotation
- Compare identity equality of the string in the annotation and the field

EXPECTED VERSUS ACTUAL BEHAVIOR :
EXPECTED -
The two strings to hold identity equality.
ACTUAL -
The two strings don't hold identity equality, they only return true for a call to the equals() method (and similar).

---------- BEGIN SOURCE ----------
import java.lang.annotation.*;

public class AnnotationTest {
    public static final String STATIC_FINAL_FIELD = "constant";

    @StringA("constant")
    public void literal() {}

    @StringA(STATIC_FINAL_FIELD)
    public void field() {}

    public static void main(String[] args) throws NoSuchMethodException {
StringA literal = AnnotationTest.class.getMethod("literal").getAnnotation(StringA.class);
StringA field = AnnotationTest.class.getMethod("field") .getAnnotation(StringA.class);

System.out.println(STATIC_FINAL_FIELD == literal.value()); // returns false
System.out.println(STATIC_FINAL_FIELD == field.value()); // returns false
System.out.println("constant" == literal.value()); // returns false
System.out.println("constant" == field.value()); // returns false

System.out.println("constant" == STATIC_FINAL_FIELD); // returns true, as expected
}
}

@Retention(RetentionPolicy.RUNTIME)
@Target(ElementType.METHOD)
@interface StringA {
    String value();
}

---------- END SOURCE ----------

CUSTOMER SUBMITTED WORKAROUND :
None, other than maybe manually interning all returned Strings from annotations.

FREQUENCY : always