A
meta-annotation
of this type specifies how long the annotated annotation type should
be retained. The value( ) of this annotation type
is one of the three RetentionPolicy enumerated
constants. See RetentionPolicy for details. If an
annotation type does not have an @Retention
meta-annotation, its default retention is
RetentionPolicy.CLASS.

public @interface Retention {
// Public Instance Methods
RetentionPolicy value( );
}