OGNL treats different kinds of objects differently in its handling of property references. Maps treat all property references as element lookups or storage, with the property name as the key. Lists and arrays treat numeric properties similarly, with the property name as the index, but string properties the same way ordinary objects do. Ordinary objects (that is, all other kinds) only can handle string properties and do so by using "get" and "set" methods (or "is" and "set"), if the object has them, or a field with the given name otherwise.

Note the new terminology here. Property "names" can be of any type, not just Strings. But to refer to non-String properties, you must use what we have been calling the "index" notation. For example, to get the length of an array, you can use this expression:

array.length

But to get at element 0 of the array, you must use an expression like this:

array[0]

Note that Java collections have some special properties associated with them. See the section called “Pseudo-Properties for Collections”for these properties.