Using a default string on a binary field results in invalid Java code.

Given the following service definition:

$ cat Service.thrift 
service MyService {
    string doWork(
    1: string arg1;
    2: binary arg2 = '';
    3: binary arg3 = '';
    );
}

And the following compilation:

/usr/local/Cellar/thrift/0.12.0/bin/thrift -gen java Service.thrift

Results in code that does not compile. This is because we end up with code like the following:

    
    public doWork_args() {
      this.arg2 = "";

      this.arg3 = "";

    }        

In Java you cannot set a ByteBuffer to a String value.

Users can run into this situation if they were generating C++ code before (binary and string both resolve to std::string) and then only later decide to use Java with existing files.