AspectJ 5 is more liberal than AspectJ 1.2.1 in accepting pointcut expressions that bind context variables in more than one location. For example, AspectJ 1.2.1 does not allow: whereas this expression is permitted in AspectJ 5. Each context variable must be bound exactly once in each branch of a disjunction, and the disjunctive branches must be mutually exclusive. In the above example for instance, no join point can be both an execution join point and a set join point so the two branches are mutually exclusive. The semantics of the declare soft statement have been refined in AspectJ 5 to only soften exceptions that are not already runtime exceptions. If the exception type specified in a declare soft statement is RuntimeException or a subtype of RuntimeException then a new XLint warning will be issued: > "SomeRuntimeException will not be softened as it is already a RuntimeException" [XLint:runtimeExceptionNotSoftened] ]]> This XLint message can be controlled by setting the runtimeExceptionNotSoftened XLint parameter. If the exception type specified in a declare soft statement is a super type of RuntimeException (such as Exception for example) then any checked exception thrown at a matched join point, where the exception is an instance of the softened exception, will be softened to an org.aspectj.lang.SoftException.