A common example is try-with-resources where you don't actually need the resource and are just using it for the closing effect. For example, let's say you have a metrics library that allows you to time code blocks like so:

  try (Timer ignored = Metrics.newTimer("getOrders")) {
    return db.getOrders();
  }

Another common example is when you are implementing an interface method or overriding a superclass method, and your implementation doesn't need all the arguments. Would be great for the programmer to have a way to express this intent (to the compiler and to the reader)

This JEP would allow stronger static analysis rules like "every declared parameter and variable MUST be used", and _ would serve as the canonical escape hatch for edge cases.

One datapoint: searching our codebase for variables named "ignored" produces >1,000 hits. And probably an order of magnitude more unused variables that aren't named ignored.