In a Pipeline ArrayList.empty is applied to each element of the list and returns another ArrayList.

In a normal console Groovy script ArrayList.empty returns a boolean value which answers, whether the list empty or not.

What is the reason for this difference? Is it expected or a bug? I always thought that when I call Java class method in the Pipeline script it should work like in Java. From this point of view it seems as a bug.

Example:

def listA = []
def listB = [ "1", "2", "3" ]
println('listA.empty=' + listA.empty)
println('listB.empty=' + listB.empty) 

Groovy command line output:

listA.empty=true
listB.empty=false

Pipeline output:

listA.empty=[]
listB.empty=[false, false, false]