Chapter 4 Spring Expression Language (SpEL), section 4.3.9. Constructors of official documentation contains incorrect description of default behavior. According to source code of org.springframework.expression.spel.support.StandardEvaluationContext there is a use of org.springframework.expression.spel.support.StandardTypeLocator class. According to the source code of letter class the core package 'java.lang' is registered by default.

Comment From: sbrannen

Good catch!

This has been merged into master in 3bded7659af9f6ecf377ccb0f8a32b31f051b7d1 and revised in https://github.com/spring-projects/spring-framework/commit/01e50fb60ad0d82f96fe4df6054ed6029e2f6a12#diff-501285a65f6142ae10e3dd10427e31d42cacfe303e03315c56305322edb72995R1369-R1372.