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Message:

Be happy!!! Don't be sorry for someting which Java does.

Posted by Kishori Sharan on January 24, 2001 at 9:33 AM

Hi
Only non-static method calls are dynamically bound. Static binding applies to all fields refernces. When you create A a = new B() , then new B() creates an object of class A first ( with some restrictions) and then it creates object of class B, because an object of class B will have all non-private fields declared in class A, which is its ancestor. So at run time an object of class B will maintain two i variables one will be A.i which it inherits from class A and one will be B.i ( or simply i) which it has declared in its own class. Since reference a in A a = new B() ; is refering to an instance which has two i's and it requires A.i so it uses A.i. That is why redeclaring an instance variable in a sub-class is called name hiding. That is, A.i is also present because of inheritance, however A.i is just hidden because of B.i. Overriding never applies to fields. It only applies to non-static methods.

Thanx
Kishori

• accessing with super.i ? richard January 30, 2001 at 6:40 AM (1)
  • U R right Richard... Kishori Sharan January 30, 2001 at 3:30 PM (0)