Static Access Discrepancy?

[Paul Carey]

Hi
I just noticed the following when studying for the scjp. Does anyone
know if there's any reason for the compiler errors generated by the
commented line below as to me it doesn't seem consistent with the
other ways of accessing static variables and methods.
Thanks
Paul

public class StaticAccess
{
static int i = 0;

static int method()
{
return 5;
}

static class StaticNested
{
int nestedMethod()
{
return 10;
}
}

void testAccess()
{
int a = StaticAccess.i;
int b = this.i;

int c = StaticAccess.method();
int d = this.method();

StaticNested sna = new StaticAccess.StaticNested();
// StaticNested snb = new this.StaticNested();

StaticNested snc = new StaticNested();
}
}

 

[Jon Skeet]

I just noticed the following when studying for the scjp. Does anyone
know if there's any reason for the compiler errors generated by the
commented line below as to me it doesn't seem consistent with the
other ways of accessing static variables and methods.

Indeed, it's not. Out of all the various bits of horrible syntax for
nested classes, this is the one bit which is not only good, but better
than the rest of Java.

I would recommend never accessing static members with a reference type
expression - it only leads to misleading code such as
Thread.currentThread.sleep(...).