Static inner class question

[Anonymous]

Q1 ) The RHE book states: You can use static inner classes as an extension to packaging. page 186, in Static inner classes.
what does this mean???

[Ajith Kallambella]

Static inner classes usually serve as helpers to their enclosing classes. This way of combining the main entity representation ie., your main class with the helper class provides a tighter coupling. This way of marrying related classes together and restricting their scope and existence is a better alternative packaging where you simply classify classes together under one package label.
Am I making sense here??
Ajith

[bongadi]

This is an small example to illustrate the verbose post by
Ajith
<pre>
public class StaticInnerEx {
StaticInnerEx() {
System.out.println( "C'tor StaticInnerEx ");
}
static class Inner{
Inner() {
System.out.println( "C'tor the static Inner ");
}
}
public static void main(String argv[]) {
StaticInnerEx out = new StaticInnerEx();
// The following expression gives the impression that Inner lives
// in pkg StaticInnerEx, dosen't it ?
StaticInnerEx.Inner in = new Inner();
}
}
</pre>

Originally posted by Ajith Kallambella:
Static inner classes usually serve as helpers to their enclosing classes. This way of combining the main entity representation ie., your main class with the helper class provides a tighter coupling. This way of marrying related classes together and restricting their scope and existence is a better alternative packaging where you simply classify classes together under one package label.
Am I making sense here??
Ajith

[Ajith Kallambella]

Thanks bongadi. I think I need to mature from being just a theoretician.
Ajith