Calendar

[Eric Sexton]

I have some code in which I want to create a current date for today. Then I want to subtract 3 months worth of time. So for the day Feb 11, 2003 I would want the date to be Nov 11, 2002. Here's my first attempt:

  
                Calendar now = new GregorianCalendar();
now.add(now.MONTH, -3);
int begYear = now.get(Calendar.YEAR);
System.out.println(begYear);
int begMonth = now.get(Calendar.MONTH);
System.out.println(begMonth);

I took a quick look at the add method for Calendar and I thought that this would work for me. This code seems to work fine for me, but my compiler flags the second line as accessing a static field in a non static way. I understand WHAT and WHY the compiler is telling me this. However, alternatives are not working for me. How can I do this the correct way? Thanks in advance.

[Joe Ess]

You should be able to access a class' public static fields through an instance. What compiler are you using? It works with JDK 1.4.2_01 on Windows 2000.

[Eric Sexton]

IBM WSAD 5.1. It is only a warning, not an error. In fact I can specify that I want those types of warning to be ignored. I guess I wanted validation that what I was doing is acceptable.
[ November 12, 2003: Message edited by: Eric Sexton ]

[Wayne L Johnson]

It worked for me, too, but this might be better:

now.add(Calendar.MONTH, -3);

This accesses the static "MONTH" variable using the class, rather than an instance. But either way is syntactically correct.