Members of inner classes

[Marcel Stör]

On http://faq.javaranch.com/java/ScjpFaq#tripsTraps it says that

No inner class can have a static member.

While I might have misinterpreted the statement, it's certainly true that static inner classes may have static members:

private static class Foo{
	private static int foo = 3;
	
	int getFoo() {
		return foo;
	}
}

[Vishwanath Krishnamurthi]

Hi,

Its a common misconception. A static class that is nested in a class is called as "static nested class" and not as static inner class. That was the confusion I guess?

Terminolgy:
inner class => any non static nested class
Sun tutorial

Regards,
Vishwa

[Marcel Stör]

Was I ignorant all those many years that I've been programming Java? I really wasn't aware of the difference in terminology...

Thanks for the link, but IMO in that article even Sun makes a mess out of those terms. At the end they quite correctly admit that

...the taxonomy of the different kinds of classes in the Java programming language (which can be tricky to describe concisely, clearly, and correctly),...

Today is a good day - I learned something

Regards,
Marcel

[Krishna Srinivasan]

Yes..static inner classes called as the nested classes..the following program will not work. because it declares static field inside a inner class.

package org.examples.test;

public class TestThread {	
	public static void main(String args[]){
		new TestThread().new Test();
	}
	private class Test{
		static int i = 0;
	}
}

[Robin Paul]

Since your confusion is already clear please do remember that the modifier static always means that it belongs to class and is treated as member. That is why static inner class is called a member class and not inner. So if you do hear inner classes it will mostly refer to non static inner class and local inner classes.