Howdy
I have always considered this one of the most absurd and funny things in
Java, for *exactly* the reason you mentioned. I'm sure somebody, somewhere, has an interesting and twisty use for it, but it just makes me laugh.
Despite what you've heard
the exam does have a basis in reality. Sometimes deliberately tricky things *are* in the exam, but for the most part, if something is considered "trivia" or "something that's legal but that nobody would ever use and which doesn't serve you in any way to know it", then these types of questions were almost always thrown out if one of the exam writers happened to be having a bad day
Of course, some of the *code* in the exam is written in such a way that nobody would ever do it like that in the real world, but the actual THING the exam question is trying to
test you on IS considered important.
That's my way of saying that if I were you, I wouldn't worry much about *this* particular thing being in the exam.
Does that make sense? In other words, the exam will throw questions at you that are *written* in a sometimes tricky way, but they aren't trying to see if you know some unbelievably obscure artifact of the language rules.
I see mock exams that have questions like this, and they should be ignored!
cheers,
Kathy