There can never be an instance of an abstract class, therefore there can be no reference to one. A reference to a class cannot exist at all (unless you mean a pointer to the classfile loaded in memory by the JVM, which you can't get at).
hello, Jeroen Wenting i think that u couldn't understand what i actually asked. anyhow we can have referance of abstract class but we cannot instentiate it directly but with the object of its child class....
It's quite possible to hold a reference to an object of a child class, and treat it as if it is an instance of the abstract class. This is just the same as holding a reference to an object and treating it as if it is a reference to an interface which it implements. Interfaces and Abstract classes can never be constructed, but it's quite possible (and useful) to have variables with such a type. For example:
[This message has been edited by Frank Carver (edited February 09, 2001).]