Is there something called 'inner interface'?

[Aakash Goel]

Inner classes exist. Why not inner interfaces?

[Ankit Garg]

Did you try to create an interface within interface or class??

[Aakash Goel]

Ankit Garg wrote:Did you try to create an interface within interface or class??

yeah, they do get created.

also, Set is an interface and so is Collection.

But nowhere in K&B is a mention of innner interfaces.

So, I thought probably they are not inner interfaces after all.

[Ankit Garg]

there are inner interfaces but maybe nothing is asked about them in SCJP that's why nothing about them is given in K&B ...

[Vishwanath Krishnamurthi]

Aakash Goel wrote:


So, I thought probably they are not inner interfaces after all.

They are not. Set is an interface that extends from Collection interface and its just a sub-interface... Its not an interface within another interface. From the specs here I see that Sun calls an interface within another interface as a "nested interface" I guess this nesting of an interface in another has only to do with some namespace resolution...

[Paul Clapham]

Vishwanath brings up an important point. There is a rather complicated difference between a "nested class" and an "inner class"... I'm not going to try to explain it because I don't remember it correctly, but you might want to review that. Then it's quite likely that "inner interface" and "nested interface" would be the same concepts.

[avi sinha]

  class A{

	interface InnerInterface{
		void go();
	}
}

class B implements A.InnerInterface{
	public void go(){
	}
}

--------------------Configuration: <Default>--------------------

Process completed  

you can find questions related to inner ineterfaces too in Dan Chilosam's book.

avi sinha

[Vlado Zajac]

The difference between "inner" and "nested" is that only non-static nested class is called "inner class" (static nested class is not an inner class).

Nested interfaces are always implicitly static so inner interfaces does not exist.