inner member classes in final outer class

[Bruno Medeiros]

Regan Heath wrote:
> Kirk McDonald wrote:
>> coxalan wrote:
>>> Frits van Bommel Wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>> I just looked it up; from the documentation (the page you linked
>>>> above): ===== Non-static nested classes work by containing an extra
>>>> hidden member (called the context pointer) that is the frame
>>>> pointer of the enclosing function if it is nested inside a
>>>> function, or the this of the enclosing class's instance if it is
>>>> nested inside a class. =====
>>>>
>>>> In the code above the class is nested in another class (not a
>>>> function), so the context pointer is the 'this' of the enclosing
>>>> class, i.e. a copy of 'o'.
>>>
>>>
>>> Yes, the "this" of the outer class is stored in each inner member
>>> class. So on a 32 bit machine: Each inner class contains 4 extra
>>> bytes storing the address of the outer class (This is what I meant by
>>> using the term "pointer": An address is stored.)
>>>
>>> In my code example, the outer class 'o' is final. That means that the
>>> reference stored in 'o' will never change, so for all instances of
>>> 'o.Inner' the address stored in the context pointer will be the same.
>>> This is redundant, and I wonder if the optimization could be done to
>>> _not_ store the reference pointers for instances of member classes of
>>> final outer classes.
>>
>> That o is final is irrelevant. Consider:
>>
>> Outer.Inner foo() {
>>     final Outer o = new Outer;
>>     return o.new Inner;
>> }
>>
>> The lifetime of the instance of the Inner class can easily exceed that 
>> of the original reference to the instance of the Outer class which 
>> created it. Therefore, the Inner class must have its own reference to 
>> the Outer class.
> 
> Must it?  What if the inner classes had a static reference to the outer?
> eg.
> 
> class Outer
> {
>   class Inner
>   {
>     static Outer outer; //only one copy for all instances of Inner
>   }
> }
> 
> So, if you have X instances of Outer, creating Y instances of Inner you 
> will have only X outer references, instead of X*Y outer references.
> 

That's wrong. You don't have X outer references, there is only one 
instance of outer (aka Outer.Inner.outer). A static attribute in a 
member declaration makes it unique, even if the member is an inner class.


-- 
Bruno Medeiros - MSc in CS/E student
http://www.prowiki.org/wiki4d/wiki.cgi?BrunoMedeiros#D