CODEWITHSUNDEEP
java
javanewbie
javanewbie

Reputation:

About the "class" property/field

When you do:

MyClass.class.someMethod()

What exactly is the "class" field? I can't find it in the API docs. Is it an inherited static field?

I thought reserved keywords were not allowed as entity names.

Upvotes: 1

Views: 2718

Answers (4)

Amir Afghani
Amir Afghani

Reputation: 38531

Please read :

A class literal is an expression consisting of the name of a class, interface, array, or primitive type, or the pseudo-type void, followed by a `.' and the token class. The type of a class literal, C.Class, where C is the name of a class, interface or array type, is Class. If p is the name of a primitive type, let B be the type of an expression of type p after boxing conversion (§5.1.7). Then the type of p.class is Class. The type of void.class is Class.

Java Language Specification: 15.8.2. Class Literals

Upvotes: 4

John Kugelman
John Kugelman

Reputation: 361595

MyClass is not the name of an object, it's a class name, so this is actually special syntax that retrieves the corresponding Class<MyClass> object for the named class. It is a language feature, not a real property of the MyClass class.

Upvotes: 2

akf
akf

Reputation: 39485

The .class is not actually a field. You can think of is as more of an 'extension' like a file extension. It is a token used to differentiate the Class Object as opposed to an instance of the class.

Upvotes: 2

Knio
Knio

Reputation:

This is documented here:

http://java.sun.com/javase/6/docs/api/java/lang/Class.html

Upvotes: 0

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