HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

Static import is a feature introduced in the
Java programming language Java is a high-level, class-based, object-oriented programming language that is designed to have as few implementation dependencies as possible. It is a general-purpose programming language intended to let programmers ''write once, run anywh ...
that allows members (fields and methods) which have been scoped within their container class as public static, to be used in Java code without specifying the class in which the field has been defined. This feature was introduced into the language in version 5.0. The feature provides a typesafe mechanism to include constants into code without having to reference the class that originally defined the field. It also helps to deprecate the practice of creating a
constant interface In the Java programming language, the constant interface pattern describes the use of an interface solely to define constants, and having classes implement that interface in order to achieve convenient syntactic access to those constants. However, ...
(an
interface Interface or interfacing may refer to: Academic journals * ''Interface'' (journal), by the Electrochemical Society * ''Interface, Journal of Applied Linguistics'', now merged with ''ITL International Journal of Applied Linguistics'' * '' Inte ...
that only defines constants then writing a class implementing that interface, which is considered an inappropriate use of interfaces.) The mechanism can be used to reference individual members of a class: import static java.lang.Math.PI; import static java.lang.Math.pow; or all the static members of a class: import static java.lang.Math.*; For example, this class: public class HelloWorld Can instead be written as: import static java.lang.Math.*; import static java.lang.System.out; public class HelloWorld


Ambiguity

If two static members of the same name are imported from multiple different classes, the compiler will throw an error, as it will not be able to determine which member to use in the absence of class name qualification. For example, the following code will fail to compile: import static java.lang.Integer.*; import static java.lang.Long.*; public class HelloWorld In this case, MAX_VALUE is ambiguous, as the MAX_VALUE field is an attribute of both java.lang.Integer and java.lang.Long. Prefixing the field with its class name will disambiguate the class from which MAX_VALUE is derived, but doing so makes the use of a static import redundant.static import ambiguity
/ref>


Notes


References

{{Portal, Computer programming

Java (programming language) Articles with example Java code