Question

(For those who read my previous question, this is the same teacher and the same project.)

My teacher ‘inspected’ my code for a web application project and provided some suggestions. One of the suggestions was to use the this keyword even in this situation:

private String getUsername() {
    return username;
}

So if I follow his advice, that would become:

private String getUsername() {
    return this.username;
}

I asked him why and he told me that there is another usage for the this keyword other than for clearing up ambiguities. A quick googling returned no results for another usage of the this keyword. Even the Java tutorial from Sun mentioned no other usages that would fit in this situation.

Answer 1

this also allows you access to the surrounding class instance and its members from within a nested class, e.g.

public class OuterClass
{
    private class InnerClass
    {
        public OuterClass getOuter()
        {
            return OuterClass.this;
        }
    }
}