Question

I have a class with two methods defined in it.

public class Routines {       public static method1() {       /* set of statements */      }       public static method2() {       /* another set of statements.*/      } } 

Now I need to call method1() from method2()

Which one the following approaches is better? Or is this qualify as a question?

public static method2() {          method1();  } 

OR

public static method2() {          Routines.method1();  } 

Answer 1

While I agree with the existing answers that this is primarily a style issue, it is enough of a style issue that both Eclipse and IntelliJ’s code critics will flag ‘non-static references to static methods’ in code that does not use the Classname.method() style.

I made it a habit to emphasize intent by using the classname to qualify references to static targets, this to qualify references to instance targets, and bare names for local references. A modern IDE will use different highlighting for these constructs, so I suppose it is less important these days. I like for the maintainer (often myself) to know what was intended, that yes, I knew that was a static reference.

Yeah, it does make for slightly more verbose code, but I think it is worth the extra characters.