Question

I have this class declaration

abstract class  A {
    protected static String message = "Hello";
}

And I want this field to get propagated to subclasses, to avoid typing protected static String message = "Whatever"; (the value of this static field is different in each subclass) in all the subclasses.

I know this won’t work:

class B extends A {

    static {
        message = "Blablabla";
    }
}

Because it will actually modify A‘s message because static fields/methods are not inherited. What I want to know is if there’s any other way of doing this, or if I have to rewrite the static field on each subclass.

Answer 1

There’s no straightforward way to do it.

You may consider use some utility class which maps a Class object to a message. This will help you use general methods to work with messages based on this.getClass().