Question

There are two ways to reference the instance of a class within that class. For example:

class Person {
  String name;

  public void setName(String name) {
    this.name = name;
  }

  public void setName2(String name) {
    Person.this.name = name;
  }
}

One uses this.name to reference the object field, but the other uses className.this to reference the object field. What is the difference between these two references?

Answer 1

In this case, they are the same. The Class.this syntax is useful when you have a non-static nested class that needs to refer to its outer class’s instance.

class Person{
    String name;

    public void setName(String name){
        this.name = name;
    }

    class Displayer {
        String getPersonName() { 
            return Person.this.name; 
        }

    }
}