Question

Why is the following allowed:

public class Foo {
  public Foo() { ... }
  public void Foo() { ... }
}

Is there ever a valid reason for naming a method the same as the class?

Answer 1

My guess is that it’s allowed because explicitly disallowing it would add another requirement to Java’s identifier naming rules for very little benefit. Unlike, say, C++, Java always requires that constructors are called with the new keyword, so there’s never any ambiguity about whether an identifier refers to a method or a constructor. I do agree that a method with the same name as its parent class is quite confusing at first glance, and it should be almost certainly be avoided. That said, I’m glad they chose not to further complicate the language by banning such methods.