Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
Inner classes became a feature of the Java programming language starting with version 1.1. Nested classes are also a feature of the D programming language, Visual Basic .NET, Ruby, C++ and C#. In Python, it is possible to nest a class within another class, method or function.
Classes are divided into top-level and nested. Nested classes are classes placed inside another class that may access the private members of the enclosing class. Nested classes include member classes (which may be defined with the static modifier for simple nesting or without it for inner classes), local classes and anonymous classes.
Nested functions can be used for unstructured control flow, by using the return statement for general unstructured control flow.This can be used for finer-grained control than is possible with other built-in features of the language – for example, it can allow early termination of a for loop if break is not available, or early termination of a nested for loop if a multi-level break or ...
Depending on the language, it may or may not be possible to refer to the class from outside the enclosing class. A related concept is inner types, also known as inner data type or nested type, which is a generalization of the concept of inner classes. C++ is an example of a language that supports both inner classes and inner types (via typedef ...
For object values, the reference cannot change. This allows the Java compiler to "capture" the value of the variable at run-time and store a copy as a field in the inner class. Once the outer method has terminated and its stack frame has been removed, the original variable is gone but the inner class's private copy persists in the class's own ...
Programmers can use trampolined functions to implement tail-recursive function calls in stack-oriented programming languages. [1] In Java, trampoline refers to using reflection to avoid using inner classes, for example in event listeners. The time overhead of a reflection call is traded for the space overhead of an inner class.
Java also supports inner classes that are declared as non-static members of an enclosing class. [17] They are normally referred to just as "inner classes". [ 18 ] These are defined in the body of the enclosing class and have full access to instance variables of the enclosing class.
In object-oriented programming, a virtual base class is a nested inner class whose functions and member variables can be overridden and redefined by subclasses of an outer class. [1] Virtual classes are analogous to virtual functions. The run time type of a virtual class depends on the run time type of an object of the outer class.