Fwd: inner class reading uninitialized value from outer class

[Xen]

On Wed, 22 Jun 2016, Alex Buckley wrote:

> The access is not advisable, but definite assignment analysis cannot
> prevent it, so ultimately it's acceptable.

Alright. It seems out of the ordinary that you couldn't detect it, but 
alright. Thanks for the reply in any case in advance ;-) :).

>>> Nothing odd here, but it does read a final value that has not been
>>> initialized yet. Maybe this should simply be a compiler error. I don't
>>> know what the spec says about this. It will just compile fine on
>>> openjdk 8 (I got a package error trying to install 9 on my system,
>>> hence I am using 8 for (this) now).
>>> 
>>> Basically I wonder if the spec allows this, or whether this is a
>>> compiler error.
>
> The spec allows this. It is possible to do all kinds of crazy things as a 
> result of the language allowing arbitrary code in instance variable 
> initializers, instance initializers, static variable initializers, and static 
> initializers.

Right, thanks. It was just a bug in my program ;-). Well, call it 
unfamiliarity with the mechanics. I had expected a final variable 
to not be able to have 2 different values during the lifetime of the 
program / class. It took me a few .....minutes ;-) to discover what was 
going on, but thankfully troubleshooting is much easier than in e.g. Bash, 
where a million things can go wrong as a matter of joy.

Linux seems to be the agenda and the place of creating more and more 
difficult problems, so that there are more problems to solve for 
problem-solving minds. A way of keeping yourself busy I guess. That 
saying: do not give him a fish, give him a rod with which to fish. Linux 
is like: empty the river first.

Thankfully Java is very much isolated from that and this is really the 
first peculiar thing I have ever come across. So well, thank you for your 
reply.

Regards.

Bart.