Qualified class name inside qualified instance creation expression

[Tagir Valeev]

Hello!

Consider the following code:

class Test {
    class Inner {}

    void test() {
        new Test.Inner(); // compiles successfully
        this.new Test.Inner(); // error
    }
}

javac reports:
Test.java:6: error: '(' expected
        this.new Test.Inner();
                     ^
1 error

I read JLS 15.9 [1]:
ClassInstanceCreationExpression:
    UnqualifiedClassInstanceCreationExpression
    ExpressionName . UnqualifiedClassInstanceCreationExpression
    Primary . UnqualifiedClassInstanceCreationExpression
UnqualifiedClassInstanceCreationExpression:
    new [TypeArguments] ClassOrInterfaceTypeToInstantiate (
[ArgumentList] ) [ClassBody]
ClassOrInterfaceTypeToInstantiate:
    {Annotation} Identifier {. {Annotation} Identifier} [TypeArgumentsOrDiamond]

Thus this.new Test.Inner() could be parsed as Primary .
UnqualifiedClassInstanceCreationExpression where
ClassOrInterfaceTypeToInstantiate could be parsed as Identifier .
Identifier, so there should not be parse error.

Next, spec (15.9.1) says different thing for qualified and unqualified
instance creation expressions:

If the class instance creation expression is unqualified:
The ClassOrInterfaceTypeToInstantiate must denote a class that is
accessible, non-abstract, and not an enum type. Otherwise, a
compile-time error occurs.

If the class instance creation expression is qualified:
The ClassOrInterfaceTypeToInstantiate must unambiguously denote an
inner class that is accessible, non-abstract, not an enum type, and a
member of the compile-time type of the Primary expression or the
ExpressionName.

To me it's not quite evident why Test.Inner denotes a class for
unqualified expression, but does not denote the same class for
qualified expression. I'm not sure that the word "unambiguously"
changes the picture: there's only one class named Inner, so I don't
see any ambuguity.

Is this javac problem, or probably I'm missing something? Should such
code be allowed or not? If not, probably this should be explicitly
specified, that qualified class name is not allowed for qualified
instance creation expression? What do you think?

Thank you in advance,
Tagir Valeev.




[1] https://docs.oracle.com/javase/specs/jls/se11/html/jls-15.html#jls-15.9