How to reference another method of the same class in Javadoc?

Question

Suppose your class has 2 methods:

contains() and
containsSame()

The distinction between them is subtle and you'd like to mention it as part of Javadoc

In Javadoc, how can you reference a method in the same class, by name?

Answer 1

Use the @link inline tag, and refer to the method with a leading #.

/**
 * ...
 * This method is similar to {@link #contains()}, with the following differences:
 * ...
 */
public boolean containsSame();


/**
 * This method does ...
 */
public boolean contains();

This example only works if there is actually a contains() method which has no arguments (which, actually, seems to be not that useful). If you have only a contains method with arguments, then either write the argument types in the parentheses:

/**
 * ...
 * This method is similar to {@link #contains(Element)}, with the following differences:
 * ...
 */
public boolean containsSame(Element e);

/**
 * This method does ...
 */
public boolean contains(Element e);

Or you can omit the parentheses completely:

/**
 * ...
 * This method is similar to {@link #contains}, with the following differences:
 * ...
 */
public boolean containsSame(Element e);

/**
 * This method does ...
 */
public boolean contains(Element e);

If you have several methods named contains (with different parameter lists), this version can't decide which one to use (the link will jump to any of them, hopefully they are all together and do similar things).