Can I acess a final object's methods?

Question

I have to declare a parameter on my method final to access it through a Runnable but can I still access the methods? I need to edit the object a bit. I can't seem to find anything that can help me with this question, so hopefully this isn't a stupid question. Thanks in advanced!

score 3 · Answer 1 · answered Apr 27 '13 at 08:04

3

An object is not final, but its reference is. So you can easily access its methods (if any) to modify the object.

answered Apr 27 '13 at 08:04

Juvanis

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1

I'd actually say it's the *variable* which is final - you can't change the value of the variable to be a different reference. But this is still helpful as-is :) – Jon Skeet Apr 27 '13 at 08:05

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Apr 27 '13 at 08:07

You can change the state of the object, even if it is marked final. When you mark a reference variable final, you can't reassign it to another object, but you can definitely change the state of the object to which it is already referring by calling its methods.

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Apr 27 '13 at 08:13

Yes you can. Check this example

public class SampleA
{
    private static final SampleB sampleB =  new SampleB();
    public static void main(String[] args)
    {
        System.out.println( sampleB.toString() );

        sampleB.setM1( "1" );

        System.out.println( sampleB.toString() );

    }

}



public class SampleB
{
    private String m1;

    private String m2;

    public String getM1()
    {
        return m1;
    }

    public void setM1(String m1)
    {
        this.m1 = m1;
    }

    public String getM2()
    {
        return m2;
    }

    public void setM2(String m2)
    {
        this.m2 = m2;
    }

    public String toString()
    {
        final String TAB = "    ";

        String retValue = "SampleB ( "
            + "m1 = " + this.m1 + TAB
            + "m2 = " + this.m2 + TAB
            + " )";

        return retValue;
    }   
}

Can I acess a final object's methods?

3 Answers3