1

according to this this and owner seem to have the same meaning. Reading further I find that owner can refer to the enclosing class or closure. Is this the only difference? If so, why reserve an entire word just for that?

srage
  • 990
  • 1
  • 9
  • 27
James Parsons
  • 6,097
  • 12
  • 68
  • 108
  • Here's a nice article on the topic: http://java.dzone.com/articles/groovy-closures-owner-delegate – Opal May 30 '14 at 07:50

1 Answers1

2

this refers to the enclosing class instance. owner refers to the directly enclosing object, which may or may not be the enclosing class instance. For example:

def x = { def y = { println this; println owner }; y() }
x()

Here this refers to the instance of the script class, and owner refers to x.

Peter Niederwieser
  • 121,412
  • 21
  • 324
  • 259