How many instances one can have of an anonymous class?

Question

An anonymous class is something like this:

  SenseOfLife _42 = new SenseOfLife() {
    public int eval() {
       return 42;
    }
  };

I didn't understand why such an anonymous class can have an unbounded number of instances (this is a proposition).

While I'm defining this anonymous class it creates automatically an instance and assigns it to the variable _42. So I have only one instance and cannot create a new instance.

Please rephrase this with the question in the body of the... question (not only the title.) — BlackVegetable, Jul 09 '13 at 18:50
the answer is only one, in your code.. or in a for loop n times — nachokk, Jul 09 '13 at 18:51
Check http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4820031/re-more-than-one-instance-of-an-anonymous-inner-class — Luis Sep, Jul 09 '13 at 18:51

score 4 · Accepted Answer · answered Jul 09 '13 at 18:50

4

You could create multiple instances by:

Executing the same block of code more than once.
Cloning an instance of an anonymous class.

answered Jul 09 '13 at 18:50

Andy Thomas

84,978
11
107
151

And, reflection? Could you add it to your post? – nanofarad Jul 11 '13 at 13:18

score 2 · Answer 2 · answered Jul 09 '13 at 18:52

If the interface extends Cloneable the class could technically be cloned.

Reflection could get a new instance.

If the same new SenseOfLife() constructor is called in a loop that constructor will get compiled down to one class that is instantiated multiple times.

score 1 · Answer 3 · answered Jul 09 '13 at 18:53

1

I haven't tried it, but most likely you can create other instances using reflection, i.e., instance.getClass().newInstance().

answered Jul 09 '13 at 18:53

Vala

5,628
1
29
55

How many instances one can have of an anonymous class?

3 Answers3