Why to instantiate a class within itself??

[orey sattiga]

Hello Java Gurus,
I was looking at some code written by someone...
and came across this

  public class EmpInfo
{
  private String i_sEmpNumber = "";
  private String i_sEmpID = "";
  private String i_sEmpName = "";
  private EmpInfo temp;
  public EmpInfo()
  {
  }
  public EmpInfo(String sEmpID, String sEmpName)
  {
    this.i_sEmpID = sEmpID;
    this.i_sEmpName = sEmpName;
  }
  
  /**
   * Followed by get/set methods for all the   *other variables
*/
  public EmpInfo gettemp()
  {
    return this.temp;
  }
  public void setTemp(EmpInfo temp)
  {
    this.temp = temp;
  }
}

Why did he instantiate the class within itself? Here temp is a type of employee. But by doing so isnt the object in kind of a loop. How is this useful? I am confused .. Is this a kind of inheritance?? please help
Thanks

[Vin Kris]

This type of class structure is not in a loop. The instance member temp is assigned a value null. It has to be explicitly set to a new EmpInfo object whose member temp will in turn be null.
This pattern is typically used to create a Linked List.
On the other hand,
Class EmpInfo {
private EmpInfo e = new EmpInfo();
}
will be a loop because when we create an instance of this class, there will be a recursive creation of objects that results in a stack overflow error.