FINAL STATIC attributes

[Sam Drake]

Hi,
Is there any problem in using final static attributes in Java. Is it a good practice or bad practice?
eg:
public static final String constant = "something";
Does compilation of such final attributes provide benefits or are they an overhead?
Please do reply..
Thanks,
Sam

[C. Nimo]

There's no real problem - on the contrary.
Because you're using static - these are class-scope variables.
Because you're using final, and since you give a value at declaration,
these are actually constants you can use from now on.
This is actually good practice, since static makes sure that you don't have
a copy of this variable with every instance of the class you create (moreover - you can access the constant even if you have no instance of this class in your program).
Nimo.

[Tony Morris]

Note that final members usually follow a convention where all characters are capitalised, and words are separate by underscore. Also, I find that using the term "constant" confuses the many C/C++ programmers who incorrectly relate Java 'final' to the C/C++ 'const'. I prefer to use the term "final members". As a part-time university lecturer, I usually sort out the differences (and emphasise that they really shouldn't be related at all) for confused students.

public static final String constant = "something";

Would be:

public static final String MY_FINAL_MEMBER = "something";