How to cast to Anonymous Inner Class

[D Rog]

  class Foo {
     protected void doSomething() {
     }
  }
 
  final Foo wantIt = new Foo() {
     public void doSomething() {
       print("Thank you for calling pal\n");
     }
  }
 
  ((hey what to put here)wantIt). doSomething() ;
 
  

How can I name anonymous class in cast? I do a trick, like comment out

//((hey what to put here)wantIt). doSomething() ;

and then do compilation. Now I can find my anonymous class name and put it in cast. It works flawlessly. However I have feeling I do something wrong. hey help to a java beginner.

[Henry Wong]

Now I can find my anonymous class name and put it in cast. It works flawlessly. However I have feeling I do something wrong. hey help to a java beginner.

Not sure what you mean here. Are you saying that you were able to cast it to the anonymous class type?

Henry

[Ernest Friedman-Hill]

If you want to use the name of a class in your code, then you don't want it to be anonymous, right? Doesn't make sense to create a class with no name, and then work hard at figuring out its name. Just create a named inner class. You know you can create a class right inside a method, yes?

public void whatever() {
    class SubFoo extends Foo {
     public void doSomething() {
       print("Thank you for calling pal\n");
     }
   }
   SubFoo wantIt = new SubFoo();
   wantIt.doSomething();
}

[Paul Clapham]

If you just need to create the anonymous class instance and call a method on it, and nothing else, then you could skip the part where you assign it to a variable. Just do this:

new Foo() {
  public void doSomething() {
    print("Thank you for calling pal\n");
  }
}.doSomething();

[Ilja Preuss]

In your example, you don't even need to cast to call doSomething. That's the whole point of polymorphism.

[Rob Spoor]

Originally posted by Ernest Friedman-Hill:
If you want to use the name of a class in your code, then you don't want it to be anonymous, right?

Very much so. In fact, you can't expect the name to stay the same. While today it might be mypackage.MyClass$2, it can change into mypackage.MyClass$3 quite easily if you add another anonymous class to your main class.

[D Rog]

Thanks all for answering.