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Java

Posted by Jiten Mistry
Jiten Mistry
4,698 Points

Can someone explain the use of "this." in constructors ?

I am confused on the use of "this." in constructors for java objects.

Dor Bar
Dor Bar
8,410 Points

Hello Jiten,

"this" means "the object you are currently in".

var theObject () { this.someMethod() //equals to "theObject.someMethod()" }

Hope I helped

1 Answer

Craig Dennis
STAFF
Craig Dennis
Treehouse Teacher
Craig Dennis
Craig Dennis
Treehouse Teacher

This is referring to the instance itself. We don't really need to use it ever because of the way we named our member variables with an 'm', but if you need to differentiate between a local variable and a member variable of the same name you could do 

public class Example {
     // NOTE: this does not use the m prefix like we talked about
    private String firstName;

    public Example(String firstName) {
         // In order to differentiate we use this
         this.firstName = firstName;
     }
}

Make sense?

Jiten Mistry
Jiten Mistry
4,698 Points

Thank you i kinda understand it more. Thank you very much craig.