Accessing Static Final Fields in Inner Classes in Java

I think the reason why new Test().new C().i works is because class Test is a top-level class and is treated as static. If you were to change your inner class C to be static then new C().i would work.

However, you should NOT access static members in a non-static way.

To access your static field do:

java

System.out.println(C.i);

Edit:

For those saying that class Test is not static please refer to this stackoverflow answer.

All top-level classes are, by definition, static.

What the static boils down to is that an instance of the class can stand on its own. Or, the other way around: a non-static inner class (= instance inner class) cannot exist without an instance of the outer class. Since a top-level class does not have an outer class, it can't be anything but static.

Because all top-level classes are static, having the static keyword in a top-level class definition is pointless.

Just to show you how dumb of an idea it is to access a static field this way I created the following project:

java

class Test {

    class C {
        static final int i = 0;
    }

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        // BAD:
        System.out.println(new Test().new C().i);
        // Correct:
        System.out.println(C.i);
    }

}

If you compile the class and view it in jd-gui you can see how it was compiled:

java

class Test {

  public static void main(String[] args) {
    void tmp13_10 = new Test(); tmp13_10.getClass(); new C(); System.out.println(0);
    System.out.println(0);
  }

  class C {
    static final int i = 0;

    C() {
    }
  }
}