NAMES

Determining the Meaning of a Name

6.5

6.5   Determining the Meaning of a Name

The meaning of a name in Java depends on the context in which it is used. The

determination of the meaning of a name requires three steps. First, context causes

a name syntactically to fall into one of five categories:

PackageName

,

TypeName

,

ExpressionName

,

MethodName

, or

AmbiguousName

. Second, a name that is ini 

tially classified by its context as an

AmbiguousName

 is then reclassified by certain

scoping rules to be a

PackageName

,

TypeName

, or

ExpressionName

. Third, the

resulting category then dictates the final determination of the meaning of the name

(or a compilation error if the name has no meaning).

PackageName:

Identifier

PackageName

 .

Identifier

TypeName:

Identifier

PackageName

 .

Identifier

ExpressionName:

Identifier

AmbiguousName

 .

Identifier

MethodName:

Identifier

AmbiguousName

 .

Identifier

AmbiguousName:

Identifier

AmbiguousName

 .

Identifier

Java's use of context helps to minimize name conflicts between entities of dif 

ferent kinds. Such conflicts will be rare if the naming conventions described in

 6.8 are followed. Nevertheless, conflicts may arise unintentionally as types

developed by different programmers or different organizations evolve. For exam 

ple, types, methods, and fields may have the same name. Java never has trouble

distinguishing between a method and a field with the same name, since the context

of a use always tells whether a method or a field is intended.

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