6.3

Scope of a Simple Name

NAMES

The scope of a parameter of a constructor ( 8.6.1) is the entire body of the

constructor.

The scope of a local variable declaration in a block ( 14.3.2) is the rest of the

block in which the declaration appears, starting with its own initializer ( 14.3)

and including any further declarators to the right in the local variable declara 

tion statement.

The scope of a local variable declared in the

ForInit

 part of a

for

 statement

( 14.12) includes all of the following:

N

Its own initializer

N

Any further declarators to the right in the

ForInit

 part of the

for

 statement

N

The

Expression

 and

ForUpdate

 parts of the

for

 statement

N

The contained

Statement

The scope of a parameter of an exception handler that is declared in a

catch

clause of a

try

 statement ( 14.18) is the entire block associated with the

catch

.

These rules imply that declarations of class and interface types need not appear

before uses of the types.

In the example:

package points;

class Point {

int x, y;

PointList list;

Point next;

}

class PointList {

Point first;

}

the use of

PointList

 in class

Point

 is correct, because the scope of the class type

name

PointList

 includes both class

Point

 and class

PointList

, as well as any

other type declarations in other compilation units of package

points

.

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