Description Jon Skeet 2002-07-08 10:24:11 EDT

One gotcha which people frequently run into is code such as:

public class Foo
{
    private String bar;

    public Foo(String value)
    {
        String bar=value;
    }

    [other code]
}

When bar is referred to in other code, it will be null rather than the value
passed to the constructor, as the assignment in the constructor is to a local
variable. Code with local variables with the same name as instance variables is
generally harder to read, with the possible exception of method parameters, eg:

public void setValue (String value)
{
    this.value = value;
}

is commonly idiomatic and should be okay.

One other compiler warning related to this, however, would be to flag the
assignment in:

public void setLongNamedParameter (String longNamesParameter)
{
    this.longNamedParameter = longNamedParameter;
}

as a no-op - note that the method parameter has a typo in it.

(This feature request is similar to 21109.)