Description Orjan Petersson 2003-11-19 04:22:56 EST

The built-in compiler does not flag assignment to this as an error.
For example, the following class compiles and runs:

package assign2this;
public class Assign2This {
  Assign2This() {
    this = null; 
    System.out.println("this: " + this);
  }
  public static void main(String[] args) {
    Assign2This t = new Assign2This();
    System.out.println("ctor returned:" + t);
  } 
}

Compiling with the Sun 1.4.2_02 javac returns an error:
C:\orpe\jtst>c:\j2sdk1.4.2_02\bin\javac Assign2This.java
Assign2This.java:3: cannot assign a value to final variable this
        this = null;
        ^
1 error