🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <3ae50e3c$1_1@dnews>, Harry Whitehouse <harry@envmgr.com>
writes
>Well, I guess it's time to learn about the modifier "final"!
>
>I'm trying to spawn a thread for the printer dialog on my applet, so the
>dialog has time to close on slower connections without blanking the
>underlying applet GUI.  Heaven knows if my approach is even correct (that's
>another question <g>) but for now I need to understand about the compiler
>error message indicated a local variable (in this case printerJob) needs to
>be declared final.  I've seen this in some other threads I've created (to
>handle URL transactions), but have managed to sidestep this issue by
>declaring and using non-local variables.
>
>First, what is the proper syntax for this?  I've tried some obvious
>permutations but with no luck.
>
>And second, what is the significance of this modifier?

 Final has two different meanings.  A final VARIABLE is a "constant" 
 in the precise sense that it is given a value when the class is
 created and cannot have its contents changed (it need not be 
 literally a fixed value known at compile time).  A final METHOD
 cannot be over-ridden in subclasses.

 I do not know why, but clearly some values are expected to be fixed
 and unchanging: presumably if you change the print-job in use 
 on the fly things go haywire.

 You just write it same as public or whatever before the type:

     final MyClass theObject = new MyClass(); // once assigned this
                                              //  can't be modified

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