Using “this” with class name

Question

I am doing Android programming and was learning about Intents, when I saw a constructor that, to my C# trained mind, seemed funky. The call was:

Intent myI         


        

Answer 1

One at a time:

The first construct is called a qualified this. The purpose of the syntax is in the case where you are in an inner class (typically an anonymous inner class) and you want to reference the this of the outer class rather than the this of the (anonymous) inner class. The "qualified this" can only be used in a context where this would be ambiguous. The quote the JLS "It is a compile-time error if the expression occurs in a class or interface which is not an inner class of class T or T itself".

The second construct is called a class literal is the way to reference the Class object that represents that type. It can be used in any context.