Strange syntax for instantiating an inner class

Question

I didn\'t imagine that I would encounter radically new syntax in Java anymore at this stage, but lo and behold, I just encountered something:

The exact context a

Answer 1

A non-static inner class in Java contains a hidden reference that points to an instance of the outer class it is declared in. So the error message you got originally is telling you that you cannot create a new instance of the inner class without also specifying an instance of the outer class for it to be attached to.

Perhaps the reason you haven't seen that syntax before is that inner classes are often allocated in a method of the outer class, where the compiler takes care of this automatically.