Why is the semicolon not required but allowed at the end of a class definition?

Question

I\'m trying to shift from C++ to Java.

What I wonder is, in C++, after a class definition, a semicolon (;) is required, but in Java it isn\'t.

T

Answer 1

I'm not familiar with Java, but the reason why there's an extra semicolon needed is because you can define an anonymous class, inside functions. For instance:

void routine(const int x, const int y)
{
    class { public: int x; int y; } my_instance;
    my_instance.x = x;
    my_instance.y = y;
    // ... etc
}

You'll usually see this more with structs than with classes, to capture some important variables of a big class.

void f(const BigClass& big_class)
{
    struct { std::string str; int i; } props;
    props.str = big_class.GetFilename();
    props.i = big_class.GetID();
    // etc...
}