6.5 Determining the Meaning of a Name

The meaning of a name in Java depends on the context in which it is used. The determination of the meaning of a name requires three steps. First, context causes a name syntactically to fall into one of five categories: PackageName, TypeName, ExpressionName, MethodName, or AmbiguousName. Second, a name that is initially classified by its context as an AmbiguousName is then reclassified by certain scoping rules to be a PackageName, TypeName, or ExpressionName. Third, the resulting category then dictates the final determination of the meaning of the name (or a compilation error if the name has no meaning).

PackageName:

	Identifier

	PackageName . Identifier

TypeName:

	Identifier

	PackageName . Identifier

ExpressionName:

	Identifier

	AmbiguousName . Identifier

MethodName:

	Identifier

	AmbiguousName . Identifier

AmbiguousName:

	Identifier

	AmbiguousName . Identifier

Java's use of context helps to minimize name conflicts between entities of different kinds. Such conflicts will be rare if the naming conventions described in §6.8 are followed. Nevertheless, conflicts may arise unintentionally as types developed by different programmers or different organizations evolve. For example, types, methods, and fields may have the same name. Java never has trouble distinguishing between a method and a field with the same name, since the context of a use always tells whether a method or a field is intended.