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In the , the final is used in several different contexts to define an entity which cannot later be changed.
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[] Final classes
A final cannot be . This is done for reasons of security and efficiency. Accordingly, many of the Java standard library classes are final, for example and . All methods in a final class are implicitly final.
Example:
public final class MyFinalClass ...
[] Final methods
A final cannot be by subclasses. This is used to prevent unexpected behavior from a subclass altering a method that may be crucial to the function or consistency of the class.
Example:
public class MyClass public final myFinalMethod ...
A common misconception is that declaring a class or method final improves efficiency by allowing the compiler to directly insert the method inline wherever it is called. This is not completely true; the compiler is unable to do this because the classes loaded at runtime might not be the same versions of the ones that were just compiled. Further, the runtime environment and compiler have the information about exactly what classes have been loaded, and are able to make better decisions about when to inline, whether or not the method is final.
[] Final variables
A final is ; it can only be assigned to once. If the variable is a field of a class, it must be assigned to in the constructor of its class. (Note: If the variable is a reference, this means that the variable cannot be re-bound to reference another object. But the object that it references is still mutable, if it was originally mutable.)
Unlike the value of a , the value of a final variable is not necessarily known at compile time.
Example:
public class Sphere public static final PI = ; public final radius; public final xpos; public final ypos; public final zpos; Sphere x, y, z, r radius = r; xpos = x; ypos = y; zpos = z; ...
Immutability of variables has great advantages, especially in optimization. For instance, Sphere will probably have a function returning its volume; knowing that its radius is constant allows us to the computed volume. If we have relatively few Spheres and we need their volumes very often, the gain might be substantial. Making the radius of a Sphere final informs developers and compilers that this sort of optimization is possible in all code that uses Spheres.