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Zachary Martin
3,545 PointsCreating in instants of MAX_PEZ question
When he called MAX_PEZ why was it called as PezDispenser.MAX_PEZ instead of dispenser.MAX_PEZ? is it not an object?
1 Answer
Ben Reynolds
35,170 PointsHe was only able to do that after he made MAX_PEZ static. Static members of a class don't need an instance to be created first before they're accessed, so you can just use the name of the class itself. To work with any of the non-static members (other fields, methods etc that don't have the static keyword) then you'd need to create an instance first. Further down in his code he does access some of those other members though, such as the getCharacterName method. That's where the "dispenser" instance comes in.
For example when you use something like Math.random(), you don't have to say Math math = new Math() first, you can just call random() right after the class name. This only works because the random() method is static.