I was looking at the Java code for LinkedList and noticed that it made use of a static nested class, Entry.
public class LinkedList<E> ... {
...
private static class Entry<E> { ... }
}
What is the reason for using a static nested class, rather than an normal inner class?
The only reason I could think of, was that Entry doesn’t have access to instance variables, so from an OOP point of view it has better encapsulation.
But I thought there might be other reasons, maybe performance. What might it be?
Note. I hope I have got my terms correct, I would have called it a static inner class, but I think this is wrong: http://java.sun.com/docs/books/tutorial/java/javaOO/nested.html