Calling a method inside another method in same class

Question

In page 428 (the chapter about Type Information) of his "Thinking In Java, 4th Ed.", Bruce Eckel has the following example:

public class Staff extends ArrayList<Position> {     public void add(String title, Person person) {         add(new Position(title, person));     } /* rest of code snipped */ 

Maybe I'm a bit tired, but I can't see how the call to add() inside the add() method works. I keep thinking that it should have a reference, or be a static method (and I can't find a static add() in ArrayList or List). What am I missing?

I just tested for myself, and found that this works:

// Test2.java public class Test2 {     public void testMethod() {         testMethod2();     }      public void testMethod2() {         System.out.println("Here");     }      public static void main(String[] args) {         Test2 t = new Test2();         t.testMethod();     } } 

Answer 1

Java implicitly assumes a reference to the current object for methods called like this. So

// Test2.java public class Test2 {     public void testMethod() {         testMethod2();     }      // ... } 

Is exactly the same as

// Test2.java public class Test2 {     public void testMethod() {         this.testMethod2();     }      // ... } 

I prefer the second version to make more clear what you want to do.