"call to this must be first statement in constructor"

Question

Here's the code:
public class TAGEmail {
    private StringBuilder sTO = new StringBuilder();
    public TAGEmail()
    public void setTO(String sRecipient)
        this( sRecipient, true );
    public void setTO(String sRecipient, boolean bAppend)
        String sRegexPattern = "^[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\\.[A-Z]{2,4}$";
        Pattern oPattern = Pattern.compile(sRegexPattern, Pattern.CASE_INSENSITIVE);
        Matcher oMatcher = oPattern.matcher(sRecipient);
        if( ! oMatcher.find() )
            oLogger.addEntry(2,"Email address '" + sRecipient + "' is not a valid e-mail address!");
        if( sTO.equals(null) || bAppend )
            sTO.append( "\"" + sRecipient + "\"" );
        else
            sTO.delete( 0, sTO.length() );
            sTO.append( "\"" + sRecipient + "\"" );
}The part I don't get is that it's not in a constructor...and it is the first line of the method it's in. Am I missing something?

Answer 1

Ah. My thought process was just the opposite. If
the compiler is going to add it anyway, I'll just do
it now. Symantics, I suppose.Well, the compiler doesn't add it into the source code. It simply interprets the two expressions identically. (It might be possible that something is hiding or shadowing the method so that this. is necessary for disambiguation. I've only seen that with variables though. I don't know if it can ever be an issue with methods. If it happens, I'd say something is poorly named.)