Duplicate class error message

Question

Hi,
Does anyone know what a duplicate class error message means and how to resolve it?
It just does not make any sense to me as there is only one instance of the class yet the compiler is throwing out a duplicate class error message.

Answer 1

I copied your experiment and had no trouble compiling the four classes (A, B, C, and Test). One thing to note is that Test.class shows up in the root destination directory (above a.b.c) because Test.java is missing the package statement. Perhaps, as mentioned earlier in the thread, the missing package statement is causing the problem with your compiler.
I compiled them with ant using the following build.xml code:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<project basedir="." default="compile" name="PackageTest">
     <property name="build.dir" location="build"/>
     <property name="dist.dir" location="dist"/>
     <target name="init">
          <mkdir dir="${build.dir}/classes"/>
          <mkdir dir="${dist.dir}"/>
     </target>
     <target name="compile"
               depends="init"
               description="Compile Source Code">
          <javac srcdir="."
               destdir="${build.dir}/classes"/>
     </target>
</project>