How to override a method in an inner class of the super class

Question

I have a rather horribly written class, which I need to adapt. I could simply do this if I could override a method in one of it's inner classes. My plan then was to extend the original class, and override the method in question. But here I am struggling.
The code below is representative of my situation.
public class ClassA
   ValueChecks vc = null;
   /** Creates a new instance of Main */
   public ClassA()
      System.out.println("ClassA Constructor");
      vc = new ValueChecks();
      vc.checkMaximum();
     // I want this to call the overridden method, but it does not, it seems to call
     // the method in this class. probably because vc belongs to this class
      this.vc.checkMinimum();
      this.myMethod();
   protected void myMethod()
      System.out.println("myMethod(SUPER)");
   protected class ValueChecks
      protected boolean checkMinimum()
         System.out.println("ValueChecks.checkMinimum (SUPER)");
         return true;
      protected boolean checkMaximum()
         return false;
}I have extended ClassA, call it ClassASub, and it is this Class which I instantiate. The constructor in ClassASub obviously calls the constructor in ClassA. I want to override the checkMinimum() method in ValueChecks, but the above code always calls the method in ClassA. The ClassASub code looks like this
public class ClassASub extends ClassA
   public ClassAInner cias;
   /** Creates a new instance of Main */
   public ClassASub()
      System.out.println("ClassASub Constructor");
   protected void myMethod()
      System.out.println("myMethod(SUB)");
   protected class ValueChecks extends ClassA.ValueChecks
      protected boolean checkMinimum()
         System.out.println("ValueChecks.checkMinimum (SUB)");
         return true;
}The method myMethod seems to be suitably overridden, but I cannot override the checkMinimum() method.
I think this is a stupid problem to do with how the ValueChecks class is instantiated. I think I need to create an instance of ValueChecks in ClassASub, and pass a reference to it into ClassA. But this will upset the way ClassA works. Could somebody enlighten me please.

Answer 1

vc = new ValueChecks();vc is a ValueChecks object. No matter whether you subclass ValueChecks or not, vc is always of this type, per this line of code.
// I want this to call the overridden method, but it does not, it seems to > call
// the method in this class. probably because vc belongs to this class
this.vc.checkMinimum();No, it's because again vc references a ValueChecks object, because it was created as such.
And when I say ValueChecks, I mean the original class, not the one you tried to create by the same name, attempting to override the original.