Polymorphismus with static variables?

Question

Hi,
I just have a vatiable which stores some speficic data of the class and one method to return this value. If I declare the code like below getName always return "Superclass" until I override getName with the same body (so it's exactly the same method) in the subclass.
Cause of this Redunancy, I want to know if there is a way to avoid this?
Even using return this.name has not the desired effect.
Thanks a lot in advance.
Greetings Michael
Superclass
private static final String name = "Superclass";
public  String  getName(){
  return name;
}Subclass
private static final String name = "Subclass";

Answer 1

There is no way Superclass method getName() could access Subclass static member name, unless explicitely.
In your case, the returned value of Superclass' getName() method is fixed at compilation time.
As you didn't override the getName() method in Subclass, the Superclass getName() will be invoked for any instance of Superclass or Subclass.
If you override the getName() method in Subclass, the choice of which method to invoke will be done at runtime.
To make things easier to understand, always access static members in a static way, i.e. prefix static member access with its class name:class Superclass {
  private static final String name = "Superclass";
  public  String  getName(){
    return Superclass.name;
}(this code is equivalent to yours)