Super.super.method()

Question

super.super.method()
Why does this not work?
When I searched this on google, the people in the thread said this was a result of bad OO design. But in the following case I don't think that it is:
Here is a small version of the tree:
-Unit
---->Ship
--------->Fighter
--------->Droid
---->Building
--------->Power Station
What I'm focused on here is the getImage() method. For the Unit class, it looks like this:
public Image getImage(){
return myImage;
}For the Ship class, the image should be rotated to the ship's rotation:
public Image getImage(){
rotate(myImage);
retuern myImage;
}Now, a Droid is in all ways a ship except that I don't want its image to rotate, so I want to call: return super.super.getImage();I know several workarounds:
1. Have "boolean rotateImage" in the Ship class
2. Have "if (this instanceof Droid) return super.getImage(); //in ship class
But to me, super.super.getImage() seems like the best way, because it allows the Droid class to take the action and it also reduces the clutter in the large Ship class.
Thanks

Answer 1

//this calls the Droid's getImage() instead of the Unit's
Well, yeah, this cause a problem...
Okay, getImage in getNonrotatedImage is dynamically dispatched -- It will call Droid.getImage, which of course, calls Unit.getNonrotatedImage, which again calls Droid.getImage, which...
you get the point.
Look, if you want to put getNonrotatedImage in the Unit class, it needs to call a statically dispatched (i.e. private or final) method of Unit, or at the very least, not one that is overriden in Droid.
Refactor the code in getImage into a private method getImage, and have both getImage and getNonrotatedImage call getImage, because _getImage will be statically dispatched.
OR
Move getNonrotatedImage to the Ship class, and have it call super.getImage (which, by the way, is guaranteed to be statically dispatched).
- Adam