Trying to use super class's methods from an anonymous inner class

Question

Hi all,
I have one class with some methods, and a second class which inherits from the first. The second class contains a method which starts up a thread, which is an anonymous inner class. Inside this inner class, I want to call a method from my first class. How can I do this?
If I just call the method, it will use the second class's version of the method. However, if I use "super," it will try to find that method in the Thread class (it's own super class) and complain.
Any suggestions?
Code:
public class TopClass
     public void doSomething(){
          // do something
=============================
public class LowerClass extends TopClass
     // overrides TopClass's doSomething.
     public void doSomething(){
          // do something
     public void testThread(){
          Thread t = new Thread(){
               public void run(){
                    doSomething();               //fine
                    super.doSomething();          //WRONG: searches class Thread for doSomething...
          t.start();
}

Answer 1

Classes frequently call the un-overridden versions of methods from their superclasses. That's that the super keyword is for, if I'm not mistaken.You're not mistaken about the keyword, but you're not calling the superclass method from a subclass. Your anonymous inner class is not a subtype of TopLevel. It's a subtype of Thread.
Here it is no different, except that I happen to be in a thread at the time.It's vastly different, since you're attempting to call the method from an unrelated class; i.e., Thread.
I could also be in a button's action listener, for example. It seems natural to me that if I can do it in a method, I should be able to do it within an anonymous inner class which is inside a method.If you were in an button's action listener and needed to call a superclass' implementation of a method overridden in the button, I'd have the same questions about your design. It seems smelly to me.
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