Thread: Function in Function?

Hi! I'm a newbie in Java programming, and I'm learning from some open-source projects now. I've just came across a question: what does this block mean? I got surprised by the method defined with another method, which is rarely seen in C++. Can someone explain a little for me? Thanks a lot!

P.S.: Here we see a 'new' operation that creates an Authenticator object, but I don't understand what the block means that follows the new operation. It seems to have defined a 'getPasswordAuthentication()' method there, but why it is defined here, not in the class?

Authenticator.setDefault
			(
				new Authenticator()
				{
					protected PasswordAuthentication getPasswordAuthentication()
					{
						PasswordAuthentication passwordAuthentication = null;
 
						if(this.getRequestorType() == Authenticator.RequestorType.PROXY)
						{
							if(this.getRequestingURL().getProtocol().equalsIgnoreCase("HTTP") == true)
							{
								passwordAuthentication = new PasswordAuthentication(APJP.APJP_HTTP_PROXY_SERVER_USERNAME, APJP.APJP_HTTP_PROXY_SERVER_PASSWORD.toCharArray());
							}
							else
							{
								if(this.getRequestingURL().getProtocol().equalsIgnoreCase("HTTPS") == true)
								{
									passwordAuthentication = new PasswordAuthentication(APJP.APJP_HTTPS_PROXY_SERVER_USERNAME, APJP.APJP_HTTPS_PROXY_SERVER_PASSWORD.toCharArray());
								}
							}
						}
 
						return passwordAuthentication;
					}
				}
			);

Oh, and the resource file can be found at
https://apjp.googlecode.com/svn/trun...APJP/Main.java

Originally Posted by Norm

That is an anonymous class. Google define anonymous class in java
for descriptions:

Thanks, Norm, I'm gonna Google the term 'anonymous class' and find out what that is for.

Now I got it. It's not creating an instance of Authenticator class, but extending it. As said by Norm, an 'anonymous class' is used here, and the function defined within the anonymous class is overriding the one from Authenticator.
This is really different from C++. I'm finding Java more interesting now.

Java refers to them as methods, not functions