Hello,

I've searched the forum and the bug database but could find only one mention of a quirk of processing(?) not allowing static variables in inner classes.

What I want to have is a global ArrayList for a class which is shared among all instances of that class. I don't want to have this ArrayList hovering around globally so I wanted to make it a member of the class, but processing does not allow me to do that. When I make a variable of the class "static" processing says "The field xyz cannot be declared static, static fields can only be declared in static or top level types."

I think this is a Java thing, as we are not working in top level in the processing IDE this is normal.

The only other way of doing this is, as it seems, declaring the class itself static (I don't really know what it changes in classes) but this time, for example if I call the function random() inside class, processing says: "Cannot make a static reference to the non-static method random(...".

So I guess there is no way for me to put that ArrayList inside the class to keep things clean and let the instances of the classes share their encapsulated data, is that true?

Or am I getting this "static" thing in Java all wrong?

Thanks

In Processing, all classes in a .pde are internal to a main, unseen class (of same name as your sketch).
So all classes are internal classes, and it seems you cannot put static variables inside an internal class.

The solution is to put your class in a .java file, which will make it a separate class. But you have to give it an instance of PApplet to be able to use regular Processing functions.