[java] Why should the static field be accessed in a static way?

public enum MyUnits
{
    MILLSECONDS(1, "milliseconds"), SECONDS(2, "seconds"),MINUTES(3,"minutes"), HOURS(4, "hours");

    private MyUnits(int quantity, String units)
    {
        this.quantity = quantity;
        this.units = units;
    }

    private int quantity;
    private  String units;

 public String toString() 
 {
    return (quantity + " " + units);
 }

 public static void main(String[] args) 
 {
    for (MyUnits m : MyUnits.values())
    {
        System.out.println(m.MILLSECONDS);
        System.out.println(m.SECONDS);
        System.out.println(m.MINUTES);
        System.out.println(m.HOURS);
    }
 }
}

This is referring to post ..wasnt able to reply or comment to any so created a new one. Why are my

System.out.println(m.MILLSECONDS);

giving warnings-The static field MyUnits.MILLSECONDS should be accessed in a static way ? Thanks.

Because ... it (MILLISECONDS) is a static field (hiding in an enumeration, but that's what it is) ... however it is being invoked upon an instance of the given type (but see below as this isn't really true¹).

javac will "accept" that, but it should really be MyUnits.MILLISECONDS (or non-prefixed in the applicable scope).

¹ Actually, javac "rewrites" the code to the preferred form -- if m happened to be null it would not throw an NPE at run-time -- it is never actually invoked upon the instance).

Happy coding.

I'm not really seeing how the question title fits in with the rest :-) More accurate and specialized titles increase the likely hood the question/answers can benefit other programmers.

There's actually a good reason:
The non-static access does not always work, for reasons of ambiguity.

Suppose we have two classes, A and B, the latter being a subclass of A, with static fields with the same name:

public class A {
    public static String VALUE = "Aaa";
}

public class B extends A {
    public static String VALUE = "Bbb";
}

Direct access to the static variable:

A.VALUE (="Aaa")
B.VALUE (="Bbb")

Indirect access using an instance (gives a compiler warning that VALUE should be statically accessed):

new B().VALUE (="Bbb")

So far, so good, the compiler can guess which static variable to use, the one on the superclass is somehow farther away, seems somehow logical.

Now to the point where it gets tricky: Interfaces can also have static variables.

public interface C {
    public static String VALUE = "Ccc";
}

public interface D {
    public static String VALUE = "Ddd";
}

Let's remove the static variable from B, and observe following situations:

• B implements C, D
• B extends A implements C
• B extends A implements C, D
• B extends A implements C where A implements D
• B extends A implements C where C extends D
• ...

The statement new B().VALUE is now ambiguous, as the compiler cannot decide which static variable was meant, and will report it as an error:

error: reference to VALUE is ambiguous
both variable VALUE in C and variable VALUE in D match

And that's exactly the reason why static variables should be accessed in a static way.