I've already resolved the problem, but thought I would document it since (a) someone else might come across it and (b) I don't think the error message was very helpful in determining the cause of the problem - even though it was accurate.

I received the error while trying to recompile a JUnit test suite which uses a number of inner class implemenations of other classes in our framework.

The error was because I had recently removed a parameter from the constructor of the class that was being created as an inner class. I had removed this parameter from constructors all over our code, but had forgotten that these inner classes extended the modified class and so was still passing a null for the parameter - hence the error is accurate.

However:

-JBuilders "internal compiler error" foxed me into thinking I had broken the compiler, and lead me away from thinking it was a simple problem with my own code.

-JBuilder could have highlighted the point where the unexpected type was occuring and lead me to realize what I had done much sooner. I'm not sure i'd have solved it yet if another poster in this group hadn't mentioned internal compiler issues with inner classes.

I think JBuilder should handle this case better.

2001-May-14 1:23pm gyles19@visi.com

  BrowserAction foo = new BrowserAction( "menuitem", 'm', "tooltip") {
    ...
  }

The compiler is expecting a character value for the second parameter. If you replace the 'm' with the null keyword, the compiler produces the unexpected type message. Unfortuately, it fails to provide a line number reference so you probably have no idea what caused it.
2001-Jul-15 3:37pm gyles19@visi.com

Here is the simple test case:

  public class Untitled1 {
        public Untitled1() {
        }
  }

  public class Untitled2 {
        public Untitled2() {
                Untitled1 _u = new Untitled1( null ) {
                };
        }
  }

I think the compiler should be able to generate a "constructor not found" error in this case, and not go bust.

2001-Sep-08 2:23pm gyles19@visi.com