When an anonymous inner class is defined within the body of a method, all variables declared final in the scope of that method are accessible from within the inner class. For scalar values, once it has been assigned, the value of the final variable cannot change. For object values, the reference cannot change. This allows the Java compiler to "capture" the value of the variable at run-time and store a copy as a field in the inner class. Once the outer method has terminated and its stack frame has been removed, the original variable is gone but the inner class's private copy persists in the class's own memory.

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Final_%28Java%29)

Java匿名类与Javascript闭包非常相似，但Java以不同的方式实现。(请看安徒生的答案)

所以为了不让Java开发人员对那些有Javascript背景的人的奇怪行为感到困惑。我想这就是为什么他们强迫我们使用final，这不是JVM的限制。

让我们看看下面的Javascript例子:

var add = (function () {
  var counter = 0;

  var func = function () {
    console.log("counter now = " + counter);
    counter += 1; 
  };

  counter = 100; // line 1, this one need to be final in Java

  return func;

})();


add(); // this will print out 100 in Javascript but 0 in Java

在Javascript中，计数器的值是100，因为从头到尾只有一个计数器变量。

但在Java中，如果没有final，它将打印出0，因为在创建内部对象时，0值被复制到内部类对象的隐藏属性中。(这里有两个整数变量，一个在局部方法中，另一个在内部类隐藏属性中)

因此，内部对象创建后的任何更改(如第1行)都不会影响内部对象。所以它会混淆两种不同的结果和行为(Java和Javascript之间)。

我相信这就是为什么，Java决定强制它是最终的，所以数据从开始到结束都是“一致的”。

正如注释中提到的，其中一些在Java 8中变得无关紧要，在Java 8中final可以是隐式的。但是，只有有效的final变量才能用于匿名内部类或lambda表达式。

这主要是由于Java管理闭包的方式。

When you create an instance of an anonymous inner class, any variables which are used within that class have their values copied in via the autogenerated constructor. This avoids the compiler having to autogenerate various extra types to hold the logical state of the "local variables", as for example the C# compiler does... (When C# captures a variable in an anonymous function, it really captures the variable - the closure can update the variable in a way which is seen by the main body of the method, and vice versa.)

As the value has been copied into the instance of the anonymous inner class, it would look odd if the variable could be modified by the rest of the method - you could have code which appeared to be working with an out-of-date variable (because that's effectively what would be happening... you'd be working with a copy taken at a different time). Likewise if you could make changes within the anonymous inner class, developers might expect those changes to be visible within the body of the enclosing method.

Making the variable final removes all these possibilities - as the value can't be changed at all, you don't need to worry about whether such changes will be visible. The only ways to allow the method and the anonymous inner class see each other's changes is to use a mutable type of some description. This could be the enclosing class itself, an array, a mutable wrapper type... anything like that. Basically it's a bit like communicating between one method and another: changes made to the parameters of one method aren't seen by its caller, but changes made to the objects referred to by the parameters are seen.

如果您对Java和c#闭包之间更详细的比较感兴趣，我有一篇文章对此进行了进一步的讨论。在这个答案中，我想专注于Java方面:)

When an anonymous inner class is defined within the body of a method, all variables declared final in the scope of that method are accessible from within the inner class. For scalar values, once it has been assigned, the value of the final variable cannot change. For object values, the reference cannot change. This allows the Java compiler to "capture" the value of the variable at run-time and store a copy as a field in the inner class. Once the outer method has terminated and its stack frame has been removed, the original variable is gone but the inner class's private copy persists in the class's own memory.

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Final_%28Java%29)

由于Jon有实现细节的答案，另一个可能的答案是JVM不想处理已经结束他的激活的写入记录。

考虑这样一个用例，在这个用例中，你的lambdas不是被应用的，而是被存储在某个地方并稍后运行。

我记得在Smalltalk中，当你做这样的修改时，你会得到一个非法的商店。

匿名类是一个内部类，严格的规则适用于内部类(JLS 8.1.3):

任何在内部类中使用但未声明的局部变量、形式方法参数或异常处理程序参数必须声明为final。在内部类中使用但未声明的任何局部变量必须明确地在内部类的主体之前赋值。

我还没有在jls或jvm上找到一个原因或解释，但我们知道，编译器为每个内部类创建了一个单独的类文件，它必须确保，在这个类文件上声明的方法(在字节码级别上)至少可以访问局部变量的值。

(Jon有完整的答案-我保留这一个未删除，因为有人可能对JLS规则感兴趣)