java - Java8 Lambdas vs Anonymous classes

Question

Since Java8 has been recently released and its brand new lambda expressions looks to be really cool, I was wondering if this means the demise of the Anonymous classes that we were so used to.

I've been researching a bit about this and found some cool examples about how Lambda expressions will systematically replace those classes, such the Collection's sort method, which used to get an Anonymous instance of Comparator to perform the sort:

Collections.sort(personList, new Comparator<Person>(){
  public int compare(Person p1, Person p2){
    return p1.firstName.compareTo(p2.firstName);
  }
});

Now can be done using Lambdas:

Collections.sort(personList, (Person p1, Person p2) -> p1.firstName.compareTo(p2.firstName));

And looks surprisingly concise. So my question is, is there any reason to keep using those classes in Java8 instead of Lambdas?

EDIT

Same question but in the opposite direction, what are the benefits of using Lambdas instead of Anonymous classes, since Lambdas can only be used with single method interfaces, is this new feature only a shortcut only used in few cases or is it really useful?

Answer 1

An anonymous inner class (AIC) can be used to create a subclass of an abstract class or a concrete class. An AIC can also provide a concrete implementation of an interface, including the addition of state (fields). An instance of an AIC can be referred to using this in its method bodies, so further methods can be called on it, its state can be mutated over time, etc. None of these apply to lambdas.

I'd guess that the majority of uses of AICs were to provide stateless implementations of single functions and so can be replaced with lambda expressions, but there are other uses of AICs for which lambdas cannot be used. AICs are here to stay.

UPDATE

Another difference between AICs and lambda expressions is that AICs introduce a new scope. That is, names are resolved from the AIC's superclasses and interfaces and can shadow names that occur in the lexically enclosing environment. For lambdas, all names are resolved lexically.