That assumes setupBase(), etc are either void-returning or return the this-instance (newModel). It won&#x27;t work if each method returns a new instance, such as methods of immutable collections.<p>Edit: Since this is hard to google for, this is called the &quot;cascade operator&quot;. The given example is equivalent to:<p><pre><code>    newModel.setupBase(); newModel.setupAdvanced();
</code></pre>
That is, it ignores the result of the method and runs the remaining part of the statement with the LHS of the operator.