The Java Language.doc

The Java Language: A White Paper Overview Harry H. Porter III Portland State University May 5, 2002 harry@  Table of Contents Abstract 4 Introduction 4 Charater Set 4 Comments 5 Identifiers 5 Reserved Words (Keywords) 6 Primitive Data Types 6 Boolean 7 Integers 8 Floating-Point 8 Numerical Operations 9 Character and String Literals 9 Implicit Type Conversion and Explicit Casting 10 Pointers are Strongly-Typed 12 Assignment and Equality Operators 14 Instanceof 15 Pointers in Java (References) 15 Operator Syntax 16 Expressions as Statements 18 Flow of Control Statements 19 Arrays 21 Strings 23 Classes 25 Object Creation 27 Interfaces 28 Declarations 30 Types: Basic Types, Classes, and Interfaces 32 More on Interfaces 33 Garbage Collection 34 Object Deletion and Finalize 35 Accessing Fields 35 Subclasses 36 Access Control / Member Visibility 37 Sending Messages 40 Arguments are Passed by Value 42 “this” and “super” 43 Invoking Static Methods 44 Method Overloading 45 Method Overriding 46 Overriding Fields in Subclasses 47 Final Methods and Final Classes 48 Anonymous Classes 49 The “main” Method 50 Methods in Class “Object” 51 Variables of Type Object 52 Casting Object References 52 The “null” Pointer 53 “Static Final” Constants 53 Abstract Methods and Classes 54 Throwing Exceptions 56 Contracts and Exceptions 62 Initialization Blocks 65 Static initialization blocks 66 Wrapper Classes 67 Packages 68 Threads 70 Locking Objects and Classes 71 Strict Floating-Point Evaluations 73 Online Web Resources 73 Please email any corrections to the author at: 74 Abstract This document provides a quick, yet fairly complete overview of the Java language. It does not discuss the principles behind object-oriented programming or how to create good Java programs; instead it focuses only on describing the language. Introduction Java is a programming language developed by Sun Microsystems. It is spreading quickly due to a number of good decisions in its design. Java grew out of several la