Chapter 13 - Inheritance and Polymorphism.ppt

protected Access Modifier When to use the protected access modifier: When you want a member to be directly accessible from any class within its subtree of classes, but you dont want it to be accessible elsewhere. Example: Suppose that the Employee class contains an employeeId instance variable and all of the descendant classes need to access it. To make access easier for the descendant classes, declare employeeId with the protected access modifier: protected int employeeId; Then, the descendant classes can access employeeId directly rather than having to use a getId() accessor method call. 32 * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Chapter 13 - Inheritance and Polymorphism The Object Class The equals Method The toString Method Polymorphism Dynamic Binding Compilation Details Polymorphism with Arrays Abstract Methods And Classes protected Access Modifier 1 The Object Class The Object class is a superclass for all other classes. When declaring your own classes, you dont have to specify the Object class as a superclass - its automatically a superclass. Im only covering two of Objects methods. The equals and toString methods are the most important Object methods.… 2 The equals Method For classes that dont have their own equals method, if objects from those classes are compared with the equals method, they inherit and use the Object classs equals method. The Object classs equals method returns true if the two reference variables that are being compared point to the same object; i.e., if the two reference variables contain the same address. 3 The equals Method Assuming that the Car class does not have its own equals method, what does this code fragment print? Car car1 = new Car(Honda); Car car2 = car1; if ((car1.equals(car2) (car1 == car2)) { System.out.println(cars are equal - first time); } car2 = new Car(Honda); if ((car1.equals(car2) || (car1 == car2)) { System.out.println(cars a