OnJava8/book/03-Objects-Everywhere.md

第三章 万物皆对象

Objects Everywhere “If we spoke a different language, we would perceive a somewhat different world.”— Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889- 1951) Although it is based on C++, Java is more of a “pure” object-oriented language. Both C++ and Java are hybrid languages, but in Java the designers felt that the hybridization was not as important as it was in C++. A hybrid language allows multiple programming styles; the reason C++ is hybrid is to support backward compatibility with the C language. Because C++ is a superset of the C language, it includes many of that language’s undesirable features, which can make some aspects of C++ overly complicated. The Java language assumes you’re only writing object-oriented programs. Before you can begin you must shift your mindset into an object-oriented world. In this chapter you’ll see the basic components of a Java program and learn that (almost) everything in Java is an object. You Manipulate Objects with References What’s in a name? That which we call a rose, by any other word would smell as sweet. (Shakespeare, Romeo & Juliet) Every programming language manipulates elements in memory. Sometimes the programmer must be constantly aware of that manipulation. Do you manipulate the element directly, or use an indirect representation that requires special syntax (for example, pointers in C or C++)? Java simplifies the issue by considering everything an object, using a single consistent syntax. Although you treat everything as an object, the identifier you manipulate is actually a “reference” to an object.1 You might imagine a television (the object) and a remote control (the reference). As long as you’re holding this reference, you have a connection to the television, but when someone says, “Change the channel” or “Lower the volume,” what you’re manipulating is the reference, which in turn modifies the object. To move around the room and still control the television, you take the remote/reference with you, not the television. Also, the remote control can stand on its own, with no television. That is, just because you have a reference doesn’t mean there’s necessarily an object connected to it. To hold a word or sentence, you create a String reference: String s; But here you’ve created only the reference, not an object. If you now decide to send a message to s, you get an error because s isn’t actually attached to anything (there’s no television). A safer practice is to always initialize a reference when you create it: String s = "asdf"; This uses a special Java feature: Strings can be initialized with quoted text. You must use a more general type of initialization for other types of objects. You Must Create All the Objects The point of a reference is to connect it to an object. You usually create objects with the new operator. The keyword new says, “Make one of these.” So in the preceding example, you can say: String s = new String("asdf"); Not only does this mean “Make a new String,” but it also gives information about how to make the String by supplying an initial group of characters. Java comes with a plethora of ready-made types in addition to String. On top of that, you can create your own types. In fact, creating new types is the fundamental activity in Java programming, and it’s what you’ll be learning about in the rest of this book. Where Storage Lives It’s useful to visualize the way things are laid out while the program is running—in particular, how memory is arranged. There are five different places to store data:

1. Registers. This is the fastest storage because it exists in a place different from that of other storage: inside the central processing unit (CPU)2. However, the number of registers is severely limited, so registers are allocated as they are needed. You don’t have direct control over register allocation, nor do you see any evidence in your programs that registers even exist (C & C++, on the other hand, allow you to suggest register allocation to the compiler).
2. The stack. This lives in the general random-access memory (RAM) area, but has direct support from the processor via its stack pointer. The stack pointer is moved down to create new memory and moved up to release that memory. This is an extremely fast and efficient way to allocate storage, second only to registers. The Java system must know, while it is creating the program, the exact lifetime of all the items stored on the stack. This constraint places limits on the flexibility of your programs, so while some Java storage exists on the stack—in particular, object references—Java objects themselves are not placed on the stack.
3. The heap. This is a general-purpose pool of memory (also in the RAM area) where all Java objects live. Unlike the stack, the compiler doesn’t need to know how long objects must stay on the heap. Thus, there’s a great deal of flexibility when using heap storage. Whenever you need an object, you write the code to create it using new, and the storage is allocated on the heap when that code is executed. There’s a price for this flexibility: It can take more time to allocate and clean up heap storage than stack storage (if you even could create objects on the stack in Java, as you can in C++). Over time, however, Java’s heap allocation mechanism has become very fast, so this is not an issue for concern.
4. Constant storage. Constant values are often placed directly in the program code, which is safe since they can never change. Sometimes constants are cordoned off by themselves so they can be optionally placed in read-only memory (ROM), in embedded systems. 3
5. Non-RAM storage. If data lives completely outside a program, it can exist while the program is not running, outside the control of the program. The two primary examples of this are serialized objects, where objects are turned into streams of bytes, generally sent to another machine, and persistent objects, where the objects are placed on disk so they will hold their state even when the program is terminated. The trick with these types of storage is turning the objects into something that exist on the other medium, and yet be resurrected into a regular RAM-based object when necessary. Java provides support for lightweight persistence. Libraries such as JDBC and Hibernate provide more sophisticated support for storing and retrieving object information using databases. Special Case: Primitive Types One group of types that you’ll often use gets special treatment. You can think of these as “primitive” types. The reason for the special treatment is that creating an object with new—especially a small, simple variable—isn’t very efficient, because new places objects on the heap. For these types Java falls back on the approach taken by C and C++. That is, instead of creating the variable using new, an “automatic” variable is created that is not a reference. The variable holds the value directly, and it’s placed on the stack, so it’s much more efficient. Java specifies the size of each primitive type, and these sizes don’t change from one machine architecture to another as they do in some languages. This size invariance is one reason Java programs are more portable than programs in some other languages. Primitive Size Min Max Wrapper boolean Boolean Unicode 16 65,535 char 0 bits \uffff Character \u0000 byte 8 bits -128 +127 Byte 16 short -215 +215-1 Short bits 32 int -231 +231-1 Integer bits 64 long -263 +263-1 Long bits 32 float IEEE754 IEEE754 Float bits 64 double IEEE754 IEEE754 Double bits void Void All numeric types are signed, so don’t look for unsigned types. The size of the boolean type is not explicitly specified; it is defined to take the literal values true or false. “Wrapper” classes for primitive data types create a non-primitive object on the heap to represent that primitive type. For example: char c = 'x'; Character ch = new Character(c); Or you can also use: Character ch = new Character('x'); Autoboxing automatically converts a primitive to a wrapped object: Character ch = 'x'; and back: char c = ch; The reasons for wrapping primitives are shown in a later chapter. High-Precision Numbers Java includes two classes for performing high-precision arithmetic: BigInteger and BigDecimal. Although these fit approximately the same category as the “wrapper” classes, neither one has a corresponding primitive. Both classes have methods that provide analogues for the operations you perform on primitive types. That is, you can do anything with a BigInteger or BigDecimal you can with an int or float, it’s just that you must use method calls instead of operators. Also, since there are more calculations involved, the operations are slower. You’re exchanging speed for accuracy. BigInteger supports arbitrary-precision integers. This means you can accurately represent integral values of any size without losing any information during operations. BigDecimal is for arbitrary-precision fixed-point numbers; you can use these for accurate monetary calculations, for example. Consult the JDK documentation for details about these two classes. Arrays in Java Many programming languages support some kind of array. Using arrays in C and C++ is perilous because those arrays are only blocks of memory. If a program accesses the array outside of its memory block or uses the memory before initialization (common programming errors), the results are unpredictable. One of the primary goals of Java is safety, so many of the problems that plague programmers in C and C++ are not repeated in Java. A Java array is guaranteed to be initialized and cannot be accessed outside of its range. This range checking comes at the price of having a small amount of memory overhead for each array as well as extra time to verify the index at run time, but the assumption is that the safety and increased productivity are worth the expense (and Java can often optimize these operations). When you create an array of objects, you are really creating an array of references, and each of those references is automatically initialized to a special value with its own keyword: null. When Java sees null, it recognizes that the reference in question isn’t pointing to an object. You must assign an object to each reference before you use it, and if you try to use a reference that’s still null, the problem is reported at run time. Thus, typical array errors are prevented in Java. You can also create an array of primitives. The compiler guarantees initialization by zeroing the memory for that array. Arrays are covered in detail later in the book, and specifically in the Arrays chapter. Comments There are two types of comments in Java. The first are the traditional C-style comment which begin with a /* and continue, possibly across many lines, until a */. Note that many programmers begin each line of a multiline comment with a , so you’ll often see: / This is a comment

• that continues
• across lines / Remember, however, that everything inside the / and / is ignored, so there’s no difference if you say instead: / This is a comment that continues across lines / The second form of comment comes from C++. It is the single-line comment, which starts with a // and continues until the end of the line. This type of comment is convenient and commonly used because it’s easy. So you often see: // This is a one-line comment You Never Need to Destroy an Object In some programming languages, managing storage lifetime requires significant effort. How long does a variable last? If you are supposed to destroy it, when should you? Confusion over storage lifetime can lead to many bugs, and this section shows how Java simplifies the issue by releasing storage for you. Scoping Most procedural languages have the concept of scope. This determines both the visibility and lifetime of the names defined within that scope. In C, C++, and Java, scope is determined by the placement of curly braces {}. Here is a fragment of Java code demonstrating scope: { int x = 12; // Only x available { int q = 96; // Both x & q available } // Only x available // q is "out of scope" } A variable defined within a scope is available only until the end of that scope. Indentation makes Java code easier to read. Since Java is a free-form language, the extra spaces, tabs, and carriage returns do not affect the resulting program. You cannot do the following, even though it is legal in C and C++: { int x = 12; { int x = 96; // Illegal } } The Java compiler will announce that the variable x has already been defined. Thus the C and C++ ability to “hide” a variable in a larger scope is not allowed, because the Java designers thought it led to confusing programs. Scope of Objects Java objects do not have the same lifetimes as primitives. When you create a Java object using new, it persists past the end of the scope. Thus, if you say: { String s = new String("a string"); } // End of scope the reference s vanishes at the end of the scope. However, the String object that s points to is still occupying memory. In this bit of code, there is no way to access the object after the end of the scope, because the only reference to it is out of scope. In later chapters you’ll see how the reference to the object can be passed around and duplicated during the course of a program. Because objects created with new exist as long as you need them, a whole slew of C++ programming problems vanish in Java. In C++ you must not only make sure that the objects stay around as long as necessary, you must also destroy the objects when you’re done with them. This brings up a question. If Java leaves the objects lying around, what keeps them from filling up memory and halting your program, which is exactly the kind of problem that occurs in C++? In Java, a bit of magic happens: the garbage collector looks at all the objects created with new and finds those that are no longer referenced. It then releases the memory for those objects, so the memory can be used for new objects. This means you don’t worry about reclaiming memory yourself. You simply create objects, and when you no longer need them, they go away by themselves. This prevents an important class of programming problem: the so-called “memory leak,” when a programmer forgets to release memory. Creating New Data Types: class If everything is an object, what determines how a particular class of object looks and behaves? Put another way, what establishes the type of an object? You might expect a keyword called “type,” and that would certainly make sense. Historically, however, most object-oriented languages use the keyword class to describe a new kind of object. The class keyword (so common it will often not be bold-faced throughout this book) is followed by the name of the new type. For example: class ATypeName { // Class body goes here } This introduces a new type, although here the class body consists only of a comment, so there is not too much you can do with it. However, you can create an object of ATypeName using new: ATypeName a = new ATypeName(); You can’t tell it to do much of anything—that is, you cannot send it any interesting messages—until you define some methods for it. Fields When you define a class, you can put two types of elements in your class: fields (sometimes called data members), and methods (sometimes called member functions). A field is an object of any type you can talk to via its reference. A field can also be a primitive type. If it is a reference to an object, you must initialize that reference to connect it to an actual object (using new, as seen earlier). Each object keeps its own storage for its fields. Ordinarily, fields are not shared among objects. Here is an example of a class with some fields: class DataOnly { int i; double d; boolean b; } This class doesn’t do anything except hold data. As before, you create an object like this: DataOnly data = new DataOnly(); You can assign values to the fields by referring to object members. To do this, you state the name of the object reference, followed by a period (dot), followed by the name of the member inside the object: objectReference.member For example: data.i = 47; data.d = 1.1; data.b = false; What if your object contains other objects that contain data you want to modify? You just keep “connecting the dots.” For example: myPlane.leftTank.capacity = 100; You can nest many objects this way (although such a design might become confusing). Default Values for Primitive Members When a primitive data type is a field in a class, it is guaranteed to get a default value if you do not initialize it: Primitive Default boolean false \u0000 char (null) byte (byte)0 short (short)0 int 0 long 0L float 0.0f double 0.0d The default values are only what Java guarantees when the variable is used as a member of a class. This ensures that primitive fields will always be initialized (something C++ doesn’t do), reducing a source of bugs. However, this initial value might not be correct or even legal for the program you are writing. It’s best to always explicitly initialize your variables. This guarantee doesn’t apply to local variables—those that are not fields of a class. Thus, if within a method definition you have: int x; Then x will get some arbitrary value (as it does in C and C++); it will not automatically be initialized to zero. You are responsible for assigning an appropriate value before you use x. If you forget, Java definitely improves on C++: You get a compile-time error telling you the variable might not be initialized. (C++ compilers often warn you about uninitialized variables, but in Java these are errors.) Methods, Arguments, and Return Values In many languages (like C and C++), the term function is used to describe a named subroutine. In Java, we use the term method, as in “a way to do something.” Methods in Java determine the messages an object can receive. The fundamental parts of a method are the name, the arguments, the return type, and the body. Here is the basic form: ReturnType methodName( / Argument list / ) { // Method body } ReturnType indicates the type of value produced by the method when you call it. The argument list gives the types and names for the information you pass into the method. The method name and argument list are collectively called the signature of the method. The signature uniquely identifies that method. Methods in Java can only be created as part of a class. A method can be called only for an object4, and that object must be able to perform that method call. If you try to call the wrong method for an object, you’ll get an error message at compile time. You call a method for an object by giving the object reference followed by a period (dot), followed by the name of the method and its argument list, like this: objectReference.methodName(arg1, arg2, arg3); Consider a method f() that takes no arguments and returns a value of type int. For a reference a that accepts calls to f(), you can say this: int x = a.f(); The type of the return value must be compatible with the type of x. This act of calling a method is sometimes termed sending a message to an object. In the preceding example, the message is f() and the object is a. Object-oriented programming can be summarized as “sending messages to objects.” The Argument List The method argument list specifies the information you pass into the method. As you might guess, this information—like everything else in Java—takes the form of objects. The argument list must specify the object types and the name of each object. As always, where you seem to be handing objects around, you are actually passing references.5 The type of the reference must be correct, however. If a String argument is expected, you must pass in a String or the compiler will give an error. Here is the definition for a method that takes a String as its argument. It must be placed within a class for it to compile: int storage(String s) { return s.length() * 2; } This method calculates and delivers the number of bytes required to hold the information in a particular String. The argument s is of type String. Once s is passed into storage(), you can treat it like any other object—you can send it messages. Here, we call length(), which is a String method that returns the number of characters in a String. The size of each char in a String is 16 bits, or two bytes. You can also see the return keyword, which does two things. First, it means “Leave the method, I’m done.” Second, if the method produces a value, that value is placed right after the return statement. Here, the return value is produced by evaluating the expression s.length() * 2. You can return any type you want, but if you don’t return anything at all, you do so by indicating that the method produces void (nothing). Here are some examples: boolean flag() { return true; } double naturalLogBase() { return 2.718; } void nothing() { return; } void nothing2() {} When the return type is void, the return keyword is used only to exit the method, and is therefore unnecessary if called at the end of the method. You can return from a method at any point, but if you’ve given a non-void return type, the compiler will force you to return the appropriate type of value regardless of where you return. It might look like a program is just a bunch of objects with methods that take other objects as arguments and send messages to those other objects. That is indeed much of what goes on, but in the following Operators chapter you’ll learn how to do the detailed low-level work by making decisions within a method. For this chapter, sending messages will suffice. Writing a Java Program There are several other issues you must understand before seeing your first Java program. Name Visibility A problem in any programming language is the control of names. If you use a name in one module of the program, and another programmer uses the same name in another module, how do you distinguish one name from another and prevent the two names from “clashing?” In C this is especially challenging because a program is often an unmanageable sea of names. C++ classes (on which Java classes are modeled) nest functions within classes so they cannot clash with function names nested within other classes. However, C++ continues to allow global data and global functions, so clashing is still possible. To solve this problem, C++ introduced namespaces using additional keywords. Java avoided all these problems by taking a fresh approach. To produce an unambiguous name for a library, the Java creators want you to use your Internet domain name in reverse, because domain names are guaranteed to be unique. Since my domain name is MindviewInc.com, my foibles utility library is named com.mindviewinc.utility.foibles. Following your reversed domain name, the dots are intended to represent subdirectories. In Java 1.0 and Java 1.1 the domain extensions com, edu, org, net, etc., were capitalized by convention, so the library would appear: Com.mindviewinc.utility.foibles. Partway through the development of Java 2, however, they discovered this caused problems, so now the entire package name is lowercase. This mechanism means all your files automatically live in their own namespaces, and each class within a file has a unique identifier. This way, the language prevents name clashes. Using reversed URLs was a new approach to namespaces, never before tried in another language. Java has a number of these “inventive” approaches to problems. As you might imagine, adding a feature without experimenting with it first risks discovering problems with that feature in the future, after the feature is used in production code, typically when it’s too late to do anything about it (some mistakes were bad enough to actually remove things from the language). The problem with associating namespaces with file paths using reversed URLs is by no means one that causes bugs, but it does make it challenging to manage source code. By using com.mindviewinc.utility.foibles, I create a directory hierarchy with “empty” directories com and mindviewinc whose only job is to reflect the reversed URL. This approach seemed to open the door to what you will encounter in production Java programs: deep directory hierarchies filled with empty directories, not just for the reversed URLs but also to capture other information. These long paths are basically being used to store data about what is in the directory. If you expect to use directories in the way they were originally designed, this approach lands anywhere from “frustrating” to “maddening,” and for production Java code you are essentially forced to use one of the IDEs specifically designed to manage code that is laid out in this fashion, such as NetBeans, Eclipse, or IntelliJ IDEA. Indeed, those IDEs both manage and create the deep empty directory hierarchies for you. For this book’s examples, I didn’t want to burden you with the extra annoyance of the deep hierarchies, which would have effectively required you to learn one of the big IDEs before getting started. The examples for each chapter are in a shallow subdirectory with a name reflecting the chapter title. This caused me occasional struggles with tools that follow the deep-hierarchy approach. Using Other Components Whenever you use a predefined class in your program, the compiler must locate that class. In the simplest case, the class already exists in the source-code file it’s being called from. In that case, you simply use the class—even if the class doesn’t get defined until later in the file (Java eliminates the so-called “forward referencing” problem). What about a class that exists in some other file? You might think the compiler should be smart enough to go and find it, but there is a problem. Imagine you use a class with a particular name, but more than one definition for that class exists (presumably these are different definitions). Or worse, imagine that you’re writing a program, and as you’re building it you add a new class to your library that conflicts with the name of an existing class. To solve this problem, you must eliminate all potential ambiguities by telling the Java compiler exactly what classes you want using the import keyword. import tells the compiler to bring in a package, which is a library of classes. (In other languages, a library could consist of functions and data as well as classes, but remember that all activities in Java take place within classes.) Much of the time you’ll use components from the standard Java libraries that come with your compiler. With these, you don’t worry about long, reversed domain names; you just say, for example: import java.util.ArrayList; This tells the compiler to use Java’s ArrayList class, located in its util library. However, util contains a number of classes, and you might want to use several of them without declaring them all explicitly. This is easily accomplished by using * to indicate a wild card: import java.util.; The examples in this book are small and for simplicity’s sake we’ll usually use the * form. However, many style guides specify that each class should be individually imported. The static Keyword Creating a class describes the look of its objects and the way they behave. You don’t actually get an object until you create one using new, at which point storage is allocated and methods become available. This approach is insufficient in two cases. Sometimes you want only a single, shared piece of storage for a particular field, regardless of how many objects of that class are created, or even if no objects are created. The second case is if you need a method that isn’t associated with any particular object of this class. That is, you need a method you can call even if no objects are created. The static keyword (adopted from C++) produces both these effects. When you say something is static, it means the field or method is not tied to any particular object instance. Even if you’ve never created an object of that class, you can call a static method or access a static field. With ordinary, non-static fields and methods, you must create an object and use that object to access the field or method, because non-static fields and methods must target a particular object.6 Some object-oriented languages use the terms class data and class methods, meaning that the data and methods exist only for the class as a whole, and not for any particular objects of the class. Sometimes Java literature uses these terms too. To make a field or method static, you place the keyword before the definition. The following produces and initializes a static field: class StaticTest { static int i = 47; } Now even if you make two StaticTest objects, there is still only one piece of storage for StaticTest.i. Both objects share the same i. For example: StaticTest st1 = new StaticTest(); StaticTest st2 = new StaticTest(); Both st1.i and st2.i have the same value of 47 since they are the same piece of memory. There are two ways to refer to a static variable. As in the preceding example, you can name it via an object; for example, st2.i. You can also refer to it directly through its class name, something you cannot do with a non-static member: StaticTest.i++; The ++ operator adds one to the variable. Now both st1.i and st2.i have the value 48. Using the class name is the preferred way to refer to a static variable because it emphasizes the variable’s static nature7. Similar logic applies to static methods. You can refer to a static method either through an object as you can with any method, or with the special additional syntax ClassName.method(). You define a static method like this: class Incrementable { static void increment() { StaticTest.i++; } } The Incrementable method increment() increments the static int i using the ++ operator. You can call increment() in the typical way, through an object: Incrementable sf = new Incrementable(); sf.increment(); However, the preferred approach is to call it directly through its class: Incrementable.increment(); static applied to a field definitely changes the way the data is created—one for each class versus the non-static one for each object. When applied to a method, static allows you to call that method without creating an object. This is essential, as you will see, in defining the main() method that is the entry point for running an application. Your First Java Program Finally, here’s the first complete program. It starts by displaying a String, followed by the date, using the Date class from the Java standard library. // objects/HelloDate.java import java.util.; public class HelloDate { public static void main(String[] args) { System.out.println("Hello, it's: "); System.out.println(new Date()); } } In this book I treat the first line specially; it’s always a comment line containing the the path information to the file (using the directory name objects for this chapter) followed by the file name. I have tools to automatically extract and test the book’s code based on this information, and you will easily find the code example in the repository by referring to the first line. At the beginning of each program file, you must place import statements to bring in any extra classes you need for the code in that file. I say “extra” because there’s a certain library of classes automatically included in every Java file: java.lang. Start up your Web browser and look at the documentation from Oracle. If you haven’t downloaded the JDK documentation from the Oracle Java site, do so now8, or find it on the Internet. If you look at the list of packages, you’ll see all the different class libraries that come with Java. Select java.lang. This will bring up a list of all the classes that are part of that library. Since java.lang is implicitly included in every Java code file, these classes are automatically available. There’s no Date class listed in java.lang, which means you must import another library to use that. If you don’t know the library where a particular class is, or if you want to see all classes, select “Tree” in the Java documentation. Now you can find every single class that comes with Java. Use the browser’s “find” function to find Date. You’ll see it listed as java.util.Date, which tells you it’s in the util library and you must import java.util. in order to use Date. If inside the documentation you select java.lang, then System, you’ll see that the System class has several fields, and if you select out, you’ll discover it’s a static PrintStream object. Since it’s static, you don’t need to use new—the out object is always there, and you can just use it. What you can do with this out object is determined by its type: PrintStream. Conveniently, PrintStream is shown in the description as a hyperlink, so if you click on that, you’ll see a list of all the methods you can call for PrintStream. There are quite a few, and these are covered later in the book. For now all we’re interested in is println(), which in effect means “Print what I’m giving you out to the console and end with a newline.” Thus, in any Java program you can write something like this: System.out.println("A String of things"); whenever you want to display information to the console. One of the classes in the file must have the same name as the file. (The compiler complains if you don’t do this.) When you’re creating a standalone program such as this one, the class with the name of the file must contain an entry point from which the program starts. This special method is called main(), with the following signature and return type: public static void main(String[] args) { The public keyword means the method is available to the outside world (described in detail in the Implementation Hiding chapter). The argument to main() is an array of String objects. The args won’t be used in the current program, but the Java compiler insists they be there because they hold the arguments from the command line. The line that prints the date is interesting: System.out.println(new Date()); The argument is a Date object that is only created to send its value (automatically converted to a String) to println(). As soon as this statement is finished, that Date is unnecessary, and the garbage collector can come along and get it anytime. We don’t worry about cleaning it up. When you look at the JDK documentation, you see that System has many other useful methods (one of Java’s assets is its large set of standard libraries). For example: // objects/ShowProperties.java public class ShowProperties { public static void main(String[] args) { System.getProperties().list(System.out); System.out.println(System.getProperty("user.name")); System.out.println( System.getProperty("java.library.path")); } } /* Output: (First 20 Lines) -- listing properties -- java.runtime.name=Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment sun.boot.library.path=C:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.8.0_112\jr... java.vm.version=25.112-b15 java.vm.vendor=Oracle Corporation java.vendor.url=http://java.oracle.com/ path.separator=; java.vm.name=Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM file.encoding.pkg=sun.io user.script= user.country=US sun.java.launcher=SUN_STANDARD sun.os.patch.level= java.vm.specification.name=Java Virtual Machine Specification user.dir=C:\Users\Bruce\Documents\GitHub\on-ja... java.runtime.version=1.8.0_112-b15 java.awt.graphicsenv=sun.awt.Win32GraphicsEnvironment java.endorsed.dirs=C:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.8.0_112\jr... os.arch=amd64 java.io.tmpdir=C:\Users\Bruce\AppData\Local\Temp
  ... / The first line in main() displays all “properties” from the system where you are running the program, so it gives you environment information. The list() method sends the results to its argument, System.out. You will see later in the book that you can send the results elsewhere, to a file, for example. You can also ask for a specific property—here, user.name and java.library.path. The / Output: tag at the end of the file indicates the beginning of the output generated by this file. Most examples in this book that produce output will contain the output in this commented form, so you see the output and know it is correct. The tag allows the output to be automatically updated into the text of this book after being checked with a compiler and executed. Compiling and Running To compile and run this program, and all the other programs in this book, you must first have a Java programming environment. The installation process was described in Installing Java and the Book Examples. If you followed these instructions, you are using the Java Developer’s Kit (JDK), free from Oracle. If you use another development system, look in the documentation for that system to determine how to compile and run programs. Installing Java and the Book Examples also describes how to install the examples for this book. Move to the subdirectory named objects and type: javac HelloDate.java This command should produce no response. If you get any kind of an error message, it means you haven’t installed the JDK properly and you must investigate those problems. On the other hand, if you just get your command prompt back, you can type: java HelloDate and you’ll get the message and the date as output. This is the process to compile and run each program (containing a main()) in this book9. However, the source code for this book also has a file called build.gradle in the root directory, and this contains the Gradle configuration for automatically building, testing, and running the files for the book. When you run the gradlew command for the first time, Gradle will automatically install itself (assuming you have Java installed). Coding Style The style described in the document Code Conventions for the Java Programming Language 10 is to capitalize the first letter of a class name. If the class name consists of several words, they are run together (that is, you don’t use underscores to separate the names), and the first letter of each embedded word is capitalized, such as: class AllTheColorsOfTheRainbow { // ... This is sometimes called “camel-casing.” For almost everything else— methods, fields (member variables), and object reference names—the accepted style is just as it is for classes except that the first letter of the identifier is lowercase. For example: class AllTheColorsOfTheRainbow { int anIntegerRepresentingColors; void changeTheHueOfTheColor(int newHue) { // ... } // ... } The user must also type these long names, so be merciful. The Java code you find in the Oracle libraries also follows the placement of open-and-close curly braces in this book. Summary This chapter shows you just enough Java so you understand how to write a simple program. You’ve also seen an overview of the language and some of its basic ideas. However, the examples so far have all been of the form “Do this, then do that, then do something else.” The next two chapters will introduce the basic operators used in Java programming, and show you how to control the flow of your program.

1. This can be a flashpoint. There are those who say, “Clearly, it’s a pointer,” but this presumes an underlying implementation. Also, the syntax of Java references is much more akin to C++ references than to pointers. In the 1st edition of Thinking in Java, I chose to invent a new term, “handle,” because C++ references and Java references have some important differences. I was coming out of C++ and did not want to confuse the C++ programmers whom I assumed would be the largest audience for Java. In the 2nd edition of Thinking in Java, I decided that “reference” was the more commonly used term, and that anyone changing from C++ would have a lot more to cope with than the terminology of references, so they might as well jump in with both feet. However, there are people who disagree even with the term “reference.” In one book I read that it was “completely wrong to say that Java supports pass by reference,” because Java object identifiers (according to that author) are actually “object references.” And (he goes on) everything is actually pass by value. So you’re not passing by reference, you’re “passing an object reference by value.” One could argue for the precision of such convoluted explanations, but I think my approach simplifies the understanding of the concept without hurting anything (well, language lawyers may claim I’m lying to you, but I’ll say that I’m providing an appropriate abstraction).↩
2. Most microprocessor chips do have additional cache memory but this is organized as traditional memory and not as registers↩
3. An example of this is the String pool. All literal Strings and String-valued constant expressions are interned automatically and put into special static storage. ↩
4. static methods, which you’ll learn about soon, can be called for the class, without an object.↩
5. With the usual exception of the aforementioned “special” data types boolean, char, byte, short, int, long, float, and double. In general, though, you pass objects, which really means you pass references to objects. ↩
6. static methods don’t require objects to be created before they are used, so they cannot directly access non-static members or methods by calling those other members without referring to a named object (since non-static members and methods must be tied to a particular object).↩
7. In some cases it also gives the compiler better opportunities for optimization↩
8. Note this documentation doesn’t come packed with the JDK; you must do a separate download to get it. ↩
9. For every program in this book to compile and run through the command line, you might also need to set your CLASSPATH. ↩
10. (Search the Internet; also look for “Google Java Style”). To keep code listings narrow for this book, not all these guidelines could be followed, but you’ll see that the style I use here matches the Java standard as much as possible.↩