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Bruce Eckel’s Thinking in Java Contents | Prev | Next Now that you’ve been introduced to inheritance, the keyword protected finally has meaning. In an ideal world, private members would always be hard-and-fast private, but in real projects there are times when you want to make something hidden from the world at large and yet […]

Bruce Eckel’s Thinking in Java Contents | Prev | Next vs. inheritance Both composition and inheritance allow you to place subobjects inside your new class. You might wonder about the difference between the two, and when to choose one over the other. Composition is generally used when you want the features of an existing class […]

Bruce Eckel’s Thinking in Java Contents | Prev | Next and inheritance It is very common to use composition and inheritance together. The following example shows the creation of a more complex class, using both inheritance and composition, along with the necessary constructor initialization: //: PlaceSetting.java // Combining composition & inheritance   class Plate { […]

Bruce Eckel’s Thinking in Java Contents | Prev | Next Inheritance is such an integral part of Java (and OOP languages in general) that it was introduced in Chapter 1 and has been used occasionally in chapters before this one because certain situations required it. In addition, you’re always doing inheritance when you create a […]

Bruce Eckel’s Thinking in Java Contents | Prev | Next Until now, composition has been used quite frequently. You simply place object handles inside new classes. For example, suppose you’d like an object that holds several String objects, a couple of primitives and an object of another class. For the non-primitive objects, just put handles […]

Bruce Eckel’s Thinking in Java Contents | Prev | Next One of the most compelling features about Java is code reuse. But to be revolutionary, you’ve got to be able to do a lot more than copy code and change it. That’s the approach used in procedural languages like C, and it hasn’t worked very […]

Bruce Eckel’s Thinking in Java Contents | Prev | Next In Java, the access specifiers can also be used to determine which classes within a library will be available to the users of that library. If you want a class to be available to a client programmer, you place the public keyword somewhere before the […]

Bruce Eckel’s Thinking in Java Contents | Prev | Next Access control is often referred to as implementation hiding. Wrapping data and methods within classes (combined with implementation hiding this is often called encapsulation) produces a data type with characteristics and behaviors, but access control puts boundaries within that data type for two important reasons. […]

Bruce Eckel’s Thinking in Java Contents | Prev | Next The Java access specifiers public, protected and private are placed in front of each definition for each member in your class, whether it’s a data member or a method. Each access specifier controls the access for only that particular definition. This is a distinct contrast […]

Bruce Eckel’s Thinking in Java Contents | Prev | Next A package is what you get when you use the import keyword to bring in an entire library, such as import java.util.*; This brings in the entire utility library that’s part of the standard Java distribution. Since Vector is in java.util, you can now either […]

Bruce Eckel’s Thinking in Java Contents | Prev | Next A primary consideration in object-oriented design is “separating the things that change from the things that stay the same.” This is particularly important for libraries. The user ( client programmer ) of that library must be able to rely on the part they use, and […]

Bruce Eckel’s Thinking in Java Contents | Prev | Next Initializing arrays in C is error-prone and tedious. C++ uses aggregate initialization to make it much safer. [22] Java has no “aggregates” like C++, since everything is an object in Java. It does have arrays, and these are supported with array initialization. An array is […]