Monday 10 August 2015

Java Minutes Drill

Remember that in this chapter, when we talk about classes, we're referring to non-inner classes, or top-level classes.

❑ Identifiers can begin with a letter, an underscore, or a currency character.
❑ After the first character, identifiers can also include digits.
❑ Identifiers can be of any length.
❑ JavaBeans methods must be named using camelCase, and depending on the method's purpose, must start with set, get, is, add, or remove. 

Declaration Rules
❑ A source code file can have only one public class.
❑ If the source file contains a public class, the filename must match the public class name.
❑ A file can have only one package statement, but multiple imports.
❑ The package statement (if any) must be the first (non-comment) line in a source file.
❑ The import statements (if any) must come after the package and before the class declaration.
❑ If there is no package statement, import statements must be the first (noncomment) statements in the source file.
❑ package and import statements apply to all classes in the file.
❑ A file can have more than one nonpublic class.
❑ Files with no public classes have no naming restrictions. 

Class Access Modifiers
❑ There are three access modifiers: public, protected, and private.
❑ There are four access levels: public, protected, default, and private.
❑ Classes can have only public or default access.
❑ A class with default access can be seen only by classes within the same package.
❑ A class with public access can be seen by all classes from all packages.
❑ Class visibility revolves around whether code in one class can
❑ Create an instance of another class
❑ Extend (or subclass), another class
❑ Access methods and variables of another class 

Class Modifiers (Nonaccess) 
❑ Classes can also be modified with final, abstract, or strictfp.
❑ A class cannot be both final and abstract.
❑ A final class cannot be subclassed.
❑ An abstract class cannot be instantiated.
❑ A single abstract method in a class means the whole class must be abstract.
❑ An abstract class can have both abstract and nonabstract methods.
❑ The first concrete class to extend an abstract class must implement all of its abstract methods. 

Interface Implementation
❑ Interfaces are contracts for what a class can do, but they say nothing about the way in which the class must do it.
❑ Interfaces can be implemented by any class, from any inheritance tree.
❑ An interface is like a 100-percent abstract class, and is implicitly abstract whether you type the abstract modifier in the declaration or not.
❑ An interface can have only abstract methods, no concrete methods allowed.
❑ Interface methods are by default public and abstract—explicit declaration of these modifiers is optional.
❑ Interfaces can have constants, which are always implicitly public, static, and final.
❑ Interface constant declarations of public, static, and final are optional in any combination.
❑ A legal nonabstract implementing class has the following properties:
❑ It provides concrete implementations for the interface's methods.
❑ It must follow all legal override rules for the methods it implements.
❑ It must not declare any new checked exceptions for an implementation method.

Declarations and Access Control
❑ It must not declare any checked exceptions that are broader than the exceptions declared in the interface method.
❑ It may declare runtime exceptions on any interface method implementation regardless of the interface declaration.
❑ It must maintain the exact signature (allowing for covariant returns) and return type of the methods it implements (but does not have to declare the exceptions of the interface).
❑ A class implementing an interface can itself be abstract.
❑ An abstract implementing class does not have to implement the interface methods (but the first concrete subclass must).
❑ A class can extend only one class (no multiple inheritance), but it can implement many interfaces. 
❑ Interfaces can extend one or more other interfaces.
❑ Interfaces cannot extend a class, or implement a class or interface.
❑ When taking the exam, verify that interface and class declarations are legal before verifying other code logic. 

Member Access Modifiers
❑ Methods and instance (nonlocal) variables are known as "members."
❑ Members can use all four access levels: public, protected, default, private.
❑ Member access comes in two forms:
❑ Code in one class can access a member of another class.
❑ A subclass can inherit a member of its superclass.
❑ If a class cannot be accessed, its members cannot be accessed.
❑ Determine class visibility before determining member visibility.
❑ public members can be accessed by all other classes, even in other packages.
❑ If a superclass member is public, the subclass inherits it—regardless of package.
❑ Members accessed without the dot operator (.) must belong to the same class.
❑ this. always refers to the currently executing object.
❑ this.aMethod() is the same as just invoking aMethod().
❑ private members can be accessed only by code in the same class.
❑ private members are not visible to subclasses, so private members cannot be inherited.
❑ Default and protected members differ only when subclasses are involved:
❑ Default members can be accessed only by classes in the same package.
❑ protected members can be accessed by other classes in the same package, plus subclasses regardless of package.
❑ protected = package plus kids (kids meaning subclasses).
❑ For subclasses outside the package, the protected member can be accessed only through inheritance; a subclass outside the package cannot access a protected member by using a reference to a superclass instance (in other words, inheritance is the only mechanism for a subclass outside the package to access a protected member of its superclass).
 ❑ A protected member inherited by a subclass from another package is not accessible to any other class in the subclass package, except for the subclass' own subclasses.

Local Variables
❑ Local (method, automatic, or stack) variable declarations cannot have access modifiers.
❑ final is the only modifier available to local variables.
❑ Local variables don't get default values, so they must be initialized before use. Other Modifiers—Members (Objective 1.3)
❑ final methods cannot be overridden in a subclass.
❑ abstract methods are declared, with a signature, a return type, and an optional throws clause, but are not implemented.
❑ abstract methods end in a semicolon—no curly braces.

❑ Three ways to spot a non-abstract method:
❑ The method is not marked abstract.
❑ The method has curly braces.
❑ The method has code between the curly braces.
❑ The first nonabstract (concrete) class to extend an abstract class must implement all of the abstract class' abstract methods.
❑ The synchronized modifier applies only to methods and code blocks.
❑ synchronized methods can have any access control and can also be marked final.

Declarations and Access Control
❑ abstract methods must be implemented by a subclass, so they must be inheritable.
For that reason:
❑ abstract methods cannot be private.
❑ abstract methods cannot be final.
❑ The native modifier applies only to methods.
❑ The strictfp modifier applies only to classes and methods. 

Methods with var-args
❑ As of Java 5, methods can declare a parameter that accepts from zero to many arguments, a so-called var-arg method.
❑ A var-arg parameter is declared with the syntax type... name; for instance: doStuff(int... x) { }
❑ A var-arg method can have only one var-arg parameter.
❑ In methods with normal parameters and a var-arg, the var-arg must come last. Variable Declarations (Objective 1.3)
❑ Instance variables can
❑ Have any access control
❑ Be marked final or transient
❑ Instance variables can't be abstract, synchronized, native, or strictfp.
❑ It is legal to declare a local variable with the same name as an instance variable; this is called "shadowing."
❑ final variables have the following properties:
❑ final variables cannot be reinitialized once assigned a value.
❑ final reference variables cannot refer to a different object once the object has been assigned to the final variable.
❑ final reference variables must be initialized before the constructor completes.
❑ There is no such thing as a final object. An object reference marked final does not mean the object itself is immutable.
❑ The transient modifier applies only to instance variables.
❑ The volatile modifier applies only to instance variables. Array Declarations (Objective 1.3)
❑ Arrays can hold primitives or objects, but the array itself is always an object.
❑ When you declare an array, the brackets can be to the left or right of the variable name.
❑ It is never legal to include the size of an array in the declaration.
❑ An array of objects can hold any object that passes the IS-A (or instanceof) test for the declared type of the array. For example, if Horse extends Animal, then a Horse object can go into an Animal array. 

Static Variables and Methods
❑ They are not tied to any particular instance of a class.
❑ No classes instances are needed in order to use static members of the class.
❑ There is only one copy of a static variable / class and all instances share it.
❑ static methods do not have direct access to non-static members. 

Enums 
❑ An enum specifies a list of constant values assigned to a type.
❑ An enum is NOT a String or an int; an enum constant's type is the enum type. For example, SUMMER and FALL are of the enum type Season.
❑ An enum can be declared outside or inside a class, but NOT in a method.
❑ An enum declared outside a class must NOT be marked static, final, abstract, protected, or private. 
❑ Enums can contain constructors, methods, variables, and constant class bodies.
❑ enum constants can send arguments to the enum constructor, using the syntax BIG(8), where the int literal 8 is passed to the enum constructor.
❑ enum constructors can have arguments, and can be overloaded.
❑ enum constructors can NEVER be invoked directly in code. They are always called automatically when an enum is initialized.
❑ The semicolon at the end of an enum declaration is optional. These are legal: enum Foo { ONE, TWO, THREE} enum Foo { ONE, TWO, THREE};
❑ MyEnum.values() returns an array of MyEnum's values

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