The Java Programming Language - Softcover

Ken Arnold

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0201634554 ISBN 13: 9780201634556

Publisher: Addison-Wesley Pub (Sd), 1996

Synopsis

Part of The Java Series, The Java Programming Language is the definitive technical guide to the Java language. Ken Arnold and James Gosling explain Java's design motivations and tradeoffs, while presenting a wealth of practical examples. (Communications/Networking)

About this title

Review:

Written by several of Java's inventors, The Java Programming Language, Third Edition provides a nearly indispensable guide to basic and advanced features in today's hottest programming language. Perfect for the intermediate or advanced developer, this book delivers a wealth of information on how to do more with Java. The first sections provide a nicely compact tour of Java basics. If you're a beginner, you'll get a glimpse of the fundamentals of Java quickly. (Most of this new edition has the more experienced reader in mind.) Subsequent chapters delve into basic and advanced language features of what can be done with classes, interfaces, and other design features in Java. The authors' explanations are notably clear and never pedantic. Many examples are illustrated by using simple mathematical problems, and the class-design samples for inheritance and interfaces all use comprehensible class names and concepts.

This title is outstanding when it comes to class design. It will definitely let any reader do more with classes, whether you want to make use of such features as "anonymous inner classes" and reflection (for loading classes dynamically), or do more with interfaces (including extending interfaces and tricks on changing data members in interfaces).

Prominent sections here include a complete guide to Java language statements, including keywords, literals, and support for Unicode. Later sections feature a nice, clear explanation of Java's complicated I/O classes, a fine tutorial on threading, and a solid introduction to using Java's collection classes. The book closes with a tour of some additional "core" Java packages that are available in the language.

In all, this up-to-the-minute guide to some of the more complex features in today's Java fills a valuable niche for any Java developer. Besides providing a glimpse into what the Java team at Sun is up to, this authoritative resource can help you master the finer points of class design, as well as make the most out of newly added features in the new JDK 1.3 standard. --Richard Dragan

Topics covered: QuickStart overview of Java, class and object design in Java, access control, construction and initialization, static methods, method overloading, class inheritance, redefining members, the protected keyword, the strictfp keyword and floating-point processing, cloning objects, interfaces (constants, methods, and modifiers), extending interfaces, marker interfaces, nested classes and interfaces (including static nested types, inner classes, and anonymous inner classes), tokens, operators, and expressions in Java, literals, keywords, operator precedence, control flow, Java exception handling, exception classes, the String and StringBuffer classes, threads, synchronization APIs and techniques (scheduling, thread groups, and thread local storage), the wrapper classes for Number types, Java reflection, loading classes, garbage collection (GC algorithms, finalization and reachability states), packages, JavaDoc documentation tags, tour of Java I/O stream classes, serialization techniques, new and legacy Java collections, miscellaneous utility classes, system programming with properties, processes and JVM shutdown; internationalization and localization techniques, and tour of additional Java "core" packages.

From the Inside Flap:

Beautiful buildings are more than scientific. They are true organisms, spiritually conceived; works of art, using the best technology by inspiration rather than the idiosyncrasies of mere taste or any averaging by the committee mind.
-Frank Lloyd Wright

The Java™ programming language (hereafter called simply "Java") has been warmly received by the world community of software developers and Internet content providers. Users of the Internet and World-Wide Web benefit from access to secure platform-independent applications that can come from anywhere on the Internet. Software developers creating applications in Java benefit by developing code only once, with no need to "port" their applications to every software and hardware platform.

For many, Java is known primarily as a tool to create applets for the World-Wide Web. "Applet" is the term Java uses for a mini-application that runs inside a web page. An applet can perform tasks and interact with the user on their browser page without using resources from the Web server after being downloaded. Some applets may, of course, interact with the server for their own purposes, but that's their business.

Java is indeed valuable for distributed network environments like the Web. However, Java goes well beyond this domain to provide a powerful general purpose programming language suitable for building a variety of applications that either do not depend on network features, or want them for different reasons. Java's ability to execute code on remote hosts in a secure manner is a critical requirement for many organizations.

Other groups use Java as a general-purpose programming language for projects where machine independence is less important. Java's ease of programming and safety features help produce debugged code quickly. Some common programming errors never occur because of features like garbage collection and type-safe references. Modern network-based and graphical user interface based applications that must attend to multiple tasks simultaneously are catered to by Java's support for multi-threading, while the mechanisms of exception handling ease the task of dealing with error conditions. While its built-in tools are powerful, Java the language is itself a simple language in which programmers can quickly become proficient.

Java is designed for maximum portability and is specifically designed to have as few implementation dependencies as possible. An int, for example, is a 32-bit signed two's-complement integer in all Java implementations, whatever the CPU architecture on which the Java program executes. Defining everything possible about the language and its runtime environment enables users to run compiled code anywhere and share code with anyone who has a Java environment.Java shares many language features common to most programming languages in use today. However, unlike C and C++, Java provides automatic storage management and exception handling, integrated with support for threads.

About This BookThis book teaches Java programming to people familiar with basic programming concepts. It explains Java without being formal or complete. This book is not an introduction to object-oriented programming, although some issues are covered to establish a common terminology.

Java should look familiar to C and C++ programmers, because Java was designed with C and C++ constructs where the languages are similar. Other books in this series, and much online documentation, focus on Java applets. This book covers applets at a high level as part of the Java library, but for other references, see the Bibliography.

Chapter 1-A Quick Tour of Java-gives a quick overview of Java. Programmers unfamiliar with object-oriented programming notions should read the quick tour, while programmers already familiar with object-oriented programming paradigms will find the quick tour a useful introduction to the object-oriented features of Java.

Chapters 2, 3, and 4 cover the object-oriented core features of Java, namely, class declarations that define components of a program, and objects manufactured according to class definitions. Chapter 2-Classes and Objects-describes the basis of the Java language. Chapter 3-Extending Classes-describes how an existing class can be extended, or subclassed, to create a new class with new data and behavior. Chapter 4-Interfaces-describes how to declare interface types that are abstract descriptions of behavior that provide maximum flexibility for class designers and implementers.

Chapters 5 and 6 cover standard language constructs common to most languages. Chapter 5-Tokens, Operators, and Expressions-describes the tokens of the language from which statements are constructed, how the tokens and operators are used to build expressions, and how expressions are evaluated. Chapter 6-Control Flow-describes how control statements direct the order of execution of statements.

Chapter 7-Exceptions-describes Java's powerful error-handling capabilities.

Chapter 8-Strings-describes the built-in language and run-time support for String objects.

Chapter 9-Threads-explains Java's implementation of multithreading. Many applications, such as graphical interface-based software, must attend to multiple tasks simultaneously. These tasks must cooperate to behave correctly, and threads meet the needs of cooperative multitasking.

Chapter 10-Packages-describes Java's mechanism for grouping collections of Java classes into their own separate packages.

Chapters 11 through 14 cover the main body of the Java class library packages. Chapter 11-The I/O Package-describes the Java input/output system, based on streams. Chapter 12-Standard Utilities-covers Java utility classes like vectors and hashtables. Chapter 13-Programming with Types-describes Java language types, both individual objects that describe each class and interface, and classes that wrap primitive data types like integers and floating point values into their own object types. Chapter 14-System Programming-leads you through the system classes that provide access to features of the underlying platform.

Appendix A describes Java support for native methods-a means to access code written in the "native" programming language of the underlying platform. Appendix B lists all the runtime exceptions and errors that the Java system itself can throw. Appendix C has tables of information that you may find useful for quick reference purposes.

Finally, a Bibliography lists works that may be interesting for further reading on object-orientation, programming with threads, and other topics.

Examples and DocumentationAll the code examples in the text have been compiled and run on the latest version of the language available at the time the book was written, which was the FCS version of Java release 1.0.1. Generally speaking, only Java 1.0.1 features are covered. We have also covered issues beyond writing programs that simply compile-part of learning a language is to learn to use it well. For this reason, we have tried to show principles of good programming style and design.

In a few places we refer to online documentation. Java development environments provide a way to automatically generate documentation (usually HTML documents) from a compiled class using the documentation comments. This documentation is normally viewed using a Web browser.

AcknowledgmentsMany people contributed technical help, excellent reviews, useful information, and book-writing advice.

Contributing Editor Henry McGilton of Trilithon Software played the role of "Chief Editorial Firefighter" to help make this book possible. Series Editor Lisa Friendly contributed dogged perseverance and support.

A veritable multitude of reviewers took time out of their otherwise busy lives to read, edit, advise, revise, and delete material, all in the name of making this a better book. Kevin Coyle performed one of the most detailed editorial reviews at all levels. Karen Bennet, Mike Burati, Patricia Giencke, Steve Gilliard, Bill Joy, Rosanna Lee, Jon Madison, Brian O'Neill, Sue Palmer, Stephen Perelgut, R. Anders Schneiderman, Susan Sim, Bob Sproull, Guy Steele, Arthur Van Hoff, Jim Waldo, Greg Wilson, and Ann Wollrath provided in-depth review. Geoff Arnold, Tom Cargill, Pat Finnegan, Mick Jordan, Doug Lea, Randall Murray, Roger Riggs, Jimmy Torres, and Frank Yellin contributed useful comments and technical information at critical junctures.

Alka Deshpande, Sharon Flank, Nassim Fotouhi, Betsy Halstead, Kee Hinckley, Dr. K. Kalyanasundaram, Patrick Martin, Paul Romagna, Susan Snyder, and Nicole Yankelovich collaborated to make possible the five words of non-ISO-Latin-1 text on page 96. Jim Arnold provided research help on the proper spelling, usage, and etymology of "smoog" and "moorge". Ed Mooney helped with the document preparation. Cookie Callahan, Robert Pierce, and Rita Tavilla provided the support necessary to keep this project going.

Thanks to Kim Polese for supplying us the capsule summary of why Java is important to computer users as well as programmers.

Support and advice were provided at critical moments by Susan Jones, Bob Sproull, Jim Waldo, and Ann Wollrath. And we thank our families, who besides their loving support, would at times drag us out to play when we should have been working, for which we are deeply grateful.

Any errors or shortcomings that remain in this book-despite all the best combined efforts of these myriads-are completely the responsibility of the authors.

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About this edition

• Publisher: Addison-Wesley Pub (Sd)
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 0201634554
• ISBN 13: 9780201634556
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 333