Introduction to Programming Using Java

Version 5.0, December 2006

(Version 5.0.2, with minor corrections, November 2007)

David J. Eck
Hobart and William Smith Colleges
ii

c 1996–2007, David J. Eck

David J. Eck (eck@[Link])

Department of Mathematics and Computer Science
Hobart and William Smith Colleges
Geneva, NY 14456

This book can be distributed in unmodified form with no restrictions. Modified

versions can be made and distributed provided they are distributed under the
same license as the original. More specifically: This work is licensed under the
Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 License. To view a copy of this
license, visit [Link] or send a letter to
Creative Commons, 543 Howard Street, 5th Floor, San Francisco, California,
94105, USA.

The web site for this book is: [Link]

Contents

Preface xiii
1 The Mental Landscape 1

1.1 Machine Language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

1.2 Asynchronous Events . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.3 The Java Virtual Machine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
1.4 Building Blocks of Programs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
1.5 Object-oriented Programming . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
1.6 The Modern User Interface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
1.7 The Internet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
Quiz on Chapter 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
2 Names and Things 19

2.1 The Basic Java Application . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

2.2 Variables and Types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
2.2.1 Variables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
2.2.2 Types and Literals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
2.2.3 Variables in Programs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
2.3 Objects and Subroutines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
2.3.1 Built-in Subroutines and Functions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
2.3.2 Operations on Strings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
2.3.3 Introduction to Enums . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
2.4 Text Input and Output . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
2.4.1 A First Text Input Example . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
2.4.2 Text Output . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
2.4.3 TextIO Input Functions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
2.4.4 Formatted Output . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
2.4.5 Introduction to File I/O . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
2.5 Details of Expressions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
2.5.1 Arithmetic Operators . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
2.5.2 Increment and Decrement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
2.5.3 Relational Operators . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
2.5.4 Boolean Operators . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
2.5.5 Conditional Operator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
2.5.6 Assignment Operators and Type-Casts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
2.5.7 Type Conversion of Strings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
2.5.8 Precedence Rules . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
2.6 Programming Environments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51

iii
iv CONTENTS
2.6.1 Java Development Kit . . . . . . . . ..................... 51

2.6.2 Command Line Environment . . . . ..................... 52

2.6.3 IDEs and Eclipse . . . . . . . . . . . ..................... 54
2.6.4 The Problem of Packages . . . . . . ..................... 56
Exercises for Chapter 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ..................... 58
Quiz on Chapter 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ..................... 60
3 Control 61

3.1 Blocks, Loops, and Branches . . . . . . . . ..................... 61

3.1.1 Blocks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ..................... 61
3.1.2 The Basic While Loop . . . . . . . . ..................... 62
3.1.3 The Basic If Statement . . . . . . . ..................... 64
3.2 Algorithm Development . . . . . . . . . . . ..................... 66
3.2.1 Pseudocode and Stepwise Refinement .................... 66
3.2.2 The 3N+1 Problem . . . . . . . . . ..................... 69
3.2.3 Coding, Testing, Debugging . . . . . ..................... 72
3.3 while and do..while . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ..................... 73
3.3.1 The while Statement . . . . . . . . . ..................... 74
3.3.2 The do..while Statement . . . . . . . ..................... 76
3.3.3 break and continue . . . . . . . . . . ..................... 78
3.4 The for Statement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ..................... 79
3.4.1 For Loops . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ..................... 80
3.4.2 Example: Counting Divisors . . . . . ..................... 83
3.4.3 Nested for Loops . . . . . . . . . . . ..................... 85
3.4.4 Enums and for-each Loops . . . . . . ..................... 87
3.5 The if Statement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ..................... 89
3.5.1 The Dangling else Problem . . . . . ..................... 89
3.5.2 The if...else if Construction . . . . . ..................... 89
3.5.3 If Statement Examples . . . . . . . . ..................... 91
3.5.4 The Empty Statement . . . . . . . . ..................... 95
3.6 The switch Statement . . . . . . . . . . . . ..................... 96
3.6.1 The Basic switch Statement . . . . . ..................... 96
3.6.2 Menus and switch Statements . . . . ..................... 97
3.6.3 Enums in switch Statements . . . . ..................... 98
3.6.4 Definite Assignment . . . . . . . . . ..................... 99
3.7 Exceptions and try..catch . . . . . . . . . . .....................100
3.7.1 Exceptions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .....................100
3.7.2 try..catch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .....................101
3.7.3 Exceptions in TextIO . . . . . . . . .....................102
3.8 GUI Programming . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .....................104
Exercises for Chapter 3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .....................111
Quiz on Chapter 3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .....................114
4 Subroutines 117

4.1 Black Boxes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .....................117

4.2 Static Subroutines and Variables . . . . . . .....................119
4.2.1 Subroutine Definitions . . . . . . . . .....................119
4.2.2 Calling Subroutines . . . . . . . . . .....................121
CONTENTS v
4.2.3 Subroutines in Programs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122

4.2.4 Member Variables ...............................124

4.3 Parameters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
4.3.1 Using Parameters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
4.3.2 Formal and Actual Parameters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128
4.3.3 Overloading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
4.3.4 Subroutine Examples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130
4.3.5 Throwing Exceptions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132
4.3.6 Global and Local Variables ..........................133
4.4 Return Values . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134
4.4.1 The return statement .............................134
4.4.2 Function Examples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135
4.4.3 3N+1 Revisited . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138
4.5 APIs, Packages, and Javadoc .............................140
4.5.1 Toolboxes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140
4.5.2 Java’s Standard Packages ...........................141
4.5.3 Using Classes from Packages .........................142
4.5.4 Javadoc . . . . . . ...............................144
4.6 More on Program Design ...............................146
4.6.1 Preconditions and Postconditions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146
4.6.2 A Design Example ...............................147
4.6.3 The Program . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151
4.7 The Truth About Declarations ............................153
4.7.1 Initialization in Declarations .........................154
4.7.2 Named Constants ...............................155
4.7.3 Naming and Scope Rules ...........................158
Exercises for Chapter 4 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161 Quiz on Chapter
4 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164

5 Objects and Classes 165

5.1 Objects and Instance Methods ............................165
5.1.1 Objects, Classes, and Instances . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 166
5.1.2 Fundamentals of Objects ...........................167
5.1.3 Getters and Setters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172
5.2 Constructors and Object Initialization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173
5.2.1 Initializing Instance Variables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173
5.2.2 Constructors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174
5.2.3 Garbage Collection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179
5.3 Programming with Objects ..............................179
5.3.1 Some Built-in Classes .............................180
5.3.2 Wrapper Classes and Autoboxing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181
5.3.3 The class “Object” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182
5.3.4 Object-oriented Analysis and Design . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183
5.4 Programming Example: Card, Hand, Deck . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185
5.4.1 Designing the classes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185
5.4.2 The Card Class . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187
5.4.3 Example: A Simple Card Game . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191
 vi CONTENTS
5.5 Inheritance and Polymorphism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .....194

5.5.1 Extending Existing Classes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .....194

5.5.2 Inheritance and Class Hierarchy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .....196
5.5.3 Example: Vehicles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .....197
5.5.4 Polymorphism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .....200
5.5.5 Abstract Classes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .....202
5.6 this and super . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .....205
5.6.1 The Special Variable this . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .....205
5.6.2 The Special Variable super . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .....206
5.6.3 Constructors in Subclasses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .....208
5.7 Interfaces, Nested Classes, and Other Details . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .....209
5.7.1 Interfaces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .....209
5.7.2 Nested Classes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .....211
5.7.3 Anonymous Inner Classes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .....214
5.7.4 Mixing Static and Non-static . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .....214
5.7.5 Static Import . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .....216
5.7.6 Enums as Classes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .....217
Exercises for Chapter 5 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 220 Quiz on Chapter
5 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223

6 Introduction to GUI Programming 225

6.1 The Basic GUI Application . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 225
6.1.1 JFrame and JPanel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 227
6.1.2 Components and Layout . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 229
6.1.3 Events and Listeners . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 230
6.2 Applets and HTML ..................................231
6.2.1 JApplet . . . ..................................231
6.2.2 Reusing Your JPanels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 233
6.2.3 Basic HTML ..................................235
6.2.4 Applets on Web Pages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 238
6.3 Graphics and Painting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 240
6.3.1 Coordinates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 242
6.3.2 Colors . . . . ..................................243
6.3.3 Fonts . . . . ..................................244
6.3.4 Shapes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 245
6.3.5 Graphics2D . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 246
6.3.6 An Example ..................................247
6.4 Mouse Events . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 251
6.4.1 Event Handling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 252
6.4.2 MouseEvent and MouseListener . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 253
6.4.3 Mouse Coordinates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 256
6.4.4 MouseMotionListeners and Dragging . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 258
6.4.5 Anonymous Event Handlers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 262
6.5 Timer and Keyboard Events . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 264
6.5.1 Timers and Animation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 264
6.5.2 Keyboard Events . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 266
6.5.3 Focus Events ..................................269
CONTENTS vii
6.5.4 State Machines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 270

6.6 Basic Components ...................................273

6.6.1 JButton . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 275
6.6.2 JLabel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 276
6.6.3 JCheckBox ...................................277
6.6.4 JTextField and JTextArea . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 278
6.6.5 JComboBox . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 279
6.6.6 JSlider . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 280
6.7 Basic Layout . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 282
6.7.1 Basic Layout Managers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 283
6.7.2 Borders . . . . . . . . . . ...........................285
6.7.3 SliderAndComboBoxDemo ..........................287
6.7.4 A Simple Calculator . . . ...........................289
6.7.5 Using a null Layout . . . ...........................291
6.7.6 A Little Card Game . . . ...........................293
6.8 Menus and Dialogs . . . . . . . . ...........................296
6.8.1 Menus and Menubars . . ...........................297
6.8.2 Dialogs . . . . . . . . . . ...........................300
6.8.3 Fine Points of Frames . . ...........................302
6.8.4 Creating Jar Files . . . . ...........................304
Exercises for Chapter 6 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 306 Quiz on Chapter
6 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 311

7 Arrays 313
7.1 Creating and Using Arrays ..............................313
7.1.1 Arrays . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .314
7.1.2 Using Arrays ..................................314
7.1.3 Array Initialization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 316
7.2 Programming With Arrays ..............................318
7.2.1 Arrays and for Loops .............................318
7.2.2 Arrays and for-each Loops . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 320
7.2.3 Array Types in Subroutines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 321
7.2.4 Random Access . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 322
7.2.5 Arrays of Objects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 324
7.2.6 Variable Arity Methods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 327
7.3 Dynamic Arrays and ArrayLists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 329
7.3.1 Partially Full Arrays . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 329
7.3.2 Dynamic Arrays ................................332
7.3.3 ArrrayLists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 335
7.3.4 Parameterized Types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 339
7.3.5 Vectors . . . . . . . ..............................342
7.4 Searching and Sorting . . . ..............................343
7.4.1 Searching . . . . . . ..............................343
7.4.2 Association Lists ................................345
7.4.3 Insertion Sort . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 348
7.4.4 Selection Sort ..................................349
7.4.5 Unsorting . . ..................................351
 viii CONTENTS
7.5 Multi-dimensional Arrays . . . . . . . . . ......................352

7.5.1 Creating Two-dimensional Arrays ......................352

7.5.2 Using Two-dimensional Arrays . . ......................354
7.5.3 Example: Checkers . . . . . . . . . ......................357
Exercises for Chapter 7 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 364 Quiz on Chapter
7 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 370

8 Correctness and Robustness 373

8.1 Introduction to Correctness and Robustness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 373
8.1.1 Horror Stories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 374
8.1.2 Java to the Rescue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 375
8.1.3 Problems Remain in Java ...........................377
8.2 Writing Correct Programs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 378
8.2.1 Provably Correct Programs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 378
8.2.2 Robust Handling of Input ...........................381
8.3 Exceptions and try..catch ...............................385
8.3.1 Exceptions and Exception Classes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 386
8.3.2 The try Statement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 388
8.3.3 Throwing Exceptions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 390
8.3.4 Mandatory Exception Handling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 392
8.3.5 Programming with Exceptions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 393
8.4 Assertions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 396
8.5 Introduction to Threads ................................399
8.5.1 Creating and Running Threads . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 400
8.5.2 Operations on Threads . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 404
8.5.3 Mutual Exclusion with “synchronized” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 405
8.5.4 Wait and Notify ................................408
8.5.5 Volatile Variables ................................412
8.6 Analysis of Algorithms . ................................413
Exercises for Chapter 8 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 419 Quiz on Chapter
8 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 424

9 Linked Data Structures and Recursion 427

9.1 Recursion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .427
9.1.1 Recursive Binary Search . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ......428
9.1.2 Towers of Hanoi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ......430
9.1.3 A Recursive Sorting Algorithm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ......432
9.1.4 Blob Counting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ......435
9.2 Linked Data Structures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ......439
9.2.1 Recursive Linking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ......439
9.2.2 Linked Lists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ......441
9.2.3 Basic Linked List Processing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ......441
9.2.4 Inserting into a Linked List . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ......445
9.2.5 Deleting from a Linked List . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ......447
9.3 Stacks, Queues, and ADTs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ......448
9.3.1 Stacks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ......449
9.3.2 Queues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ......452
9.3.3 Postfix Expressions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ......456
CONTENTS ix
9.4 Binary Trees . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 459

9.4.1 Tree Traversal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 460

9.4.2 Binary Sort Trees ...............................462
9.4.3 Expression Trees ................................467
9.5 A Simple Recursive Descent Parser . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 470
9.5.1 Backus-Naur Form . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 470
9.5.2 Recursive Descent Parsing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 472
9.5.3 Building an Expression Tree . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 476
Exercises for Chapter 9 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 479 Quiz on Chapter
9 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 482

10 Generic Programming and Collection Classes 485

10.1 Generic Programming .................................485
10.1.1 Generic Programming in Smalltalk . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 486
10.1.2 Generic Programming in C++ ........................487
10.1.3 Generic Programming in Java . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 488
10.1.4 The Java Collection Framework . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 489
10.1.5 Iterators and for-each Loops . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 491
10.1.6 Equality and Comparison . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 492
10.1.7 Generics and Wrapper Classes ........................495
10.2 Lists and Sets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 496
10.2.1 ArrayList and LinkedList . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 496
10.2.2 Sorting . . . . . . . . . . . . .........................499
10.2.3 TreeSet and HashSet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 500
10.2.4 EnumSet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 503
10.3 Maps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 504
10.3.1 The Map Interface ...............................505
10.3.2 Views, SubSets, and SubMaps ........................506
10.3.3 Hash Tables and Hash Codes .........................509
10.4 Programming with the Collection Framework ....................511
10.4.1 Symbol Tables .................................511
10.4.2 Sets Inside a Map ...............................512
10.4.3 Using a Comparator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 515
10.4.4 Word Counting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 517
10.5 Writing Generic Classes and Methods ........................519
10.5.1 Simple Generic Classes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 520
10.5.2 Simple Generic Methods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 521
10.5.3 Type Wildcards ................................523
10.5.4 Bounded Types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 527
Exercises for Chapter 10 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 531 Quiz on
Chapter 10 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 535

11 Files and Networking 537

11.1 Streams, Readers, and Writers . . . .........................537
11.1.1 Character and Byte Streams .........................537
11.1.2 PrintWriter . . . . . . . . . . .........................539
11.1.3 Data Streams . . . . . . . . . .........................540
11.1.4 Reading Text . . . . . . . . . .........................541
x CONTENTS
11.1.5 The Scanner Class . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 544

11.1.6 Serialized Object I/O .............................545

11.2 Files ................ ...........................546
11.2.1 Reading and Writing Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 546
11.2.2 Files and Directories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 549
11.2.3 File Dialog Boxes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 552
11.3 Programming With Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 554
11.3.1 Copying a File . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 555
11.3.2 Persistent Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 557
11.3.3 Files in GUI Programs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 559
11.3.4 Storing Objects in Files ............................561
11.4 Networking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 568
11.4.1 URLs and URLConnections . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 569
11.4.2 TCP/IP and Client/Server ..........................571
11.4.3 Sockets . . . . . . . . . ............................572
11.4.4 A Trivial Client/Server ............................574
11.4.5 A Simple Network Chat ............................578
11.5 Network Programming and Threads .........................581
11.5.1 A Threaded GUI Chat Program. .......................582
11.5.2 A Multithreaded Server ............................585
11.5.3 Distributed Computing ............................588
11.6 A Brief Introduction to XML .............................596
11.6.1 Basic XML Syntax . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 596
11.6.2 XMLEncoder and XMLDecoder .......................598
11.6.3 Working With the DOM . . . . . .......................600
Exercises for Chapter 11 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 606 Quiz on
Chapter 11 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 609

12 Advanced GUI Programming 611

12.1 Images and Resources . . . . . . . ..........................611
12.1.1 Images and BufferedImages ..........................611
12.1.2 Working With Pixels . . . . ..........................617
12.1.3 Resources . . . . . . . . . . ..........................620
12.1.4 Cursors and Icons . . . . . ..........................621
12.1.5 Image File I/O . . . . . . . ..........................622
12.2 Fancier Graphics . . . . . . . . . . ..........................624
12.2.1 Measuring Text . . . . . . . ..........................625
12.2.2 Transparency . . . . . . . . ..........................627
12.2.3 Antialiasing . . . . . . . . . ..........................629
12.2.4 Strokes and Paints . . . . . ..........................630
12.2.5 Transforms . . . . . . . . . ..........................633
12.3 Actions and Buttons . . . . . . . . ..........................636
12.3.1 Action and AbstractAction ..........................636
12.3.2 Icons on Buttons . . . . . . ..........................638
12.3.3 Radio Buttons . . . . . . . ..........................639
12.3.4 Toolbars . . . . . . . . . . . ..........................642
12.3.5 Keyboard Accelerators . . . ..........................643
CONTENTS xi
12.3.6 HTML on Buttons . . . ............................645

12.4 Complex Components and MVC ...........................646

12.4.1 Model-View-Controller . ............................646
12.4.2 Lists and ListModels . . ............................647
12.4.3 Tables and TableModels ............................650
12.4.4 Documents and Editors ............................654
12.4.5 Custom Components . . ............................655
12.5 Finishing Touches . . . . . . . ............................660
12.5.1 The Mandelbrot Set . . ............................660
12.5.2 Design of the Program . ............................662
12.5.3 Internationalization . . ............................664
12.5.4 Events, Events, Events . ............................666
12.5.5 Custom Dialogs . . . . . ............................668
12.5.6 Preferences . . . . . . . ............................669
Exercises for Chapter 12 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 671 Quiz on
Chapter 12 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 673

Appendix: Source Files 675

xii CONTENTS
Preface

Introduction to Programming Using Java is a free introductory computer programming textbook

that uses Java as the language of instruction. It is suitable for use in an introductory
programming course and for people who are trying to learn programming on their own. There are
no prerequisites beyond a general familiarity with the ideas of computers and programs. There is
enough material for a full year of college-level programming. Chapters 1 through 7 can be used
as a textbook in a one-semester college-level course or in a year-long high school course.

This version of the book covers “Java 5.0”, and many of the examples use features that
were not present in earlier versions of Java. (Sometimes, you will see this version of Java
referred to as Java 1.5 instead of Java 5.0.) Note that Java applets appear throughout the
pages of the on-line version of this book. Many of those applets will be non-functional in
Web browsers that do not support Java 5.0.
The home web site for this book is [Link] The page at that
address contains links for downloading a copy of the web site and for downloading a PDF
version of the book.
∗∗∗
In style, this is a textbook rather than a tutorial. That is, it concentrates on explaining
concepts rather than giving step-by-step how-to-do-it guides. I have tried to use a conversational
writing style that might be closer to classroom lecture than to a typical textbook. You’ll find
programming exercises at the end of most chapters, and you will find a detailed solution for each
exercise, with the sort of discussion that I would give if I presented the solution in class.
(Solutions to the exercises can be found in the on-line version only.) I strongly advise that you
read the exercise solutions if you want to get the most out of this book. This is certainly not a
Java reference book, and it is not even close to a comprehensive survey of all the features of
Java. It is not written as a quick introduction to Java for people who already know another
programming language. Instead, it is directed mainly towards people who are learning
programming for the first time, and it is as much about general programming concepts as it is
about Java in particular. I believe that Introduction to Programming using Java is fully
competitive with the conventionally published, printed programming textbooks that are available
on the market. (Well, all right, I’ll confess that I think it’s better.)
There are several approaches to teaching Java. One approach uses graphical user interface
programming from the very beginning. Some people believe that object oriented programming
should also be emphasized from the very beginning. This is not the approach that I take. The
approach that I favor starts with the more basic building blocks of programming and builds from
there. After an introductory chapter, I cover procedural programming in Chapters 2, 3, and 4.
Object-oriented programming is introduced in Chapter 5. Chapters 6 covers the closely related
topic of event-oriented programming and graphical user interfaces. Arrays are covered in
Chapter 7. Chapter 8 marks a turning point in the book, moving beyond the fundamental ideas

xiii
 xiv Preface

of programming to cover more advanced topics. Chapter 8 is mostly about writing robust
and correct programs, but it also has a section on parallel processing and threads. Chapters
9 and 10 cover recursion and data structures, including the Java Collection Framework.
Chapter 11 is about files and networking. Finally, Chapter 12 returns to the topic of graphical
user interface programming to cover some of Java’s more advanced capabilities.
∗∗∗
Major changes have been made in the fifth edition. Perhaps the most significant change is
the use of parameterized types in the chapter on generic programming. Parameterized types—
Java’s version of templates—were the most eagerly anticipated new feature in Java 5.0.
Other new features in Java 5.0 are also covered. Enumerated types are introduced, although
they are not covered in their full complexity. The “for-each” loop is covered and is used
extensively. Formatted output is also used extensively, and the Scanner class is covered
(though not until Chapter 11). Static import is covered briefly, as are variable arity methods.
The non-standard TextIO class that I use for input in the first half of the book has been
rewritten to support formatted output. I have also added some file I/O capabilities to this
class to make it possible to cover some examples that use files early in the book.
Javadoc comments are covered for the first time in this edition. Almost all code examples
have been revised to use Javadoc-style comments.
The coverage of graphical user interface programming has been reorganized, much of it
has been rewritten, and new material has been added. In previous editions, I emphasized
applets. Stand-alone GUI applications were covered at the end, almost as an afterthought.
In the fifth edition, the emphasis on applets is gone, and almost all examples are presented
as stand-alone applications. However, applet versions of each example are still presented
on the web pages of the on-line version of the book. The chapter on advanced GUI
programming has been moved to the end, and a significant amount of new material has
been added, including coverage of some of the features of Graphics2D.
Aside from the changes in content, the appearance of the book has been improved,
especially the appearance of the PDF version. For the first time, the quality of the PDF
approaches that of conventional textbooks.
∗∗∗
The latest complete edition of Introduction to Programming using Java is always
available on line at [Link] The first version of the book was written
in 1996, and there have been several editions since then. All editions are archived at the
following Web addresses:
࿿࿿࿿(넌喋࿿࿿࿿࿿࿿࿿࿿%0%࿿)羦䎲࿿࿿࿿࿿࿿࿿࿿࿿࿿* First edition: [Link] (Covers
Java 1.0.)
࿿࿿࿿(넌喋࿿࿿࿿࿿࿿࿿࿿%0%࿿)羦䎲࿿࿿࿿࿿࿿࿿࿿࿿࿿* Second edition: [Link]
(Covers Java 1.1.)
࿿࿿࿿(넌喋࿿࿿࿿࿿࿿࿿࿿%0%࿿)羦䎲࿿࿿࿿࿿࿿࿿࿿࿿࿿* Third edition: [Link] (Covers
Java 1.1.)
࿿࿿࿿(넌喋࿿࿿࿿࿿࿿࿿࿿%0%࿿)羦䎲࿿࿿࿿࿿࿿࿿࿿࿿࿿* Fourth edition: [Link] (Covers
Java 1.4.)
࿿࿿࿿(넌喋࿿࿿࿿࿿࿿࿿࿿%0%࿿)羦䎲࿿࿿࿿࿿࿿࿿࿿࿿࿿* Fifth edition: [Link] (Covers
Java 5.0.)
Introduction to Programming using Java is free, but it is not in the public domain. As
of Version 5.0, it is published under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Share
Alike 2.5 License. To view a copy of this license, visit
[Link] or send a letter to Creative Commons, 543
Howard Street, 5th Floor, San Francisco, California, 94105, USA. This license allows
redistribution and modification under certain terms. For example, you can:
Preface xv

Post an unmodified copy of the on-line version on your own Web site (including the parts
that list the author and state the license under which it is distributed!).
Give away or sell printed, unmodified copies of this book, as long as they meet the re-
quirements of the license.
Make modified copies of the complete book or parts of it and post them on the web or
otherwise distribute them, provided that attribution to the author is given, the modifica-
tions are clearly noted, and the modified copies are distributed under the same license
as the original. This includes translations to other languages.
While it is not actually required by the license, I do appreciate hearing from people who
are using or distributing my work.
∗∗∗
A technical note on production: The on-line and PDF versions of this book are created
from a single source, which is written largely in XML. To produce the PDF version, the XML is
processed into a form that can be used by the TeX typesetting program. In addition to XML files,
the source includes DTDs, XSLT transformations, Java source code files, image files, a TeX
macro file, and a couple of scripts that are used in processing. I have not made the source
materials available for download, since they are not in a clean enough form to be publishable,
and because it would require a fair amount of expertise to make any use of them. However, they
are not meant to be secret, and I am willing to make them available on request.
∗∗∗
Professor David J. Eck
Department of Mathematics and Computer Science
Hobart and William Smith Colleges
Geneva, New York 14456, USA
Email: eck@[Link]
WWW: [Link]
xvi Preface
Chapter 1

Overview: The Mental Landscape

When you begin a journey, it’s a good idea to have a mental map of the terrain you’ll be passing
through. The same is true for an intellectual journey, such as learning to write computer
programs. In this case, you’ll need to know the basics of what computers are and how they work.
You’ll want to have some idea of what a computer program is and how one is created. Since you
will be writing programs in the Java programming language, you’ll want to know something about
that language in particular and about the modern, networked computing environment for which
Java is designed.
As you read this chapter, don’t worry if you can’t understand everything in detail. (In fact,
it would be impossible for you to learn all the details from the brief expositions in this
chapter.) Concentrate on learning enough about the big ideas to orient yourself, in
preparation for the rest of the book. Most of what is covered in this chapter will be covered in
much greater detail later in the book.

1.1 The Fetch and Execute Cycle: Machine Language

A computer is a complex system consisting of many different components. But at the heart—or
the brain, if you want—of the computer is a single component that does the actual computing.
This is the Central Processing Unit, or CPU. In a modern desktop computer, the CPU is a
single “chip” on the order of one square inch in size. The job of the CPU is to execute programs.

A program is simply a list of unambiguous instructions meant to be followed

mechanically by a computer. A computer is built to carry out instructions that are written in a
very simple type of language called machine language. Each type of computer has its own
machine language, and the computer can directly execute a program only if the program is
expressed in that language. (It can execute programs written in other languages if they are
first translated into machine language.)
When the CPU executes a program, that program is stored in the computer’s main mem-ory
(also called the RAM or random access memory). In addition to the program, memory can also
hold data that is being used or processed by the program. Main memory consists of a sequence
of locations. These locations are numbered, and the sequence number of a location is called its
address. An address provides a way of picking out one particular piece of informa-tion from
among the millions stored in memory. When the CPU needs to access the program instruction or
data in a particular location, it sends the address of that information as a sig-nal to the memory;
the memory responds by sending back the data contained in the specified

1
2 CHAPTER 1. THE MENTAL LANDSCAPE

location. The CPU can also store information in memory by specifying the information to be
stored and the address of the location where it is to be stored.
On the level of machine language, the operation of the CPU is fairly straightforward (al-
though it is very complicated in detail). The CPU executes a program that is stored as a
sequence of machine language instructions in main memory. It does this by repeatedly
reading, or fetching , an instruction from memory and then carrying out, or executing , that
instruc-tion. This process—fetch an instruction, execute it, fetch another instruction, execute
it, and so on forever—is called the fetch-and-execute cycle. With one exception, which will
be covered in the next section, this is all that the CPU ever does.
The details of the fetch-and-execute cycle are not terribly important, but there are a few
basic things you should know. The CPU contains a few internal registers, which are small
memory units capable of holding a single number or machine language instruction. The
CPU uses one of these registers—the program counter , or PC—to keep track of where it
is in the program it is executing. The PC stores the address of the next instruction that the
CPU should execute. At the beginning of each fetch-and-execute cycle, the CPU checks the
PC to see which instruction it should fetch. During the course of the fetch-and-execute cycle,
the number in the PC is updated to indicate the instruction that is to be executed in the next
cycle. (Usually, but not always, this is just the instruction that sequentially follows the current
instruction in the program.)
∗∗∗

A computer executes machine language programs mechanically—that is without under-

standing them or thinking about them—simply because of the way it is physically put
together. This is not an easy concept. A computer is a machine built of millions of tiny
switches called transistors, which have the property that they can be wired together in such
a way that an output from one switch can turn another switch on or o ff. As a computer
computes, these switches turn each other on or off in a pattern determined both by the way
they are wired together and by the program that the computer is executing.
Machine language instructions are expressed as binary numbers. A binary number is
made up of just two possible digits, zero and one. So, a machine language instruction is just
a sequence of zeros and ones. Each particular sequence encodes some particular
instruction. The data that the computer manipulates is also encoded as binary numbers. A
computer can work directly with binary numbers because switches can readily represent
such numbers: Turn the switch on to represent a one; turn it off to represent a zero.
Machine language instructions are stored in memory as patterns of switches turned on or
off. When a machine language instruction is loaded into the CPU, all that happens is that
certain switches are turned on or off in the pattern that encodes that particular instruction.
The CPU is built to respond to this pattern by executing the instruction it encodes; it does
this simply because of the way all the other switches in the CPU are wired together.
So, you should understand this much about how computers work: Main memory holds
machine language programs and data. These are encoded as binary numbers. The CPU
fetches machine language instructions from memory one after another and executes them.
It does this mechanically, without thinking about or understanding what it does —and therefore
the program it executes must be perfect, complete in all details, and unambiguous because the CPU can do
nothing but execute it exactly as written. Here is a schematic view of this first-stage understanding of the
computer:
1.2. ASYNCHRONOUS EVENTS 3

Memory
00101110 (Location 0)
11010011 (Location 1)
Data to memory 01010011 (Location 2)
00010000 (Location 3)
CPU 10111111
Data from memory 10100110
11101001
Program 00000111
counter: 10100110
Address for
1011100001 reading/writing 00010001
data 00111110 (Location 10)

1.2 Asynchronous Events: Polling Loops and Interrupts

The CPU spends almost all of its time fetching instructions from memory and executing them.
However, the CPU and main memory are only two out of many components in a real computer
system. A complete system contains other devices such as:

A hard disk for storing programs and data files. (Note that main memory holds only a
comparatively small amount of information, and holds it only as long as the power is
turned on. A hard disk is necessary for permanent storage of larger amounts of
information, but programs have to be loaded from disk into main memory before they
can actually be executed.)
A keyboard and mouse for user input.
A monitor and printer which can be used to display the computer’s output.
A modem that allows the computer to communicate with other computers over telephone
lines.
A network interface that allows the computer to communicate with other computers that
are connected to it on a network.
A scanner that converts images into coded binary numbers that can be stored and
manipulated on the computer.

The list of devices is entirely open ended, and computer systems are built so that they
can easily be expanded by adding new devices. Somehow the CPU has to communicate
with and control all these devices. The CPU can only do this by executing machine
language instructions (which is all it can do, period). The way this works is that for each
device in a system, there is a device driver , which consists of software that the CPU
executes when it has to deal with the device. Installing a new device on a system generally
has two steps: plugging the device physically into the computer, and installing the device
driver software. Without the device driver, the actual physical device would be useless, since
the CPU would not be able to communicate with it.
4 CHAPTER 1. THE MENTAL LANDSCAPE

∗∗∗
A computer system consisting of many devices is typically organized by connecting
those devices to one or more busses. A bus is a set of wires that carry various sorts of
information between the devices connected to those wires. The wires carry data, addresses,
and control signals. An address directs the data to a particular device and perhaps to a
particular register or location within that device. Control signals can be used, for example, by
one device to alert another that data is available for it on the data bus. A fairly simple
computer system might be organized like this:

CPU Empty Slot

for future
Memory Expansion

Input/ Data bus

Output Address bus
Controller Control bus

Video Keyboard Network

Controller Interface
and
Monitor
... ...
Network Cable

Now, devices such as keyboard, mouse, and network interface can produce input that
needs to be processed by the CPU. How does the CPU know that the data is there? One
simple idea, which turns out to be not very satisfactory, is for the CPU to keep checking for
incoming data over and over. Whenever it finds data, it processes it. This method is called
polling , since the CPU polls the input devices continually to see whether they have any
input data to report. Unfortunately, although polling is very simple, it is also very ine fficient.
The CPU can waste an awful lot of time just waiting for input.
To avoid this inefficiency, interrupts are often used instead of polling. An interrupt is a signal
sent by another device to the CPU. The CPU responds to an interrupt signal by putting aside
whatever it is doing in order to respond to the interrupt. Once it has handled the interrupt, it
returns to what it was doing before the interrupt occurred. For example, when you press a key on
your computer keyboard, a keyboard interrupt is sent to the CPU. The CPU responds to this
signal by interrupting what it is doing, reading the key that you pressed, processing it, and then
returning to the task it was performing before you pressed the key.
Again, you should understand that this is a purely mechanical process: A device signals an
interrupt simply by turning on a wire. The CPU is built so that when that wire is turned on, the
CPU saves enough information about what it is currently doing so that it can return to the same
state later. This information consists of the contents of important internal registers such as the
program counter. Then the CPU jumps to some predetermined memory location and begins
executing the instructions stored there. Those instructions make up an interrupt handler that
does the processing necessary to respond to the interrupt. (This interrupt handler is part of the
device driver software for the device that signalled the interrupt.) At the end of
1.2. ASYNCHRONOUS EVENTS 5

the interrupt handler is an instruction that tells the CPU to jump back to what it was doing; it
does that by restoring its previously saved state.
Interrupts allow the CPU to deal with asynchronous events. In the regular fetch-and-
execute cycle, things happen in a predetermined order; everything that happens is “synchro-
nized” with everything else. Interrupts make it possible for the CPU to deal e fficiently with
events that happen “asynchronously,” that is, at unpredictable times.
As another example of how interrupts are used, consider what happens when the CPU
needs to access data that is stored on the hard disk. The CPU can access data directly only
if it is in main memory. Data on the disk has to be copied into memory before it can be
accessed. Unfortunately, on the scale of speed at which the CPU operates, the disk drive is
extremely slow. When the CPU needs data from the disk, it sends a signal to the disk drive
telling it to locate the data and get it ready. (This signal is sent synchronously, under the
control of a regular program.) Then, instead of just waiting the long and unpredictalble
amount of time that the disk drive will take to do this, the CPU goes on with some other task.
When the disk drive has the data ready, it sends an interrupt signal to the CPU. The
interrupt handler can then read the requested data.
∗∗∗
Now, you might have noticed that all this only makes sense if the CPU actually has
several tasks to perform. If it has nothing better to do, it might as well spend its time polling
for input or waiting for disk drive operations to complete. All modern computers use
multitasking to perform several tasks at once. Some computers can be used by several
people at once. Since the CPU is so fast, it can quickly switch its attention from one user to
another, devoting a fraction of a second to each user in turn. This application of multitasking
is called timesharing . But a modern personal computer with just a single user also uses
multitasking. For example, the user might be typing a paper while a clock is continuously
displaying the time and a file is being downloaded over the network.
Each of the individual tasks that the CPU is working on is called a thread . (Or a
process; there are technical differences between threads and processes, but they are not
important here.) At any given time, only one thread can actually be executed by a CPU. The
CPU will continue running the same thread until one of several things happens:
The thread might voluntarily yield control, to give other threads a chance to run.
The thread might have to wait for some asynchronous event to occur. For example, the
thread might request some data from the disk drive, or it might wait for the user to
press a key. While it is waiting, the thread is said to be blocked , and other threads
have a chance to run. When the event occurs, an interrupt will “wake up” the thread so
that it can continue running.
The thread might use up its allotted slice of time and be suspended to allow other threads to
run. Not all computers can “forcibly” suspend a thread in this way; those that can are said
to use preemptive multitasking . To do preemptive multitasking, a computer needs a
special timer device that generates an interrupt at regular intervals, such as 100 times per
second. When a timer interrupt occurs, the CPU has a chance to switch from one thread to
another, whether the thread that is currently running likes it or not.
Ordinary users, and indeed ordinary programmers, have no need to deal with interrupts and
interrupt handlers. They can concentrate on the different tasks or threads that they want the
computer to perform; the details of how the computer manages to get all those tasks done are
not important to them. In fact, most users, and many programmers, can ignore threads and
6 CHAPTER 1. THE MENTAL LANDSCAPE

multitasking altogether. However, threads have become increasingly important as computers

have become more powerful and as they have begun to make more use of multitasking. Indeed,
threads are built into the Java programming language as a fundamental programming concept.
Just as important in Java and in modern programming in general is the basic concept of
asynchronous events. While programmers don’t actually deal with interrupts directly, they do
often find themselves writing event handlers, which, like interrupt handlers, are called
asynchronously when specified events occur. Such “event-driven programming” has a very
different feel from the more traditional straight-through, synchronous programming. We will
begin with the more traditional type of programming, which is still used for programming
individual tasks, but we will return to threads and events later in the text.
∗∗∗
By the way, the software that does all the interrupt handling and the communication with
the user and with hardware devices is called the operating system . The operating system
is the basic, essential software without which a computer would not be able to function.
Other programs, such as word processors and World Wide Web browsers, are dependent
upon the operating system. Common operating systems include Linux, DOS, Windows
2000, Windows XP, and the Macintosh OS.

1.3 The Java Virtual Machine

Machine language consists of very simple instructions that can be executed directly by the CPU
of a computer. Almost all programs, though, are written in high-level programming languages
such as Java, Pascal, or C++. A program written in a high-level language cannot be run directly
on any computer. First, it has to be translated into machine language. This translation can be
done by a program called a compiler . A compiler takes a high-level-language program and
translates it into an executable machine-language program. Once the translation is done, the
machine-language program can be run any number of times, but of course it can only be run on
one type of computer (since each type of computer has its own individual machine language). If
the program is to run on another type of computer it has to be re-translated, using a di fferent
compiler, into the appropriate machine language.
There is an alternative to compiling a high-level language program. Instead of using a
compiler, which translates the program all at once, you can use an interpreter , which
translates it instruction-by-instruction, as necessary. An interpreter is a program that acts
much like a CPU, with a kind of fetch-and-execute cycle. In order to execute a program, the
interpreter runs in a loop in which it repeatedly reads one instruction from the program,
decides what is necessary to carry out that instruction, and then performs the appropriate
machine-language commands to do so.
One use of interpreters is to execute high-level language programs. For example, the pro-
gramming language Lisp is usually executed by an interpreter rather than a compiler. However,
interpreters have another purpose: they can let you use a machine-language program meant for
one type of computer on a completely different type of computer. For example, there is a pro-
gram called “Virtual PC” that runs on Macintosh computers. Virtual PC is an interpreter that executes
machine-language programs written for IBM-PC-clone computers. If you run Virtual PC on your Macintosh, you
can run any PC program, including programs written for Windows. (Unfortunately, a PC program will run much
more slowly than it would on an actual IBM clone. The problem is that Virtual PC executes several Macintosh
machine-language instructions for
1.3. THE JAVA VIRTUAL MACHINE 7

each PC machine-language instruction in the program it is interpreting. Compiled programs

are inherently faster than interpreted programs.)
∗∗∗
The designers of Java chose to use a combination of compilation and interpretation. Pro-
grams written in Java are compiled into machine language, but it is a machine language for
a computer that doesn’t really exist. This so-called “virtual” computer is known as the Java
virtual machine. The machine language for the Java virtual machine is called Java byte-
code. There is no reason why Java bytecode could not be used as the machine language of
a real computer, rather than a virtual computer.
However, one of the main selling points of Java is that it can actually be used on any
computer. All that the computer needs is an interpreter for Java bytecode. Such an interpreter
simulates the Java virtual machine in the same way that Virtual PC simulates a PC computer.
Of course, a different Jave bytecode interpreter is needed for each type of computer, but
once a computer has a Java bytecode interpreter, it can run any Java bytecode program.
And the same Java bytecode program can be run on any computer that has such an
interpreter. This is one of the essential features of Java: the same compiled program can be
run on many different types of computers.

Why, you might wonder, use the intermediate Java bytecode at all? Why not just
distribute the original Java program and let each person compile it into the machine
language of whatever computer they want to run it on? There are many reasons. First of all,
a compiler has to understand Java, a complex high-level language. The compiler is itself a
complex program. A Java bytecode interpreter, on the other hand, is a fairly small, simple
program. This makes it easy to write a bytecode interpreter for a new type of computer;
once that is done, that computer can run any compiled Java program. It would be much
harder to write a Java compiler for the same computer.
Furthermore, many Java programs are meant to be downloaded over a network. This
leads to obvious security concerns: you don’t want to download and run a program that will
damage your computer or your files. The bytecode interpreter acts as a bu ffer between you
and the program you download. You are really running the interpreter, which runs the
downloaded program indirectly. The interpreter can protect you from potentially dangerous
actions on the part of that program.
I should note that there is no necessary connection between Java and Java bytecode. A pro-
gram written in Java could certainly be compiled into the machine language of a real computer.
And programs written in other languages could be compiled into Java bytecode. However, it is
the combination of Java and Java bytecode that is platform-independent, secure, and network-
compatible while allowing you to program in a modern high-level object-oriented language.
8 CHAPTER 1. THE MENTAL LANDSCAPE

∗∗∗
I should also note that the really hard part of platform-independence is providing a
“Graph-ical User Interface”—with windows, buttons, etc.—that will work on all the platforms
that support Java. You’ll see more about this problem in Section 1.6.

1.4 Fundamental Building Blocks of Programs

There are two basic aspects of programming: data and instructions. To work with data, you
need to understand variables and types; to work with instructions, you need to understand
control structures and subroutines. You’ll spend a large part of the course becoming familiar
with these concepts.
A variable is just a memory location (or several locations treated as a unit) that has been
given a name so that it can be easily referred to and used in a program. The programmer
only has to worry about the name; it is the compiler’s responsibility to keep track of the
memory location. The programmer does need to keep in mind that the name refers to a kind
of “box” in memory that can hold data, even if the programmer doesn’t have to know where
in memory that box is located.
In Java and most other languages, a variable has a type that indicates what sort of data
it can hold. One type of variable might hold integers—whole numbers such as 3, -7, and 0—
while another holds floating point numbers—numbers with decimal points such as 3.14, -2.7,
or 17.0. (Yes, the computer does make a distinction between the integer 17 and the floating-
point number 17.0; they actually look quite different inside the computer.) There could also
be types for individual characters (’A’, ’;’, etc.), strings (“Hello”, “A string can include many
characters”, etc.), and less common types such as dates, colors, sounds, or any other type
of data that a program might need to store.
Programming languages always have commands for getting data into and out of
variables and for doing computations with data. For example, the following “assignment
statement,” which might appear in a Java program, tells the computer to take the number
stored in the variable named “principal”, multiply that number by 0.07, and then store the
result in the variable named “interest”:
interest = principal * 0.07;

There are also “input commands” for getting data from the user or from files on the
computer’s disks and “output commands” for sending data in the other direction.
These basic commands—for moving data from place to place and for performing
computations—are the building blocks for all programs. These building blocks are combined
into complex programs using control structures and subroutines.
∗∗∗
A program is a sequence of instructions. In the ordinary “flow of control,” the computer
executes the instructions in the sequence in which they appear, one after the other. However,
this is obviously very limited: the computer would soon run out of instructions to execute.
Control structures are special instructions that can change the flow of control. There are two
basic types of control structure: loops, which allow a sequence of instructions to be repeated
over and over, and branches, which allow the computer to decide between two or more different
courses of action by testing conditions that occur as the program is running.
For example, it might be that if the value of the variable “principal” is greater than 10000,
then the “interest” should be computed by multiplying the principal by 0.05; if not, then the
1.5. OBJECT-ORIENTED PROGRAMMING 9

interest should be computed by multiplying the principal by 0.04. A program needs some
way of expressing this type of decision. In Java, it could be expressed using the following “if
statement”:
if (principal > 10000)
interest = principal * 0.05;
else
interest = principal * 0.04;

(Don’t worry about the details for now. Just remember that the computer can test a condition
and decide what to do next on the basis of that test.)
Loops are used when the same task has to be performed more than once. For example,
if you want to print out a mailing label for each name on a mailing list, you might say, “Get
the first name and address and print the label; get the second name and address and print
the label; get the third name and address and print the label—” But this quickly becomes
ridiculous—and might not work at all if you don’t know in advance how many names there
are. What you would like to say is something like “While there are more names to process,
get the next name and address, and print the label.” A loop can be used in a program to
express such repetition.
∗∗∗
Large programs are so complex that it would be almost impossible to write them if there
were not some way to break them up into manageable “chunks.” Subroutines provide one
way to do this. A subroutine consists of the instructions for performing some task, grouped
together as a unit and given a name. That name can then be used as a substitute for the
whole set of instructions. For example, suppose that one of the tasks that your program
needs to perform is to draw a house on the screen. You can take the necessary instructions,
make them into a subroutine, and give that subroutine some appropriate name—say,
“drawHouse()”. Then anyplace in your program where you need to draw a house, you can
do so with the single command:
drawHouse();

This will have the same effect as repeating all the house-drawing instructions in each place.
The advantage here is not just that you save typing. Organizing your program into sub-
routines also helps you organize your thinking and your program design e ffort. While writing the
house-drawing subroutine, you can concentrate on the problem of drawing a house without
worrying for the moment about the rest of the program. And once the subroutine is written, you
can forget about the details of drawing houses—that problem is solved, since you have a
subroutine to do it for you. A subroutine becomes just like a built-in part of the language which
you can use without thinking about the details of what goes on “inside” the subroutine.
∗∗∗
Variables, types, loops, branches, and subroutines are the basis of what might be called
“traditional programming.” However, as programs become larger, additional structure is
needed to help deal with their complexity. One of the most e ffective tools that has been
found is object-oriented programming, which is discussed in the next section.

1.5 Objects and Object-oriented Programming

Programs must be designed. No one can just sit down at the computer and compose a program
of any complexity. The discipline called software engineering is concerned with
10 CHAPTER 1. THE MENTAL LANDSCAPE

the construction of correct, working, well-written programs. The software engineer tends to
use accepted and proven methods for analyzing the problem to be solved and for designing
a program to solve that problem.
During the 1970s and into the 80s, the primary software engineering methodology was
structured programming . The structured programming approach to program design was
based on the following advice: To solve a large problem, break the problem into several
pieces and work on each piece separately; to solve each piece, treat it as a new problem
which can itself be broken down into smaller problems; eventually, you will work your way
down to problems that can be solved directly, without further decomposition. This approach
is called top-down programming .
There is nothing wrong with top-down programming. It is a valuable and often-used ap-
proach to problem-solving. However, it is incomplete. For one thing, it deals almost entirely
with producing the instructions necessary to solve a problem. But as time went on, people
realized that the design of the data structures for a program was as least as important as
the design of subroutines and control structures. Top-down programming doesn’t give
adequate consideration to the data that the program manipulates.
Another problem with strict top-down programming is that it makes it di fficult to reuse
work done for other projects. By starting with a particular problem and subdividing it into
convenient pieces, top-down programming tends to produce a design that is unique to that
problem. It is unlikely that you will be able to take a large chunk of programming from
another program and fit it into your project, at least not without extensive modification.
Producing high-quality programs is difficult and expensive, so programmers and the people
who employ them are always eager to reuse past work.
∗∗∗
So, in practice, top-down design is often combined with bottom-up design . In bottom-
up design, the approach is to start “at the bottom,” with problems that you already know how
to solve (and for which you might already have a reusable software component at hand).
From there, you can work upwards towards a solution to the overall problem.
The reusable components should be as “modular” as possible. A module is a
component of a larger system that interacts with the rest of the system in a simple, well-
defined, straightforward manner. The idea is that a module can be “plugged into” a system.
The details of what goes on inside the module are not important to the system as a whole,
as long as the module fulfills its assigned role correctly. This is called information hiding ,
and it is one of the most important principles of software engineering.
One common format for software modules is to contain some data, along with some sub-
routines for manipulating that data. For example, a mailing-list module might contain a list of
names and addresses along with a subroutine for adding a new name, a subroutine for
printing mailing labels, and so forth. In such modules, the data itself is often hidden inside
the module; a program that uses the module can then manipulate the data only indirectly, by
calling the subroutines provided by the module. This protects the data, since it can only be
manipulated in known, well-defined ways. And it makes it easier for programs to use the
module, since they don’t have to worry about the details of how the data is represented.
Information about the representation of the data is hidden.
Modules that could support this kind of information-hiding became common in program-
ming languages in the early 1980s. Since then, a more advanced form of the same idea has
more or less taken over software engineering. This latest approach is called object-
oriented programming , often abbreviated as OOP.
1.5. OBJECT-ORIENTED PROGRAMMING 11

The central concept of object-oriented programming is the object , which is a kind of

module containing data and subroutines. The point-of-view in OOP is that an object is a kind
of self-sufficient entity that has an internal state (the data it contains) and that can respond
to messages (calls to its subroutines). A mailing list object, for example, has a state
consisting of a list of names and addresses. If you send it a message telling it to add a
name, it will respond by modifying its state to reflect the change. If you send it a message
telling it to print itself, it will respond by printing out its list of names and addresses.
The OOP approach to software engineering is to start by identifying the objects involved
in a problem and the messages that those objects should respond to. The program that
results is a collection of objects, each with its own data and its own set of responsibilities.
The objects interact by sending messages to each other. There is not much “top-down” in
such a program, and people used to more traditional programs can have a hard time getting
used to OOP. However, people who use OOP would claim that object-oriented programs
tend to be better models of the way the world itself works, and that they are therefore easier
to write, easier to understand, and more likely to be correct.
∗∗∗
You should think of objects as “knowing” how to respond to certain messages. Di fferent
objects might respond to the same message in different ways. For example, a “print”
message would produce very different results, depending on the object it is sent to. This
property of objects—that different objects can respond to the same message in di fferent
ways—is called polymorphism .
It is common for objects to bear a kind of “family resemblance” to one another. Objects
that contain the same type of data and that respond to the same messages in the same way
belong to the same class. (In actual programming, the class is primary; that is, a class is
created and then one or more objects are created using that class as a template.) But
objects can be similar without being in exactly the same class.
For example, consider a drawing program that lets the user draw lines, rectangles, ovals,
polygons, and curves on the screen. In the program, each visible object on the screen could
be represented by a software object in the program. There would be five classes of objects
in the program, one for each type of visible object that can be drawn. All the lines would
belong to one class, all the rectangles to another class, and so on. These classes are
obviously related; all of them represent “drawable objects.” They would, for example, all
presumably be able to respond to a “draw yourself” message. Another level of grouping,
based on the data needed to represent each type of object, is less obvious, but would be
very useful in a program: We can group polygons and curves together as “multipoint
objects,” while lines, rectangles, and ovals are “two-point objects.” (A line is determined by
its endpoints, a rectangle by two of its corners, and an oval by two corners of the rectangle
that contains it.) We could diagram these relationships as follows:
12 CHAPTER 1. THE MENTAL LANDSCAPE

DrawableObject, MultipointObject, and TwoPointObject would be classes in the program.

MultipointObject and TwoPointObject would be subclasses of DrawableObject. The class
Line would be a subclass of TwoPointObject and (indirectly) of DrawableObject. A subclass
of a class is said to inherit the properties of that class. The subclass can add to its
inheritance and it can even “override” part of that inheritance (by defining a di fferent
response to some method). Nevertheless, lines, rectangles, and so on are drawable objects,
and the class DrawableObject expresses this relationship.
Inheritance is a powerful means for organizing a program. It is also related to the
problem of reusing software components. A class is the ultimate reusable component. Not
only can it be reused directly if it fits exactly into a program you are trying to write, but if it
just almost fits, you can still reuse it by defining a subclass and making only the small
changes necessary to adapt it exactly to your needs.
So, OOP is meant to be both a superior program-development tool and a partial solution
to the software reuse problem. Objects, classes, and object-oriented programming will be
important themes throughout the rest of this text.

1.6 The Modern User Interface

When computers were first introduced, ordinary people—including most programmers— couldn’t
get near them. They were locked up in rooms with white-coated attendants who would take your
programs and data, feed them to the computer, and return the computer’s response some time
later. When timesharing—where the computer switches its attention rapidly from one person to
another—was invented in the 1960s, it became possible for several people to interact directly with
the computer at the same time. On a timesharing system, users sit at “terminals” where they type
commands to the computer, and the computer types back its re-sponse. Early personal computers
also used typed commands and responses, except that there was only one person involved at a
time. This type of interaction between a user and a computer is called a command-line interface.

Today, of course, most people interact with computers in a completely di fferent way.
They use a Graphical User Interface, or GUI. The computer draws interface components
on the screen. The components include things like windows, scroll bars, menus, buttons,
and icons. Usually, a mouse is used to manipulate such components. Assuming that you
have not just been teleported in from the 1970s, you are no doubt already familiar with the
basics of graphical user interfaces!
A lot of GUI interface components have become fairly standard. That is, they have similar appearance and
behavior on many different computer platforms including Macintosh, Windows,
1.6. THE MODERN USER INTERFACE 13

and Linux. Java programs, which are supposed to run on many di fferent platforms without
modification to the program, can use all the standard GUI components. They might vary a
little in appearance from platform to platform, but their functionality should be identical on
any computer on which the program runs.
Shown below is an image of a very simple Java program—actually an “applet ”, since it
is meant to appear on a Web page—that shows a few standard GUI interface components.
There are four components that the user can interact with: a button, a checkbox, a text field,
and a pop-up menu. These components are labeled. There are a few other components in
the applet. The labels themselves are components (even though you can’t interact with
them). The right half of the applet is a text area component, which can display multiple lines
of text, and a scrollbar component appears alongside the text area when the number of lines
of text becomes larger than will fit in the text area. And in fact, in Java terminology, the
whole applet is itself considered to be a “component.”

Now, Java actually has two complete sets of GUI components. One of these, the AWT or
Abstract Windowing Toolkit , was available in the original version of Java. The other,
which is known as Swing , is included in Java version 1.2 or later, and is used in preference
to the AWT in most modern Java programs. The applet that is shown above uses
components that are part of Swing. If your Web browser uses an old version of Java, you
might get an error when the browser tries to load the applet. Remember that most of the
applets in this textbook require Java 5.0 (or higher).
When a user interacts with the GUI components in this applet, an “event” is generated.
For example, clicking a push button generates an event, and pressing return while typing in
a text field generates an event. Each time an event is generated, a message is sent to the
applet telling it that the event has occurred, and the applet responds according to its
program. In fact, the program consists mainly of “event handlers” that tell the applet how to
respond to various types of events. In this example, the applet has been programmed to
respond to each event by displaying a message in the text area.
The use of the term “message” here is deliberate. Messages, as you saw in the previous
sec-tion, are sent to objects. In fact, Java GUI components are implemented as objects.
Java includes many predefined classes that represent various types of GUI components.
Some of these classes are subclasses of others. Here is a diagram showing some of
Swing’s GUI classes and their relationships:
14 CHAPTER 1. THE MENTAL LANDSCAPE

Don’t worry about the details for now, but try to get some feel about how object-oriented
programming and inheritance are used here. Note that all the GUI classes are subclasses,
directly or indirectly, of a class called JComponent, which represents general properties that are
shared by all Swing components. Two of the direct subclasses of JComponent themselves have
subclasses. The classes JTextArea and JTextField, which have certain behaviors in common,
are grouped together as subclasses of JTextComponent. Similarly JButton and JToggleButton
are subclasses of JAbstractButton, which represents properties common to both buttons and
checkboxes. (JComboBox, by the way, is the Swing class that represents pop-up menus.)
Just from this brief discussion, perhaps you can see how GUI programming can make
effec-tive use of object-oriented design. In fact, GUI’s, with their “visible objects,” are
probably a major factor contributing to the popularity of OOP.
Programming with GUI components and events is one of the most interesting aspects of
Java. However, we will spend several chapters on the basics before returning to this topic in
Chapter 6.

1.7 The Internet and the World-Wide Web

Computers can be connected together on networks. A computer on a network can
communicate with other computers on the same network by exchanging data and files or by
sending and receiving messages. Computers on a network can even work together on a large
computation.
Today, millions of computers throughout the world are connected to a single huge network
called the Internet . New computers are being connected to the Internet every day. Computers
can join the Internet by using a modem to establish a connection through telephone lines.
Broadband connections to the Internet, such as DSL and cable modems, are increasingly
common. They allow faster data transmission than is possible through telephone modems.
There are elaborate protocols for communication over the Internet. A protocol is simply a
detailed specification of how communication is to proceed. For two computers to communicate at
all, they must both be using the same protocols. The most basic protocols on the Internet are the
Internet Protocol (IP), which specifies how data is to be physically transmitted from one
computer to another, and the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP), which ensures that data sent
using IP is received in its entirety and without error. These two protocols, which are referred to collectively as
TCP/IP, provide a foundation for communication. Other protocols
1.7. THE INTERNET 15

use TCP/IP to send specific types of information such as web pages, electronic mail, and
data files.
All communication over the Internet is in the form of packets. A packet consists of some data
being sent from one computer to another, along with addressing information that indicates where
on the Internet that data is supposed to go. Think of a packet as an envelope with an address on
the outside and a message on the inside. (The message is the data.) The packet also includes a
“return address,” that is, the address of the sender. A packet can hold only a limited amount of
data; longer messages must be divided among several packets, which are then sent individually
over the net and reassembled at their destination.
Every computer on the Internet has an IP address, a number that identifies it uniquely
among all the computers on the net. The IP address is used for addressing packets. A computer
can only send data to another computer on the Internet if it knows that computer’s IP address.
Since people prefer to use names rather than numbers, most computers are also identified by
names, called domain names. For example, the main computer of the Mathematics Depart-
ment at Hobart and William Smith Colleges has the domain name [Link]. (Domain
names are just for convenience; your computer still needs to know IP addresses before it can
communicate. There are computers on the Internet whose job it is to translate domain names to
IP addresses. When you use a domain name, your computer sends a message to a domain
name server to find out the corresponding IP address. Then, your computer uses the IP address,
rather than the domain name, to communicate with the other computer.)
The Internet provides a number of services to the computers connected to it (and, of
course, to the users of those computers). These services use TCP/IP to send various types
of data over the net. Among the most popular services are instant messaging, file sharing,
electronic mail, and the World-Wide Web. Each service has its own protocols, which are
used to control transmission of data over the network. Each service also has some sort of
user interface, which allows the user to view, send, and receive data through the service.
For example, the email service uses a protocol known as SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer
Protocol) to transfer email messages from one computer to another. Other protocols, such
as POP and IMAP, are used to fetch messages from an email account so that the recipient
can read them. A person who uses email, however, doesn’t need to understand or even
know about these protocols. Instead, they are used behind the scenes by the programs that
the person uses to send and receive email messages. These programs provide an easy-to-
use user interface to the underlying network protocols.
The World-Wide Web is perhaps the most exciting of network services. The World-Wide
Web allows you to request pages of information that are stored on computers all over the
Internet. A Web page can contain links to other pages on the same computer from which it
was obtained or to other computers anywhere in the world. A computer that stores such
pages of information is called a web server . The user interface to the Web is the type of
program known as a web browser . Common web browsers include Internet Explorer and
Firefox. You use a Web browser to request a page of information. The browser will send a
request for that page to the computer on which the page is stored, and when a response is
received from that computer, the web browser displays it to you in a neatly formatted form. A
web browser is just a user interface to the Web. Behind the scenes, the web browser uses a
protocol called HTTP (HyperText Transfer Protocol) to send each page request and to
receive the response from the web server.
∗∗∗
Now just what, you might be thinking, does all this have to do with Java? In fact, Java
16 CHAPTER 1. THE MENTAL LANDSCAPE

is intimately associated with the Internet and the World-Wide Web. As you have seen in the
previous section, special Java programs called applets are meant to be transmitted over the
Internet and displayed on Web pages. A Web server transmits a Java applet just as it would
transmit any other type of information. A Web browser that understands Java—that is, that
includes an interpreter for the Java virtual machine—can then run the applet right on the
Web page. Since applets are programs, they can do almost anything, including complex
interaction with the user. With Java, a Web page becomes more than just a passive display
of information. It becomes anything that programmers can imagine and implement.
But applets are only one aspect of Java’s relationship with the Internet, and not the major
one. In fact, as both Java and the Internet have matured, applets have become less
important. At the same time, however, Java has increasingly been used to write complex,
stand-alone applications that do not depend on a web browser. Many of these programs are
network-related. For example many of the largest and most complex web sites use web
server software that is written in Java. Java includes excellent support for network protocols,
and its platform independence makes it possible to write network programs that work on
many different types of computer.
Its association with the Internet is not Java’s only advantage. But many good
programming languages have been invented only to be soon forgotten. Java has had the
good luck to ride on the coattails of the Internet’s immense and increasing popularity.
Quiz 17

Quiz on Chapter 1

One of the components of a computer is its CPU. What is a CPU and what role does it
play in a computer?

Explain what is meant by an “asynchronous event.” Give some examples.

What is the difference between a “compiler” and an “interpreter”?

Explain the difference between high-level languages and machine language.

If you have the source code for a Java program, and you want to run that program, you
will need both a compiler and an interpreter. What does the Java compiler do, and
what does the Java interpreter do?

What is a subroutine?

Java is an object-oriented programming language. What is an object ?

What is a variable? (There are four different ideas associated with variables in Java. Try
to mention all four aspects in your answer. Hint: One of the aspects is the variable’s
name.)

Java is a “platform-independent language.” What does this mean?

What is the “Internet”? Give some examples of how it is used. (What kind of services does
it provide?)
18 CHAPTER 1. THE MENTAL LANDSCAPE
Chapter 2

Programming in the Small I:

Names and Things

On a basic level (the level of machine language), a computer can perform only very simple
operations. A computer performs complex tasks by stringing together large numbers of such
operations. Such tasks must be “scripted” in complete and perfect detail by programs. Creating
complex programs will never be really easy, but the difficulty can be handled to some extent by
giving the program a clear overall structure. The design of the overall structure of a program is
what I call “programming in the large.”
Programming in the small, which is sometimes called coding , would then refer to filling
in the details of that design. The details are the explicit, step-by-step instructions for
performing fairly small-scale tasks. When you do coding, you are working fairly “close to the
machine,” with some of the same concepts that you might use in machine language:
memory locations, arithmetic operations, loops and branches. In a high-level language such
as Java, you get to work with these concepts on a level several steps above machine
language. However, you still have to worry about getting all the details exactly right.
This chapter and the next examine the facilities for programming in the small in the Java
programming language. Don’t be misled by the term “programming in the small” into thinking
that this material is easy or unimportant. This material is an essential foundation for all types
of programming. If you don’t understand it, you can’t write programs, no matter how good
you get at designing their large-scale structure.

2.1 The Basic Java Application

A program is a sequence of instructions that a computer can execute to perform some task. A
simple enough idea, but for the computer to make any use of the instructions, they must be
written in a form that the computer can use. This means that programs have to be written in
programming languages. Programming languages differ from ordinary human languages in
being completely unambiguous and very strict about what is and is not allowed in a program.
The rules that determine what is allowed are called the syntax of the language. Syntax rules
specify the basic vocabulary of the language and how programs can be constructed using things
like loops, branches, and subroutines. A syntactically correct program is one that can be
successfully compiled or interpreted; programs that have syntax errors will be rejected (hopefully
with a useful error message that will help you fix the problem).
So, to be a successful programmer, you have to develop a detailed knowledge of the syntax

19
20 CHAPTER 2. NAMES AND THINGS

of the programming language that you are using. However, syntax is only part of the story.
It’s not enough to write a program that will run—you want a program that will run and
produce the correct result! That is, the meaning of the program has to be right. The
meaning of a program is referred to as its semantics. A semantically correct program is one
that does what you want it to.
Furthermore, a program can be syntactically and semantically correct but still be a pretty
bad program. Using the language correctly is not the same as using it well. For example, a
good program has “style.” It is written in a way that will make it easy for people to read and
to understand. It follows conventions that will be familiar to other programmers. And it has
an overall design that will make sense to human readers. The computer is completely
oblivious to such things, but to a human reader, they are paramount. These aspects of
programming are sometimes referred to as pragmatics.
When I introduce a new language feature, I will explain the syntax, the semantics, and
some of the pragmatics of that feature. You should memorize the syntax; that’s the easy
part. Then you should get a feeling for the semantics by following the examples given,
making sure that you understand how they work, and maybe writing short programs of your
own to test your understanding. And you should try to appreciate and absorb the pragmatics
—this means learning how to use the language feature well, with style that will earn you the
admiration of other programmers.
Of course, even when you’ve become familiar with all the individual features of the
language, that doesn’t make you a programmer. You still have to learn how to construct
complex programs to solve particular problems. For that, you’ll need both experience and
taste. You’ll find hints about software development throughout this textbook.
∗∗∗
We begin our exploration of Java with the problem that has become traditional for such
beginnings: to write a program that displays the message “Hello World!”. This might seem
like a trivial problem, but getting a computer to do this is really a big first step in learning a
new programming language (especially if it’s your first programming language). It means
that you understand the basic process of:
getting the program text into the computer,
compiling the program, and
running the compiled program.
The first time through, each of these steps will probably take you a few tries to get right. I
won’t go into the details here of how you do each of these steps; it depends on the particular
computer and Java programming environment that you are using. See Section 2.6 for
informa-tion about creating and running Java programs in specific programming
environments. But in general, you will type the program using some sort of text editor and
save the program in a file. Then, you will use some command to try to compile the file. You’ll
either get a message that the program contains syntax errors, or you’ll get a compiled
version of the program. In the case of Java, the program is compiled into Java bytecode, not
into machine language. Fi-nally, you can run the compiled program by giving some
appropriate command. For Java, you will actually use an interpreter to execute the Java
bytecode. Your programming environment might automate some of the steps for you, but
you can be sure that the same three steps are being done in the background.
Here is a Java program to display the message “Hello World!”. Don’t expect to understand
what’s going on here just yet—some of it you won’t really understand until a few chapters from
2.1. THE BASIC JAVA APPLICATION 21

now:
A program to display the message
"Hello World!" on standard output
public class HelloWorld {
public static void main(String[] args) {
[Link]("Hello World!");
}
} // end of class HelloWorld

The command that actually displays the message is:

[Link]("Hello World!");

This command is an example of a subroutine call statement . It uses a “built-in subroutine”

named [Link] to do the actual work. Recall that a subroutine consists of
the instructions for performing some task, chunked together and given a name. That name
can be used to “call” the subroutine whenever that task needs to be performed. A built-in
subroutine is one that is already defined as part of the language and therefore
automatically available for use in any program.
When you run this program, the message “Hello World!” (without the quotes) will be
displayed on standard output. Unfortunately, I can’t say exactly what that means! Java is
meant to run on many different platforms, and standard output will mean di fferent things on
different platforms. However, you can expect the message to show up in some convenient
place. (If you use a command-line interface, like that in Sun Microsystem’s Java
Development Kit, you type in a command to tell the computer to run the program. The
computer will type the output from the program, Hello World!, on the next line.)
You must be curious about all the other stuff in the above program. Part of it consists of
comments. Comments in a program are entirely ignored by the computer; they are there for
human readers only. This doesn’t mean that they are unimportant. Programs are meant to
be read by people as well as by computers, and without comments, a program can be very
difficult to understand. Java has two types of comments. The first type, used in the above
program, begins with // and extends to the end of a line. The computer ignores the // and
everything that follows it on the same line. Java has another style of comment that can
extend over many lines. That type of comment begins with /* and ends with */.
Everything else in the program is required by the rules of Java syntax. All programming in
Java is done inside “classes.” The first line in the above program (not counting the comments)
says that this is a class named HelloWorld. “HelloWorld,” the name of the class, also serves as
the name of the program. Not every class is a program. In order to define a program, a class
must include a subroutine named main, with a definition that takes the form:
public static void main(String[] args) {
statements
}

When you tell the Java interpreter to run the program, the interpreter calls the main()
subroutine, and the statements that it contains are executed. These statements make up the
script that tells the computer exactly what to do when the program is executed. The main()
routine can call subroutines that are defined in the same class or even in other classes, but it is
the main() routine that determines how and in what order the other subroutines are used.
22 CHAPTER 2. NAMES AND THINGS

The word “public” in the first line of main() means that this routine can be called from
out-side the program. This is essential because the main() routine is called by the Java
interpreter, which is something external to the program itself. The remainder of the first line
of the routine is harder to explain at the moment; for now, just think of it as part of the
required syntax. The definition of the subroutine—that is, the instructions that say what it
does—consists of the sequence of “statements” enclosed between braces, { and }. Here,
I’ve used statements as a placeholder for the actual statements that make up the program.
Throughout this textbook, I will always use a similar format: anything that you see in this
style of text (italic in angle brackets) is a placeholder that describes something you need to
type when you write an actual program.
As noted above, a subroutine can’t exist by itself. It has to be part of a “class”. A program
is defined by a public class that takes the form:
public class program-name { optional-
variable-declarations-and-subroutines
public static void main(String[] args) {
statements
}
optional-variable-declarations-and-subroutines
}

The name on the first line is the name of the program, as well as the name of the class. If the
name of the class is HelloWorld, then the class must be saved in a file called
[Link]. When this file is compiled, another file named [Link] will be
produced. This class file, [Link], contains the Java bytecode that is executed by
a Java interpreter. [Link] is called the source code for the program. To execute
the program, you only need the compiled class file, not the source code.
The layout of the program on the page, such as the use of blank lines and indentation, is
not part of the syntax or semantics of the language. The computer doesn’t care about layout
— you could run the entire program together on one line as far as it is concerned. However,
layout is important to human readers, and there are certain style guidelines for layout that
are followed by most programmers. These style guidelines are part of the pragmatics of the
Java programming language.
Also note that according to the above syntax specification, a program can contain other
subroutines besides main(), as well as things called “variable declarations.” You’ll learn
more about these later, but not until Chapter 4.

2.2 Variables and the Primitive Types

Names are fundamental to programming. In programs, names are used to refer to many
different sorts of things. In order to use those things, a programmer must understand the rules
for giving names to things and the rules for using the names to work with those things. That is,
the programmer must understand the syntax and the semantics of names.
According to the syntax rules of Java, a name is a sequence of one or more characters. It
must begin with a letter or underscore and must consist entirely of letters, digits, and
underscores. (“Underscore” refers to the character ’ ’.) For example, here are some legal names:
N n rate x15 quite a long name HelloWorld
2.2. VARIABLES AND TYPES 23

No spaces are allowed in identifiers; HelloWorld is a legal identifier, but “Hello World” is
not. Upper case and lower case letters are considered to be different, so that
HelloWorld, helloworld, HELLOWORLD, and hElloWorLD are all distinct names.
Certain names are reserved for special uses in Java, and cannot be used by the
programmer for other purposes. These reserved words include: class, public,
static, if, else, while, and several dozen other words.
Java is actually pretty liberal about what counts as a letter or a digit. Java uses the
Unicode character set, which includes thousands of characters from many di fferent
languages and different alphabets, and many of these characters count as letters or digits.
However, I will be sticking to what can be typed on a regular English keyboard.
The pragmatics of naming includes style guidelines about how to choose names for things.
For example, it is customary for names of classes to begin with upper case letters, while names
of variables and of subroutines begin with lower case letters; you can avoid a lot of confusion by
following the same convention in your own programs. Most Java programmers do not use
underscores in names, although some do use them at the beginning of the names of certain
kinds of variables. When a name is made up of several words, such as HelloWorld or
interestRate, it is customary to capitalize each word, except possibly the first; this is
sometimes referred to as camel case, since the upper case letters in the middle of a name are
supposed to look something like the humps on a camel’s back.
Finally, I’ll note that things are often referred to by compound names which consist of
several ordinary names separated by periods. (Compound names are also called qualified
names.) You’ve already seen an example: [Link]. The idea here is that
things in Java can contain other things. A compound name is a kind of path to an item through
one or more levels of containment. The name [Link] indicates that something
called “System” contains something called “out” which in turn contains something called “println”.
Non-compound names are called simple identifiers. I’ll use the term identifier to refer to any
name—simple or compound—that can be used to refer to something in Java. (Note that the
reserved words are not identifiers, since they can’t be used as names for things.)

2.2.1 Variables
Programs manipulate data that are stored in memory. In machine language, data can only
be referred to by giving the numerical address of the location in memory where it is stored.
In a high-level language such as Java, names are used instead of numbers to refer to data.
It is the job of the computer to keep track of where in memory the data is actually stored; the
programmer only has to remember the name. A name used in this way—to refer to data
stored in memory—is called a variable.
Variables are actually rather subtle. Properly speaking, a variable is not a name for the
data itself but for a location in memory that can hold data. You should think of a variable as
a container or box where you can store data that you will need to use later. The variable
refers directly to the box and only indirectly to the data in the box. Since the data in the box
can change, a variable can refer to different data values at di fferent times during the
execution of the program, but it always refers to the same box. Confusion can arise,
especially for beginning programmers, because when a variable is used in a program in
certain ways, it refers to the container, but when it is used in other ways, it refers to the data
in the container. You’ll see examples of both cases below.
(In this way, a variable is something like the title, “The President of the United States.” This
title can refer to different people at different times, but it always refers to the same o ffice.
24 CHAPTER 2. NAMES AND THINGS

If I say “the President went fishing,” I mean that George W. Bush went fishing. But if I say
“Hillary Clinton wants to be President” I mean that she wants to fill the o ffice, not that she
wants to be George Bush.)
In Java, the only way to get data into a variable—that is, into the box that the variable
names—is with an assignment statement . An assignment statement takes the form:
variable = expression ;

where expression represents anything that refers to or computes a data value. When the
computer comes to an assignment statement in the course of executing a program, it
evaluates the expression and puts the resulting data value into the variable. For example,
consider the simple assignment statement
rate = 0.07;

The variable in this assignment statement is rate, and the expression is the number
0.07. The computer executes this assignment statement by putting the number 0.07 in the
variable rate, replacing whatever was there before. Now, consider the following more
complicated assignment statement, which might come later in the same program:
interest = rate * principal;

Here, the value of the expression “rate * principal” is being assigned to the variable
interest. In the expression, the * is a “multiplication operator” that tells the computer to
multiply rate times principal. The names rate and principal are themselves
variables, and it is really the values stored in those variables that are to be multiplied. We
see that when a variable is used in an expression, it is the value stored in the variable that
matters; in this case, the variable seems to refer to the data in the box, rather than to the
box itself. When the computer executes this assignment statement, it takes the value of
rate, multiplies it by the value of principal, and stores the answer in the box referred
to by interest. When a variable is used on the left-hand side of an assignment
statement, it refers to the box that is named by the variable.
(Note, by the way, that an assignment statement is a command that is executed by the
computer at a certain time. It is not a statement of fact. For example, suppose a program
includes the statement “rate = 0.07;”. If the statement “interest = rate *
principal;” is executed later in the program, can we say that the principal is
multiplied by 0.07? No! The value of rate might have been changed in the meantime by
another statement. The meaning of an assignment statement is completely di fferent from
the meaning of an equation in mathematics, even though both use the symbol “=”.)

2.2.2 Types and Literals

A variable in Java is designed to hold only one particular type of data; it can legally hold that type
of data and no other. The compiler will consider it to be a syntax error if you try to violate this
rule. We say that Java is a strongly typed language because it enforces this rule.
There are eight so-called primitive types built into Java. The primitive types are named
byte, short, int, long, float, double, char, and boolean. The first four types hold integers
(whole numbers such as 17, -38477, and 0). The four integer types are distinguished by the
ranges of integers they can hold. The float and double types hold real numbers (such as 3.6
and -145.99). Again, the two real types are distinguished by their range and accuracy. A
variable of type char holds a single character from the Unicode character set. And a variable
of type boolean holds one of the two logical values true or false.
2.2. VARIABLES AND TYPES 25

Any data value stored in the computer’s memory must be represented as a binary
number, that is as a string of zeros and ones. A single zero or one is called a bit . A string of
eight bits is called a byte. Memory is usually measured in terms of bytes. Not surprisingly,
the byte data type refers to a single byte of memory. A variable of type byte holds a string of
eight bits, which can represent any of the integers between -128 and 127, inclusive. (There
are 256 integers in that range; eight bits can represent 256—two raised to the power eight—
different values.) As for the other integer types,
short corresponds to two bytes (16 bits). Variables of type short have values in the range
-32768 to 32767.
int corresponds to four bytes (32 bits). Variables of type int have values in the range -
2147483648 to 2147483647.
long corresponds to eight bytes (64 bits). Variables of type long have values in the range
-9223372036854775808 to 9223372036854775807.

You don’t have to remember these numbers, but they do give you some idea of the size
of integers that you can work with. Usually, you should just stick to the int data type, which is
good enough for most purposes.
The float data type is represented in four bytes of memory, using a standard method for
encoding real numbers. The maximum value for a float is about 10 raised to the power 38. A
float can have about 7 significant digits. (So that 32.3989231134 and 32.3989234399 would
both have to be rounded off to about 32.398923 in order to be stored in a variable of type
float.) A double takes up 8 bytes, can range up to about 10 to the power 308, and has about
15 significant digits. Ordinarily, you should stick to the double type for real values.
A variable of type char occupies two bytes in memory. The value of a char variable is a
single character such as A, *, x, or a space character. The value can also be a special character
such a tab or a carriage return or one of the many Unicode characters that come from di fferent
languages. When a character is typed into a program, it must be surrounded by single quotes;
for example: ’A’, ’*’, or ’x’. Without the quotes, A would be an identifier and * would be a
multiplication operator. The quotes are not part of the value and are not stored in the variable;
they are just a convention for naming a particular character constant in a program.
A name for a constant value is called a literal . A literal is what you have to type in a
program to represent a value. ’A’ and ’*’ are literals of type char, representing the character
values A and *. Certain special characters have special literals that use a backslash, \, as
an “escape character”. In particular, a tab is represented as ’\t’, a carriage return as ’\
r’, a linefeed as ’\n’, the single quote character as ’\’’, and the backslash itself as
’\\’. Note that even though you type two characters between the quotes in ’\t’, the
value represented by this literal is a single tab character.
Numeric literals are a little more complicated than you might expect. Of course, there are the
obvious literals such as 317 and 17.42. But there are other possibilities for expressing numbers
in a Java program. First of all, real numbers can be represented in an exponential form such as
1.3e12 or 12.3737e-108. The “e12” and “e-108” represent powers of 10, so that 1.3e12 means
12 108
1.3 times 10 and 12.3737e-108 means 12.3737 times 10− . This format can be used to
express very large and very small numbers. Any numerical literal that contains a decimal point or
exponential is a literal of type double. To make a literal of type float, you have to append an “F”
or “f” to the end of the number. For example, “1.2F” stands for 1.2 considered as a value of type
float. (Occasionally, you need to know this because the rules of Java say that you can’t assign a
value of type double to a variable of type float, so you might be
26 CHAPTER 2. NAMES AND THINGS

confronted with a ridiculous-seeming error message if you try to do something like “x =

1.2;” when x is a variable of type float. You have to say “x = 1.2F;". This is one reason
why I advise sticking to type double for real numbers.)
Even for integer literals, there are some complications. Ordinary integers such as 177777
and -32 are literals of type byte, short, or int, depending on their size. You can make a literal of
type long by adding “L” as a suffix. For example: 17L or 728476874368L. As another
complication, Java allows octal (base-8) and hexadecimal (base-16) literals. I don’t want to cover
base-8 and base-16 in detail, but in case you run into them in other people’s programs, it’s worth
knowing a few things: Octal numbers use only the digits 0 through 7. In Java, a numeric literal
that begins with a 0 is interpreted as an octal number; for example, the literal 045 represents the
number 37, not the number 45. Hexadecimal numbers use 16 digits, the usual digits 0 through 9
and the letters A, B, C, D, E, and F. Upper case and lower case letters can be used
interchangeably in this context. The letters represent the numbers 10 through 15. In Java, a
hexadecimal literal begins with 0x or 0X, as in 0x45 or 0xFF7A.
Hexadecimal numbers are also used in character literals to represent arbitrary Unicode
characters. A Unicode literal consists of \u followed by four hexadecimal digits. For
example, the character literal ’\u00E9’ represents the Unicode character that is an “e”
with an acute accent.
For the type boolean, there are precisely two literals: true and false. These literals are
typed just as I’ve written them here, without quotes, but they represent values, not variables.
Boolean values occur most often as the values of conditional expressions. For example,

rate > 0.05

is a boolean-valued expression that evaluates to true if the value of the variable rate is
greater than 0.05, and to false if the value of rate is not greater than 0.05. As you’ll see
in Chapter 3, boolean-valued expressions are used extensively in control structures. Of
course, boolean values can also be assigned to variables of type boolean.
Java has other types in addition to the primitive types, but all the other types represent
objects rather than “primitive” data values. For the most part, we are not concerned with
objects for the time being. However, there is one predefined object type that is very
important: the type String. A String is a sequence of characters. You’ve already seen a
string literal: "Hello World!". The double quotes are part of the literal; they have to be
typed in the program. However, they are not part of the actual string value, which consists
of just the characters between the quotes. Within a string, special characters can be
represented using the backslash notation. Within this context, the double quote is itself a
special character. For example, to represent the string value

I said, "Are you listening!"

with a linefeed at the end, you would have to type the string literal:

"I said, \"Are you listening!\"\n"

You can also use \t, \r, \\, and unicode sequences such as \u00E9 to represent other
special characters in string literals. Because strings are objects, their behavior in programs
is peculiar in some respects (to someone who is not used to objects). I ’ll have more to say about
them in the next section.
2.2. VARIABLES AND TYPES 27

2.2.3 Variables in Programs

A variable can be used in a program only if it has first been declared . A variable declaration
statement is used to declare one or more variables and to give them names. When the
computer executes a variable declaration, it sets aside memory for the variable and associates
the variable’s name with that memory. A simple variable declaration takes the form:
type-name variable-name-or-names ;

The variable-name-or-names can be a single variable name or a list of variable names

separated by commas. (We’ll see later that variable declaration statements can actually be
somewhat more complicated than this.) Good programming style is to declare only one variable
in a declaration statement, unless the variables are closely related in some way. For example:
int numberOfStudents;
String name;
double x, y;
boolean isFinished;
char firstInitial, middleInitial, lastInitial;

It is also good style to include a comment with each variable declaration to explain its
purpose in the program, or to give other information that might be useful to a human reader.
For example:
double principal; // Amount of money invested.
double interestRate; // Rate as a decimal, not percentage.

In this chapter, we will only use variables declared inside the main() subroutine of a pro-
gram. Variables declared inside a subroutine are called local variables for that subroutine. They
exist only inside the subroutine, while it is running, and are completely inaccessible from outside.
Variable declarations can occur anywhere inside the subroutine, as long as each variable is
declared before it is used in any expression. Some people like to declare all the variables at the
beginning of the subroutine. Others like to wait to declare a variable until it is needed. My
preference: Declare important variables at the beginning of the subroutine, and use a comment
to explain the purpose of each variable. Declare “utility variables” which are not important to the
overall logic of the subroutine at the point in the subroutine where they are first used. Here is a
simple program using some variables and assignment statements:
/**
This class implements a simple program that
will compute the amount of interest that is
earned on $17,000 invested at an interest
rate of 0.07 for one year. The interest and
the value of the investment after one year are
printed to standard output.
*/
public class Interest {
public static void main(String[] args) {
/* Declare the variables. */
double principal; // The value of the investment.
double rate; // The annual interest rate.
double interest; // Interest earned in one year.
28 CHAPTER 2. NAMES AND THINGS

/* Do the computations. */

principal = 17000;
rate = 0.07;
interest = principal * rate; // Compute the interest.

principal = principal + interest;

Compute value of investment after one year, with interest.
(Note: The new value replaces the old value of principal.)

/* Output the results. */

[Link]("The interest earned

is $"); [Link](interest);
[Link]("The value of the investment after one
year is $"); [Link](principal);

} // end of main()

} // end of class Interest

This program uses several subroutine call statements to display information to the user of the
program. Two different subroutines are used: [Link] and [Link].
The difference between these is that [Link] adds a linefeed after the end of the
information that it displays, while [Link] does not. Thus, the value of interest,
which is displayed by the subroutine call “[Link](interest);”, follows on the
same line after the string displayed by the previous [Link] statement. Note that the
value to be displayed by [Link] or [Link] is provided in paren-
theses after the subroutine name. This value is called a parameter to the subroutine. A parameter
provides a subroutine with information it needs to perform its task. In a subroutine call statement, any
parameters are listed in parentheses after the subroutine name. Not all subroutines have parameters.
If there are no parameters in a subroutine call statement, the subroutine name must be followed by an
empty pair of parentheses.
All the sample programs for this textbook are available in separate source code files in
the on-line version of this text at [Link] They are also
included in the downloadable archives of the web site. The source code for the Interest
program, for example, can be found in the file [Link].

2.3 Strings, Objects, Enums, and Subroutines

The previous section introduced the eight primitive data types and the type String. There is a
fundamental difference between the primitive types and the String type: Values of type String
are objects. While we will not study objects in detail until Chapter 5, it will be useful for you to
know a little about them and about a closely related topic: classes. This is not just because
strings are useful but because objects and classes are essential to understanding another
important programming concept, subroutines.
Another reason for considering classes and objects at this point is so that we can
introduce enums. An enum is a data type that can be created by a Java programmer to
represent a small collection of possible values. Technically, an enum is a class and its possible values are
objects. Enums will be our first example of adding a new type to the Java language. We will look at them later
in this section.
2.3. OBJECTS AND SUBROUTINES 29

2.3.1 Built-in Subroutines and Functions

Recall that a subroutine is a set of program instructions that have been chunked together
and given a name. In Chapter 4, you’ll learn how to write your own subroutines, but you can
get a lot done in a program just by calling subroutines that have already been written for
you. In Java, every subroutine is contained in a class or in an object. Some classes that are
standard parts of the Java language contain predefined subroutines that you can use. A
value of type String, which is an object, contains subroutines that can be used to manipulate
that string. These subroutines are “built into” the Java language. You can call all these
subroutines without understanding how they were written or how they work. Indeed, that’s
the whole point of subroutines: A subroutine is a “black box” which can be used without
knowing what goes on inside.
Classes in Java have two very different functions. First of all, a class can group together
variables and subroutines that are contained in that class. These variables and subroutines
are called static members of the class. You’ve seen one example: In a class that defines a
program, the main() routine is a static member of the class. The parts of a class definition
that define static members are marked with the reserved word “static”, just like the
main() routine of a program. However, classes have a second function. They are used to
describe objects. In this role, the class of an object specifies what subroutines and variables
are contained in that object. The class is a type—in the technical sense of a specification of
a certain type of data value—and the object is a value of that type. For example, String is
actually the name of a class that is included as a standard part of the Java language. String
is also a type, and literal strings such as "Hello World" represent values of type String.
So, every subroutine is contained either in a class or in an object. Classes contain
subrou-tines called static member subroutines. Classes also describe objects and the
subroutines that are contained in those objects.
This dual use can be confusing, and in practice most classes are designed to perform
pri-marily or exclusively in only one of the two possible roles. For example, although the
String class does contain a few rarely-used static member subroutines, it exists mainly to
specify a large number of subroutines that are contained in objects of type String. Another
standard class, named Math, exists entirely to group together a number of static member
subroutines that compute various common mathematical functions.
∗∗∗
To begin to get a handle on all of this complexity, let’s look at the subroutine
[Link] as an example. As you have seen earlier in this chapter, this
subroutine is used to display information to the user. For example,
[Link]("Hello World") displays the message, Hello World.
System is one of Java’s standard classes. One of the static member variables in this class is
named out. Since this variable is contained in the class System, its full name—which you have
to use to refer to it in your programs—is [Link]. The variable [Link] refers to an
object, and that object in turn contains a subroutine named print. The compound identifier
[Link] refers to the subroutine print in the object out in the class System.
(As an aside, I will note that the object referred to by [Link] is an object of the class
PrintStream. PrintStream is another class that is a standard part of Java. Any object of type
PrintStream is a destination to which information can be printed; any object of type PrintStream
has a print subroutine that can be used to send information to that destination. The object
[Link] is just one possible destination, and [Link] is the subrou-
30 CHAPTER 2. NAMES AND THINGS

tine that sends information to that particular destination. Other objects of type
PrintStream might send information to other destinations such as files or across a
network to other com-puters. This is object-oriented programming: Many di fferent things
which have something in common—they can all be used as destinations for information—
can all be used in the same way—through a print subroutine. The PrintStream class
expresses the commonalities among all these objects.)
Since class names and variable names are used in similar ways, it might be hard to tell
which is which. Remember that all the built-in, predefined names in Java follow the rule that
class names begin with an upper case letter while variable names begin with a lower case
letter. While this is not a formal syntax rule, I recommend that you follow it in your own
programming. Subroutine names should also begin with lower case letters. There is no
possibility of confusing a variable with a subroutine, since a subroutine name in a program is
always followed by a left parenthesis.
(As one final general note, you should be aware that subroutines in Java are often
referred to as methods. Generally, the term “method” means a subroutine that is contained
in a class or in an object. Since this is true of every subroutine in Java, every subroutine in
Java is a method. The same is not true for other programming languages. Nevertheless, the
term “method” is mostly used in the context of object-oriented programming, and until we
start doing real object-oriented programming in Chapter 5, I will prefer to use the more
general term, “subroutine.”)
∗∗∗
Classes can contain static member subroutines, as well as static member variables. For
example, the System class contains a subroutine named exit. In a program, of course,
this subroutine must be referred to as [Link]. Calling this subroutine will terminate
the program. You could use it if you had some reason to terminate the program before the
end of the main routine. For historical reasons, this subroutine takes an integer as a
parameter, so the subroutine call statement might look like “[Link](0);” or
“[Link](1);”. (The parameter tells the computer why the program was terminated.
A parameter value of 0 indicates that the program ended normally. Any other value indicates
that the program was terminated because an error was detected. But in practice, the value
of the parameter is usually ignored.)
Every subroutine performs some specific task. For some subroutines, that task is to compute
or retrieve some data value. Subroutines of this type are called functions. We say that a
function returns a value. The returned value must then be used somehow in the program.
You are familiar with the mathematical function that computes the square root of a num-ber.
Java has a corresponding function called [Link]. This function is a static member
subroutine of the class named Math. If x is any numerical value, then [Link](x)
computes and returns the square root of that value. Since [Link](x) represents a value, it
doesn’t make sense to put it on a line by itself in a subroutine call statement such as
[Link](x); // This doesn’t make sense!

What, after all, would the computer do with the value computed by the function in this case?
You have to tell the computer to do something with the value. You might tell the computer to
display it:
[Link]( [Link](x) ); // Display the square root of x.

or you might use an assignment statement to tell the computer to store that value in a variable:
2.3. OBJECTS AND SUBROUTINES 31

lengthOfSide = [Link](x);

The function call [Link](x) represents a value of type double, and it can be used
anyplace where a numeric literal of type double could be used.
The Math class contains many static member functions. Here is a list of some of the
more important of them:
[Link](x), which computes the absolute value of x.
The usual trigonometric functions, [Link](x), [Link](x), and [Link](x).
(For all the trigonometric functions, angles are measured in radians, not degrees.)
The inverse trigonometric functions arcsin, arccos, and arctan, which are written as:
[Link](x), [Link](x), and [Link](x). The return value is
expressed in radi-ans, not degrees.
The exponential function [Link](x) for computing the number e raised to the power
x, and the natural logarithm function [Link](x) for computing the logarithm of x
in the base e.
[Link](x,y) for computing x raised to the power y.
[Link](x), which rounds x down to the nearest integer value that is less than or
equal to x. Even though the return value is mathematically an integer, it is returned as
a value of type double, rather than of type int as you might expect. For example,
[Link](3.76) is 3.0. The function [Link](x) returns the integer that is
closest to x.
[Link](), which returns a randomly chosen double in the range 0.0 <=
[Link]() < 1.0. (The computer actually calculates so-called “pseudorandom”
numbers, which are not truly random but are random enough for most purposes.)

For these functions, the type of the parameter—the x or y inside the parentheses—can be
any value of any numeric type. For most of the functions, the value returned by the function is of
type double no matter what the type of the parameter. However, for [Link](x), the value
returned will be the same type as x; if x is of type int, then so is [Link](x). So, for
example, while [Link](9) is the double value 3.0, [Link](9) is the int value 9.
Note that [Link]() does not have any parameter. You still need the
parentheses, even though there’s nothing between them. The parentheses let the computer
know that this is a sub-routine rather than a variable. Another example of a subroutine that
has no parameters is the function [Link](), from the System
class. When this function is executed, it retrieves the current time, expressed as the number
of milliseconds that have passed since a standardized base time (the start of the year 1970
in Greenwich Mean Time, if you care). One millisecond is one-thousandth of a second. The
return value of [Link]() is of type long. This function can be used
to measure the time that it takes the computer to perform a task. Just record the time at
which the task is begun and the time at which it is finished and take the difference.
Here is a sample program that performs a few mathematical tasks and reports the time
that it takes for the program to run. On some computers, the time reported might be zero,
because it is too small to measure in milliseconds. Even if it’s not zero, you can be sure that
most of the time reported by the computer was spent doing output or working on tasks other
than the program, since the calculations performed in this program occupy only a tiny
fraction of a second of a computer’s time.
32 CHAPTER 2. NAMES AND THINGS

/**
This program performs some mathematical computations and displays
the results. It then reports the number of seconds that the
computer spent on this task.
*/

public class TimedComputation {

public static void main(String[] args) {

long startTime; // Starting time of program, in milliseconds.

long endTime; // Time when computations are done, in milliseconds.
double time; // Time difference, in seconds.

startTime = [Link]();

double width, height, hypotenuse; // sides of a triangle

width = 42.0;
height = 17.0;
hypotenuse = [Link]( width*width + height*height );
[Link]("A triangle with sides 42 and 17 has
hypotenuse "); [Link](hypotenuse);

[Link]("\nMathematically, sin(x)*sin(x) + "

+ "cos(x)*cos(x) - 1 should be
0."); [Link]("Let’s check this for x = 1:");
[Link](" sin(1)*sin(1) + cos(1)*cos(1) - 1 is ");
[Link]( [Link](1)*[Link](1)
+ [Link](1)*[Link](1) - 1 );
[Link]("(There can be round-off errors when"
+ " computing with real numbers!)");

[Link]("\nHere is a random number:

"); [Link]( [Link]() );

endTime = [Link]();
time = (endTime - startTime) / 1000.0;

[Link]("\nRun time in seconds

was: "); [Link](time);

} // end main()

} // end class TimedComputation

2.3.2 Operations on Strings

A value of type String is an object. That object contains data, namely the sequence of characters
that make up the string. It also contains subroutines. All of these subroutines are in fact
functions. For example, every string object contains a function named length that computes
the number of characters in that string. Suppose that advice is a variable that refers to a
String. For example, advice might have been declared and assigned a value as follows:
String advice;
advice = "Seize the day!";
2.3. OBJECTS AND SUBROUTINES 33

Then [Link]() is a function call that returns the number of characters in the
string “Seize the day!”. In this case, the return value would be 14. In general, for any string
variable str, the value of [Link]() is an int equal to the number of characters in the
string that is the value of str. Note that this function has no parameter; the particular
string whose length is being computed is the value of str. The length subroutine is
defined by the class String, and it can be used with any value of type String. It can even be
used with String literals, which are, after all, just constant values of type String. For example,
you could have a program count the characters in “Hello World” for you by saying
[Link]("The number of characters in ");
[Link]("the string \"Hello World\" is
"); [Link]( "Hello World".length() );

The String class defines a lot of functions. Here are some that you might find useful.
Assume that s1 and s2 refer to values of type String :

[Link](s2) is a function that returns a boolean value. It returns true if s1 consists

of exactly the same sequence of characters as s2, and returns false otherwise.
[Link](s2) is another boolean-valued function that checks whether s1

is the same string as s2, but this function considers upper and lower case letters to be
equivalent. Thus, if s1 is “cat”, then [Link]("Cat") is false, while
[Link]("Cat") is true.
Ȁ⸀ĀᜀĀᜀĀᜀĀᜀĀᜀĀᜀĀᜀĀᜀࠀĀȀ⸀ĀᜀĀᜀĀᜀĀᜀĀᜀĀᜀĀᜀĀ [Link](), as
mentioned above, is an integer-valued function that gives the number of characters in
s1.
Ȁ⸀ĀᜀĀᜀĀᜀĀᜀĀᜀĀᜀĀᜀĀᜀࠀĀȀ⸀ĀᜀĀᜀĀᜀĀᜀĀᜀĀᜀĀᜀĀ [Link](N), where N is
an integer, returns a value of type char. It returns the N-th character in the string. Positions
are numbered starting with 0, so [Link](0) is actually the first character,
[Link](1) is the second, and so on. The final position is [Link]() - 1. For
example, the value of "cat".charAt(1) is ’a’. An error occurs if the value of the
parameter is less than zero or greater than [Link]() - 1.
Ȁ⸀ĀᜀĀᜀĀᜀĀᜀĀᜀĀᜀĀᜀĀᜀࠀĀȀ⸀ĀᜀĀᜀĀᜀĀᜀĀᜀĀᜀĀᜀĀ [Link](N,M), where
N and M are integers, returns a value of type String. The returned value consists of the
characters in s1 in positions N, N+1,. . . , M-1. Note that the character in position M is
not included. The returned value is called a substring of s1.
Ȁ⸀ĀᜀĀᜀĀᜀĀᜀĀᜀĀᜀĀᜀĀᜀࠀĀȀ⸀ĀᜀĀᜀĀᜀĀᜀĀᜀĀᜀĀᜀĀ [Link](s2) returns an
integer. If s2 occurs as a substring of s1, then the returned value is the starting position
of that substring. Otherwise, the returned value is -1. You can also use [Link](ch)
to search for a particular character, ch, in s1. To find the first occurrence of x at or after
position N, you can use [Link](x,N).
Ȁ⸀ĀᜀĀᜀĀᜀĀᜀĀᜀĀᜀĀᜀĀᜀࠀĀȀ⸀ĀᜀĀᜀĀᜀĀᜀĀᜀĀᜀĀᜀĀ [Link](s2) is an
integer-valued function that compares the two strings. If the strings are equal, the value
returned is zero. If s1 is less than s2, the value returned is a number less than zero,
and if s1 is greater than s2, the value returned is some number greater than zero. (If
both of the strings consist entirely of lower case letters, then “less than” and “greater
than” refer to alphabetical order. Otherwise, the ordering is more complicated.)
Ȁ⸀ĀᜀĀᜀĀᜀĀᜀĀᜀĀᜀĀᜀĀᜀࠀĀȀ⸀ĀᜀĀᜀĀᜀĀᜀĀᜀĀᜀĀᜀĀ [Link]() is a String
-valued function that returns a new string that is equal to s1, except that any lower case letters
in s1 have been converted to upper case. For example,
 "Cat".toUpperCase() is the string "CAT". There is also a function [Link]().
Ȁ⸀ĀᜀĀᜀĀᜀĀᜀĀᜀĀᜀĀᜀĀᜀࠀĀȀ⸀ĀᜀĀᜀĀᜀĀᜀĀᜀĀᜀĀᜀĀ [Link]() is a String -valued
function that returns a new string that is equal to s1 except that any non-printing characters
such as spaces and tabs have been trimmed from the
 34 CHAPTER 2. NAMES AND THINGS
beginning and from the end of the string. Thus, if s1 has the value "fred ", then

[Link]() is the string "fred".

For the functions [Link](), [Link](), and [Link](), note
that the value of s1 is not modified. Instead a new string is created and returned as the
value of the function. The returned value could be used, for example, in an assignment
statement such as “smallLetters = [Link]();”. To change the value of
s1, you could use an assignment “s1 = [Link]();”.
∗∗∗
Here is another extremely useful fact about strings: You can use the plus operator, +, to
concatenate two strings. The concatenation of two strings is a new string consisting of all
the characters of the first string followed by all the characters of the second string. For
example, "Hello" + "World" evaluates to "HelloWorld". (Gotta watch those spaces,
of course—if you want a space in the concatenated string, it has to be somewhere in the
input data, as in "Hello " + "World".)
Let’s suppose that name is a variable of type String and that it already refers to the
name of the person using the program. Then, the program could greet the user by executing
the statement:
[Link]("Hello, " + name + ". Pleased to meet you!");

Even more surprising is that you can actually concatenate values of any type onto a String
using the + operator. The value is converted to a string, just as it would be if you printed it
to the standard output, and then it is concatenated onto the string. For example, the
expression "Number" + 42 evaluates to the string "Number42". And the statements
[Link]("After ");
[Link](years);
[Link](" years, the value is ");
[Link](principal);
can be replaced by the single statement:
[Link]("After " + years +
" years, the value is " + principal);

Obviously, this is very convenient. It would have shortened some of the examples presented
earlier in this chapter.

2.3.3 Introduction to Enums

Java comes with eight built-in primitive types and a large set of types that are defined by
classes, such as String. But even this large collection of types is not su fficient to cover all
the possible situations that a programmer might have to deal with. So, an essential part of
Java, just like almost any other programming language, is the ability to create new types.
For the most part, this is done by defining new classes; you will learn how to do that in
Chapter 5. But we will look here at one particular case: the ability to define enums (short for
enumerated types). Enums are a recent addition to Java. They were only added in Version
5.0. Many programming languages have something similar, and many people believe that
enums should have been part of Java from the beginning.
Technically, an enum is considered to be a special kind of class, but that is not important for now. In this
section, we will look at enums in a simplified form. In practice, most uses of enums will only need the
simplified form that is presented here.
2.3. OBJECTS AND SUBROUTINES 35

An enum is a type that has a fixed list of possible values, which is specified when the enum
is created. In some ways, an enum is similar to the boolean data type, which has true and
false as its only possible values. However, boolean is a primitive type, while an enum is not.
The definition of an enum types has the (simplified) form:
enum enum-type-name { list-of-enum-values }

This definition cannot be inside a subroutine. You can place it outside the main() routine
of the program. The enum-type-name can be any simple identifier. This identifier becomes
the name of the enum type, in the same way that “boolean” is the name of the boolean type
and “String” is the name of the String type. Each value in the list-of-enum-values must be a
simple identifier, and the identifiers in the list are separated by commas. For example, here
is the definition of an enum type named Season whose values are the names of the four
seasons of the year:
enum Season { SPRING, SUMMER, FALL, WINTER }

By convention, enum values are given names that are made up of upper case letters, but
that is a style guideline and not a syntax rule. Enum values are not variables. Each value is
a constant that always has the same value. In fact, the possible values of an enum type are
usually referred to as enum constants.
Note that the enum constants of type Season are considered to be “contained in” Season,
which means—following the convention that compound identifiers are used for things that are
contained in other things—the names that you actually use in your program to refer to them are
[Link], [Link], [Link], and [Link].
Once an enum type has been created, it can be used to declare variables in exactly the
same ways that other types are used. For example, you can declare a variable named
vacation of type Season with the statement:
Season vacation;

After declaring the variable, you can assign a value to it using an assignment statement. The
value on the right-hand side of the assignment can be one of the enum constants of type
Season. Remember to use the full name of the constant, including “Season”! For example:
vacation = [Link];

You can print out an enum value with an output statement such as
[Link](vacation). The output value will be the name of the enum constant
(without the “Season.”). In this case, the output would be “SUMMER”.
Because an enum is technically a class, the enum values are technically objects. As ob-
jects, they can contain subroutines. One of the subroutines in every enum value is named
ordinal(). When used with an enum value, it returns the ordinal number of the value in
the list of values of the enum. The ordinal number simply tells the position of the value in the
list. That is, [Link]() is the int value 0,
[Link]() is 1, [Link]() is 2, and
[Link]() is 3. (You will see over and over again that computer
scientists like to start counting at zero!) You can, of course, use the ordinal() method
with a variable of type Season, such as [Link]() in our example.
Right now, it might not seem to you that enums are all that useful. As you work though
the rest of the book, you should be convinced that they are. For now, you should at least
appreciate them as the first example of an important concept: creating new types. Here is a
little example that shows enums being used in a complete program:
36 CHAPTER 2. NAMES AND THINGS

public class EnumDemo {

Define two enum types -- remember that the definitions
go OUTSIDE The main() routine!
enum Day { SUNDAY, MONDAY, TUESDAY, WEDNESDAY, THURSDAY, FRIDAY, SATURDAY }

enum Month { JAN, FEB, MAR, APR, MAY, JUN, JUL, AUG, SEP, OCT, NOV, DEC }

public static void main(String[] args) {

Day tgif; // Declare a variable of type Day.
Month libra; // Declare a variable of type Month.
tgif = [Link]; // Assign a value of type Day to tgif.
libra = [Link]; // Assign a value of type Month to libra.

[Link]("My sign is libra, since I was born

in "); [Link](libra); // Output value will
be: OCT [Link]("That’s the ");
[Link]( [Link]() );
[Link]("-th month of the year.");
[Link](" (Counting from 0, of course!)");

[Link]("Isn’t it nice to get to ");

[Link](tgif); // Output value will be: FRIDAY

[Link]( tgif + " is the " + [Link]()

+ "-th day of the week.");
// You can concatenate enum values onto Strings!
}
}

2.4 Text Input and Output

For some unfathomable reason, Java has never made it easy to read data typed in by the user
of a program. You’ve already seen that output can be displayed to the user using the subroutine
[Link]. This subroutine is part of a pre-defined object called [Link]. The
purpose of this object is precisely to display output to the user. There is a corresponding object
called [Link] that exists to read data input by the user, but it provides only very primitive
input facilities, and it requires some advanced Java programming skills to use it e ffectively.

Java 5.0 finally makes input a little easier with a new Scanner class. However, it requires
some knowledge of object-oriented programming to use this class, so it’s not appropriate for
use here at the beginning of this course. (Furthermore, in my opinion, Scanner still does not
get things quite right.)
There is some excuse for this lack of concern with input, since Java is meant mainly to
write programs for Graphical User Interfaces, and those programs have their own style of
input/output, which is implemented in Java. However, basic support is needed for
input/output in old-fashioned non-GUI programs. Fortunately, it is possible to extend Java by
creating new classes that provide subroutines that are not available in the standard part of the language. As
soon as a new class is available, the subroutines that it contains can be used in exactly the same way as built-in
routines.
2.4. TEXT INPUT AND OUTPUT 37

Along these lines, I’ve written a class called TextIO that defines subroutines for reading
values typed by the user of a non-GUI program. The subroutines in this class make it
possible to get input from the standard input object, [Link], without knowing about the
advanced aspects of Java that are needed to use Scanner or to use [Link] directly.
TextIO also contains a set of output subroutines. The output subroutines are similar to those
provided in [Link], but they provide a few additional features. You can use whichever
set of output subroutines you prefer, and you can even mix them in the same program.
To use the TextIO class, you must make sure that the class is available to your program.
What this means depends on the Java programming environment that you are using. In
general, you just have to add the source code file, [Link], to the same directory that
contains your main program. See Section 2.6 for more information about how to use TextIO.

2.4.1 A First Text Input Example

The input routines in the TextIO class are static member functions. (Static member functions
were introduced in the previous section.) Let’s suppose that you want your program to read
an integer typed in by the user. The TextIO class contains a static member function named
getlnInt that you can use for this purpose. Since this function is contained in the TextIO
class, you have to refer to it in your program as [Link]. The function has no
parameters, so a complete call to the function takes the form “[Link]()”. This
function call represents the int value typed by the user, and you have to do something with
the returned value, such as assign it to a variable. For example, if userInput is a variable
of type int (created with a declaration statement “int userInput;”), then you could use
the assignment statement
userInput = [Link]();

When the computer executes this statement, it will wait for the user to type in an integer
value. The value typed will be returned by the function, and it will be stored in the variable,
userInput. Here is a complete program that uses [Link] to read a number
typed by the user and then prints out the square of the number that the user types:
/**
A program that reads an integer that is typed in by the
user and computes and prints the square of that
integer. */

public class PrintSquare {

public static void main(String[] args) {

int userInput; // The number input by the user.

int square; // The userInput, multiplied by itself.

[Link]("Please type a number: ");

userInput = [Link](); square =
userInput * userInput;
[Link]("The square of that number
is "); [Link](square);

} // end of main()

} //end of class PrintSquare

38 CHAPTER 2. NAMES AND THINGS

When you run this program, it will display the message “Please type a number:” and will
pause until you type a response, including a carriage return after the number.

2.4.2 Text Output

The TextIO class contains static member subroutines [Link] and [Link]
that can be used in the same way as [Link] and [Link].
For example, al-though there is no particular advantage in doing so in this case, you could
replace the two lines

[Link]("The square of that number

is "); [Link](square);

with

[Link]("The square of that number is ");

[Link](square);

For the next few chapters, I will use TextIO for input in all my examples, and I will often use
it for output. Keep in mind that TextIO can only be used in a program if it is available to that
program. It is not built into Java in the way that the System class is.
Let’s look a little more closely at the built-in output subroutines [Link] and
[Link]. Each of these subroutines can be used with one parameter, where the
parameter can be a value of any of the primitive types byte, short, int, long, float, double, char, or
boolean. The parameter can also be a String, a value belonging to an enum type, or indeed any
object. That is, you can say “[Link](x);” or “[Link](x);”,
where x is any expression whose value is of any type whatsoever. The expression can be a
con-stant, a variable, or even something more complicated such as 2*distance*time. Now,
in fact, the System class actually includes several different subroutines to handle di fferent
parameter types. There is one [Link] for printing values of type double, one for
values of type int, another for values that are objects, and so on. These subroutines can have the
same name since the computer can tell which one you mean in a given subroutine call
statement, depending on the type of parameter that you supply. Having several subroutines of
the same name that differ in the types of their parameters is called overloading . Many
programming languages do not permit overloading, but it is common in Java programs.
The difference between [Link] and [Link] is that the
println version outputs a carriage return after it outputs the specified parameter value.
There is a version of [Link] that has no parameters. This version simply
outputs a carriage return, and nothing else. A subroutine call statement for this version of
the program looks like “[Link]();”, with empty parentheses. Note that
“[Link](x);” is exactly equivalent to “[Link](x);
[Link]();”; the carriage return comes after the value of x. (There is no
version of [Link] without parameters. Do you see why?)
As mentioned above, the TextIO subroutines [Link] and [Link] can be used
as replacements for [Link] and [Link]. The TextIO functions work in
exactly the same way as the System functions, except that, as we will see below, TextIO can
also be used to write to other destinations.
2.4. TEXT INPUT AND OUTPUT 39

2.4.3 TextIO Input Functions

The TextIO class is a little more versatile at doing output than is [Link]. However,
it’s input for which we really need it.
With TextIO, input is done using functions. For example, [Link](), which was
discussed above, makes the user type in a value of type int and returns that input value so that
you can use it in your program. TextIO includes several functions for reading di fferent types of
input values. Here are examples of the ones that you are most likely to use:
j = [Link](); // Reads a value of type int.
y = [Link](); // Reads a value of type double.
a = [Link](); // Reads a value of type boolean.
c = [Link](); // Reads a value of type char.
w = [Link](); // Reads one "word" as a value of type String.
s = [Link](); // Reads an entire input line as a String.

For these statements to be legal, the variables on the left side of each assignment
statement must already be declared and must be of the same type as that returned by the
function on the right side. Note carefully that these functions do not have parameters. The
values that they return come from outside the program, typed in by the user as the program
is running. To “capture” that data so that you can use it in your program, you have to assign
the return value of the function to a variable. You will then be able to refer to the user’s input
value by using the name of the variable.
When you call one of these functions, you are guaranteed that it will return a legal value
of the correct type. If the user types in an illegal value as input—for example, if you ask for
an int and the user types in a non-numeric character or a number that is outside the legal
range of values that can be stored in in a variable of type int—then the computer will ask the
user to re-enter the value, and your program never sees the first, illegal value that the user
entered. For [Link](), the user is allowed to type in any of the following:
true, false, t, f, yes, no, y, n, 1, or 0. Furthermore, they can use either upper or lower case
letters. In any case, the user’s input is interpreted as a true/false value. It’s convenient to use
[Link]() to read the user’s response to a Yes/No question.
You’ll notice that there are two input functions that return Strings. The first, getlnWord(),
returns a string consisting of non-blank characters only. When it is called, it skips over any
spaces and carriage returns typed in by the user. Then it reads non-blank characters until it gets
to the next space or carriage return. It returns a String consisting of all the non-blank characters
that it has read. The second input function, getln(), simply returns a string consisting of all the
characters typed in by the user, including spaces, up to the next carriage return. It gets an entire
line of input text. The carriage return itself is not returned as part of the input string, but it is read
and discarded by the computer. Note that the String returned by this function might be the
empty string , "", which contains no characters at all. You will get this return value if the user
simply presses return, without typing anything else first.
All the other input functions listed—getlnInt(), getlnDouble(),
getlnBoolean(), and getlnChar()—behave like getWord() in that they will skip past
any blanks and carriage returns in the input before reading a value.
Furthermore, if the user types extra characters on the line after the input value, all the extra
characters will be discarded, along with the carriage return at the end of the line. If the
program executes another input function, the user will have to type in another line of input. It
might not sound like a good idea to discard any of the user’s input, but it turns out to be the
safest thing to do in most programs. Sometimes, however, you do want to read more
40 CHAPTER 2. NAMES AND THINGS

than one value from the same line of input. TextIO provides the following alternative input
functions to allow you to do this:
j = [Link](); // Reads a value of type int.
y = [Link](); // Reads a value of type double.
a = [Link](); // Reads a value of type boolean.
c = [Link](); // Reads a value of type char.
w = [Link](); // Reads one "word" as a value of type String.

The names of these functions start with “get” instead of “getln”. “Getln” is short for “get
line” and should remind you that the functions whose names begin with “getln” will get an
entire line of data. A function without the “ln” will read an input value in the same way, but
will then save the rest of the input line in a chunk of internal memory called the input
buffer . The next time the computer wants to read an input value, it will look in the input
buffer before prompting the user for input. This allows the computer to read several values
from one line of the user’s input. Strictly speaking, the computer actually reads only from
the input buffer. The first time the program tries to read input from the user, the computer
will wait while the user types in an entire line of input. TextIO stores that line in the input
buffer until the data on the line has been read or discarded (by one of the “getln” functions).
The user only gets to type when the buffer is empty.
Clearly, the semantics of input is much more complicated than the semantics of output!
Fortunately, for the majority of applications, it’s pretty straightforward in practice. You only
need to follow the details if you want to do something fancy. In particular, I strongly advise
you to use the “getln” versions of the input routines, rather than the “get” versions, unless
you really want to read several items from the same line of input, precisely because the
semantics of the “getln” versions is much simpler.
Note, by the way, that although the TextIO input functions will skip past blank spaces
and carriage returns while looking for input, they will not skip past other characters. For
example, if you try to read two ints and the user types “2,3”, the computer will read the first
number correctly, but when it tries to read the second number, it will see the comma. It will
regard this as an error and will force the user to retype the number. If you want to input
several numbers from one line, you should make sure that the user knows to separate them
with spaces, not commas. Alternatively, if you want to require a comma between the
numbers, use getChar() to read the comma before reading the second number.
There is another character input function, [Link](), which does not
skip past blanks or carriage returns. It simply reads and returns the next character typed by
the user, even if it’s a blank or carriage return. If the user typed a carriage return, then the
char returned by getAnyChar() is the special linefeed character ’\n’. There is also a
function, [Link](), that lets you look ahead at the next character in the input
without actually reading it. After you “peek” at the next character, it will still be there when
you read the next item from input. This allows you to look ahead and see what’s coming up
in the input, so that you can take different actions depending on what’s there.
The TextIO class provides a number of other functions. To learn more about them, you
can look at the comments in the source code file, [Link].
(You might be wondering why there are only two output routines, print and println, which can
output data values of any type, while there is a separate input routine for each data type. As noted
above, in reality there are many print and println routines, one for each data type. The computer can
tell them apart based on the type of the parameter that you provide. However, the input routines don’t
have parameters, so the different input routines can only be
2.4. TEXT INPUT AND OUTPUT 41

distinguished by having different names.)

∗∗∗
Using TextIO for input and output, we can now improve the program from Section 2.2 for
computing the value of an investment. We can have the user type in the initial value of the
investment and the interest rate. The result is a much more useful program—for one thing, it
makes sense to run it more than once!
/**
This class implements a simple program that will compute
the amount of interest that is earned on an investment over
a period of one year. The initial amount of the investment
and the interest rate are input by the user. The value of
the investment at the end of the year is output. The
rate must be input as a decimal, not a percentage (for
example, 0.05 rather than 5).
*/
public class Interest2 {
public static void main(String[] args) {
double principal; // The value of the investment.
double rate; // The annual interest rate.
double interest; // The interest earned during the year.
[Link]("Enter the initial investment: ");
principal = [Link]();

[Link]("Enter the annual interest rate (decimal, not

percentage!): "); rate = [Link]();

interest = principal * rate; Compute this year’s interest.

principal = principal + interest; Add it to principal.
[Link]("The value of the investment after one year
is $"); [Link](principal);
} // end of main()
} // end of class Interest2

2.4.4 Formatted Output

If you ran the preceding Interest2 example, you might have noticed that the answer is not
always written in the format that is usually used for dollar amounts. In general, dollar amounts
are written with two digits after the decimal point. But the program’s output can be a number like
1050.0 or 43.575. It would be better if these numbers were printed as 1050.00 and 43.58.
Java 5.0 introduced a formatted output capability that makes it much easier than it used
to be to control the format of output numbers. A lot of formatting options are available. I will
cover just a few of the simplest and most commonly used possibilities here.
You can use the function [Link] to produce formatted output. (The name “printf,”
which stands for “print formatted,” is copied from the C and C++ programming languages, which have
always have a similar formatting capability). [Link] takes two or more parameters.
The first parameter is a String that specifies the format of the output. This parameter is called the
format string . The remaining parameters specify the values that
42 CHAPTER 2. NAMES AND THINGS

are to be output. Here is a statement that will print a number in the proper format for a dollar
amount, where amount is a variable of type double:
[Link]( "%1.2f", amount );

TextIO can also do formatted output. The function [Link] has

the same
functionality as [Link]. Using TextIO, the above example would be:
[Link]("%1.2",amount); and you could say
[Link]("%1.2f",principal); instead of [Link](principal); in
the Interest2 program to get the output in the right format.
The output format of a value is specified by a format specifier . The format string (in the
simple cases that I cover here) contains one format specifier for each of the values that is to
be output. Some typical format specifiers are %d, %12d, %10s, %1.2f, %15.8e and
%1.8g. Every format specifier begins with a percent sign (%) and ends with a letter, possibly
with some extra formatting information in between. The letter specifies the type of output
that is to be produced. For example, in %d and %12d, the “d” specifies that an integer is to
be written. The “12” in %12d specifies the minimum number of spaces that should be used
for the output. If the integer that is being output takes up fewer than 12 spaces, extra blank
spaces are added in front of the integer to bring the total up to 12. We say that the output is
“right-justified in a field of length 12.” The value is not forced into 12 spaces; if the value has
more than 12 digits, all the digits will be printed, with no extra spaces. The specifier %d
means the same as %1d; that is an integer will be printed using just as many spaces as
necessary. (The “d,” by the way, stands for “decimal” (base-10) numbers. You can use an
“x” to output an integer value in hexadecimal form.)
The letter “s” at the end of a format specifier can be used with any type of value. It
means that the value should be output in its default format, just as it would be in unformatted
output. A number, such as the “10” in %10s can be added to specify the (minimum) number
of characters. The “s” stands for “string,” meaning that the value is converted into a String
value in the usual way.
The format specifiers for values of type double are even more complicated. An “f”, as in
%1.2f, is used to output a number in “floating-point” form, that is with digits after the decimal
point. In %1.2f, the “2” specifies the number of digits to use after the decimal point. The “1”
specifies the (minimum) number of characters to output, which e ffectively means that just as
many characters as are necessary should be used. Similarly, %12.3f would specify a floating-
point format with 3 digits after the decimal point, right-justified in a field of length 12.
Very large and very small numbers should be written in exponential format, such as
6.00221415e23, representing “6.00221415 times 10 raised to the power 23.” A format speci-
fier such as %15.8e specifies an output in exponential form, with the “8” telling how many
digits to use after the decimal point. If you use “g” instead of “e”, the output will be in
floating-point form for small values and in exponential form for large values. In %1.8g, the 8
gives the total number of digits in the answer, including both the digits before the decimal
point and the digits after the decimal point.
In addition to format specifiers, the format string in a printf statement can include
other characters. These extra characters are just copied to the output. This can be a
convenient way to insert values into the middle of an output string. For example, if x and y
are variables of type int, you could say
[Link]("The product of %d and %d is %d", x, y, x*y);

When this statement is executed, the value of x is substituted for the first %d in the string, the
2.4. TEXT INPUT AND OUTPUT 43

value of y for the second %d, and the value of the expression x*y for the third, so the
output would be something like “The product of 17 and 42 is 714” (quotation marks not
included in output!).

2.4.5 Introduction to File I/O

[Link] sends its output to the output destination known as “standard output.” But
stan-dard output is just one possible output destination. For example, data can be written to
a file that is stored on the user’s hard drive. The advantage to this, of course, is that the
data is saved in the file even after the program ends, and the user can print the file, email it
to someone else, edit it with another program, and so on.
TextIO has the ability to write data to files and to read data from files. When you write
output using the put, putln, or putf method in TextIO, the output is sent to the current
output destination. By default, the current output destination is standard output. However,
TextIO has some subroutines that can be used to change the current output destination. To
write to a file named “[Link]”, for example, you would use the statement:
[Link]("[Link]");

After this statement is executed, any output from TextIO output statements will be sent to
the file named “[Link]” instead of to standard output. The file should be created in the
same directory that contains the program. Note that if a file with the same name already
exists, its previous contents will be erased! In many cases, you want to let the user select
the file that will be used for output. The statement
[Link]();

will open a typical graphical-user-interface file selection dialog where the user can specify
the output file. If you want to go back to sending output to standard output, you can say
[Link]();

You can also specify the input source for TextIO’s various “get” functions. The default
input source is standard input. You can use the statement
[Link]("[Link]") to read from a file named “[Link]” instead, or you can
let the user select the input file by saying [Link](), and you
can go back to reading from standard input with [Link]().
When your program is reading from standard input, the user gets a chance to correct any
errors in the input. This is not possible when the program is reading from a file. If illegal data
is found when a program tries to read from a file, an error occurs that will crash the program.
(Later, we will see that is is possible to “catch” such errors and recover from them.) Errors
can also occur, though more rarely, when writing to files.
A complete understanding of file input/output in Java requires a knowledge of object ori-
ented programming. We will return to the topic later, in Chapter 11. The file I/O capabilities in
TextIO are rather primitive by comparison. Nevertheless, they are su fficient for many appli-
cations, and they will allow you to get some experience with files sooner rather than later.
As a simple example, here is a program that asks the user some questions and outputs
the user’s responses to a file named “[Link]”:
public class CreateProfile {
public static void main(String[] args) {
44 CHAPTER 2. NAMES AND THINGS

String name; // The user’s name.

String email; // The user’s email address.
double salary; // the user’s yearly salary.
String favColor; // The user’s favorite color.

[Link]("Good Afternoon! This program will

create"); [Link]("your profile file, if you
will just answer"); [Link]("a few simple
questions."); [Link]();
/* Gather responses from the user. */
[Link]("What is your name? ");
name = [Link]();
[Link]("What is your email address? ");
email = [Link]();
[Link]("What is your yearly income? ");
salary = [Link]();
[Link]("What is your favorite color? ");
favColor = [Link]();

/* Write the user’s information to the file named [Link]. */

[Link]("[Link]"); // subsequent output goes to the file

[Link]("Name: " + name);
[Link]("Email: " + email);
[Link]("Favorite Color: " + favColor);
[Link]( "Yearly Income: %1.2f\n", salary);
The "/n" in the previous line is a carriage
return. /* Print a final message to standard output. */
[Link]();
[Link]("Thank you. Your profile has been written to
[Link].");

}
}

2.5 Details of Expressions

This section takes a closer look at expressions. Recall that an expression is a piece of program
code that represents or computes a value. An expression can be a literal, a variable, a function
call, or several of these things combined with operators such as + and >. The value of an
expression can be assigned to a variable, used as a parameter in a subroutine call, or combined
with other values into a more complicated expression. (The value can even, in some cases, be
ignored, if that’s what you want to do; this is more common than you might think.) Expressions
are an essential part of programming. So far, these notes have dealt only informally with
expressions. This section tells you the more-or-less complete story (leaving out some of the less
commonly used operators).
The basic building blocks of expressions are literals (such as 674, 3.14, true, and ’X’),
variables, and function calls. Recall that a function is a subroutine that returns a value.
You’ve already seen some examples of functions, such as the input routines from the
TextIO class and the mathematical functions from the Math class.
2.5. DETAILS OF EXPRESSIONS 45

The Math class also contains a couple of mathematical constants that are useful in math-
ematical expressions: [Link] represents π (the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its
diameter), and Math.E represents e (the base of the natural logarithms). These “constants”
are actually member variables in Math of type double. They are only approximations for the
mathematical constants, which would require an infinite number of digits to specify exactly.
Literals, variables, and function calls are simple expressions. More complex expressions
can be built up by using operators to combine simpler expressions. Operators include + for
adding two numbers, > for comparing two values, and so on. When several operators
appear in an expression, there is a question of precedence, which determines how the
operators are grouped for evaluation. For example, in the expression “A + B * C”, B*C is
computed first and then the result is added to A. We say that multiplication (*) has higher
precedence than addition (+). If the default precedence is not what you want, you can use
parentheses to explicitly specify the grouping you want. For example, you could use “(A +
B) * C” if you want to add A to B first and then multiply the result by C.
The rest of this section gives details of operators in Java. The number of operators in
Java is quite large, and I will not cover them all here. Most of the important ones are here; a
few will be covered in later chapters as they become relevant.

2.5.1 Arithmetic Operators

Arithmetic operators include addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. They are
indicated by +, -, *, and /. These operations can be used on values of any numeric type:
byte, short, int, long, float, or double. When the computer actually calculates one of these
operations, the two values that it combines must be of the same type. If your program tells
the computer to combine two values of different types, the computer will convert one of the
values from one type to another. For example, to compute 37.4 + 10, the computer will
convert the integer 10 to a real number 10.0 and will then compute 37.4 + 10.0. This is
called a type conversion . Ordinarily, you don’t have to worry about type conversion in
expressions, because the computer does it automatically.
When two numerical values are combined (after doing type conversion on one of them, if
necessary), the answer will be of the same type. If you multiply two ints, you get an int; if you
multiply two doubles, you get a double. This is what you would expect, but you have to be very
careful when you use the division operator /. When you divide two integers, the answer will
always be an integer; if the quotient has a fractional part, it is discarded. For example, the value
of 7/2 is 3, not 3.5. If N is an integer variable, then N/100 is an integer, and 1/N is equal
to zero for any N greater than one! This fact is a common source of programming errors. You
can force the computer to compute a real number as the answer by making one of the operands
real: For example, when the computer evaluates 1.0/N, it first converts N to a real number in
order to match the type of 1.0, so you get a real number as the answer.
Java also has an operator for computing the remainder when one integer is divided by
another. This operator is indicated by %. If A and B are integers, then A % B represents the
remainder when A is divided by B. (However, for negative operands, % is not quite the same as
the usual mathematical “modulus” operator, since if one of A or B is negative, then the value of
A % B will be negative.) For example, 7 % 2 is 1, while 34577 % 100 is 77, and 50 % 8
is 2. A common use of % is to test whether a given integer is even or odd. N is even if N % 2 is
zero, and it is odd if N % 2 is 1. More generally, you can check whether an integer N is evenly
divisible by an integer M by checking whether N % M is zero.
Finally, you might need the unary minus operator, which takes the negative of a number.
46 CHAPTER 2. NAMES AND THINGS

For example, -X has the same value as (-1)*X. For completeness, Java also has a
unary plus operator, as in +X, even though it doesn’t really do anything.
By the way, recall that the + operator can also be used to concatenate a value of any
type onto a String. This is another example of type conversion. In Java, any type can be
automatically converted into type String.

2.5.2 Increment and Decrement

You’ll find that adding 1 to a variable is an extremely common operation in programming.
Subtracting 1 from a variable is also pretty common. You might perform the operation of
adding 1 to a variable with assignment statements such as:
counter = counter + 1;
goalsScored= goalsScored + 1;

The effect of the assignment statement x = x + 1 is to take the old value of the variable
x, compute the result of adding 1 to that value, and store the answer as the new value of
x. The same operation can be accomplished by writing x++ (or, if you prefer, ++x). This
actually changes the value of x, so that it has the same effect as writing “ x = x + 1”. The
two statements above could be written
counter++;
goalsScored++;

Similarly, you could write x-- (or --x) to subtract 1 from x. That is, x-- performs the same
computation as x = x - 1. Adding 1 to a variable is called incrementing that variable, and
subtracting 1 is called decrementing . The operators ++ and -- are called the increment
operator and the decrement operator, respectively. These operators can be used on variables
belonging to any of the numerical types and also on variables of type char.
Usually, the operators ++ or -- are used in statements like “x++;” or “x--;”. These state-
ments are commands to change the value of x. However, it is also legal to use x++, ++x,
x--, or --x as expressions, or as parts of larger expressions. That is, you can write things like:
y = x++;
y = ++x;
[Link](--x);
z = (++x) * (y--);

The statement “y = x++;” has the effects of adding 1 to the value of x and, in addition, assigning
some value to y. The value assigned to y is the value of the expression x++, which is defined to be
the old value of x, before the 1 is added. Thus, if the value of x is 6, the statement “y
x++;” will change the value of x to 7, but it will change the value of y to 6 since the value
assigned to y is the old value of x. On the other hand, the value of ++x is defined to be the
new value of x, after the 1 is added. So if x is 6, then the statement “y = ++x;” changes the
values of both x and y to 7. The decrement operator, --, works in a similar way.
This can be confusing. My advice is: Don’t be confused. Use ++ and -- only in stand-alone
statements, not in expressions. I will follow this advice in all the examples in these notes.

2.5.3 Relational Operators

Java has boolean variables and boolean-valued expressions that can be used to express con-
ditions that can be either true or false. One way to form a boolean-valued expression is
2.5. DETAILS OF EXPRESSIONS 47

to compare two values using a relational operator . Relational operators are used to test whether
two values are equal, whether one value is greater than another, and so forth. The relational
operators in Java are: ==, !=, <, >, <=, and >=. The meanings of these operators are:
A == B Is A "equal to" B?
A != B Is A "not equal to" B?
A < B Is A "less than" B?
A > B Is A "greater than" B?
A <= B Is A "less than or equal to" B?
A >= B Is A "greater than or equal to" B?

These operators can be used to compare values of any of the numeric types. They can also be used
to compare values of type char. For characters, < and > are defined according the numeric Unicode
values of the characters. (This might not always be what you want. It is not the same as alphabetical
order because all the upper case letters come before all the lower case letters.)
When using boolean expressions, you should remember that as far as the computer is con-
cerned, there is nothing special about boolean values. In the next chapter, you will see how to
use them in loop and branch statements. But you can also assign boolean-valued expressions to
boolean variables, just as you can assign numeric values to numeric variables.
By the way, the operators == and != can be used to compare boolean values. This is
occasionally useful. For example, can you figure out what this does:
boolean sameSign;
sameSign = ((x > 0) == (y > 0));

One thing that you cannot do with the relational operators <, >, <=, and <= is to use them
to compare values of type String. You can legally use == and != to compare Strings, but
because of peculiarities in the way objects behave, they might not give the results you want.
(The == operator checks whether two objects are stored in the same memory location, rather
than whether they contain the same value. Occasionally, for some objects, you do want to make
such a check—but rarely for strings. I’ll get back to this in a later chapter.) Instead, you should
use the subroutines equals(), equalsIgnoreCase(), and compareTo(), which were
described in Section 2.3, to compare two Strings.

2.5.4 Boolean Operators

In English, complicated conditions can be formed using the words “and”, “or”, and “not.” For
example, “If there is a test and you did not study for it. . . ”. “And”, “or”, and “not” are
boolean operators, and they exist in Java as well as in English.
In Java, the boolean operator “and” is represented by &&. The && operator is used to
combine two boolean values. The result is also a boolean value. The result is true if both
of the combined values are true, and the result is false if either of the combined values
is false. For example, “(x == 0) && (y == 0)” is true if and only if both x is equal
to 0 and y is equal to 0.
The boolean operator “or” is represented by ||. (That’s supposed to be two of the
vertical line characters, |.) The expression “A || B” is true if either A is true or B is
true, or if both are true. “A || B” is false only if both A and B are false.
The operators && and || are said to be short-circuited versions of the boolean operators.
This means that the second operand of && or || is not necessarily evaluated. Consider the test
(x != 0) && (y/x > 1)
48 CHAPTER 2. NAMES AND THINGS

Suppose that the value of x is in fact zero. In that case, the division y/x is undefined math-
matically. However, the computer will never perform the division, since when the computer
evaluates (x != 0), it finds that the result is false, and so it knows that ((x != 0) &&
any-thing) has to be false. Therefore, it doesn’t bother to evaluate the second operand,
(y/x > 1). The evaluation has been short-circuited and the division by zero is avoided.
Without the short-circuiting, there would have been a division by zero. (This may seem like a
technicality, and it is. But at times, it will make your programming life a little easier.)
The boolean operator “not” is a unary operator. In Java, it is indicated by ! and is written
in front of its single operand. For example, if test is a boolean variable, then
test = ! test;
will reverse the value of test, changing it from true to false, or from false to true.

2.5.5 Conditional Operator

Any good programming language has some nifty little features that aren’t really necessary
but that let you feel cool when you use them. Java has the conditional operator. It’s a ternary
operator—that is, it has three operands—and it comes in two pieces, ? and :, that have to be
used together. It takes the form
boolean-expression ? expression1 : expression2

The computer tests the value of boolean-expression . If the value is true, it evaluates
expression1 ; otherwise, it evaluates expression2 . For example:
next = (N % 2 == 0) ? (N/2) : (3*N+1);

will assign the value N/2 to next if N is even (that is, if N % 2 == 0 is true), and it will
assign the value (3*N+1) to next if N is odd. (The parentheses in this example are not
required, but they do make the expression easier to read.)

2.5.6 Assignment Operators and Type-Casts

You are already familiar with the assignment statement, which uses the symbol “=” to assign
the value of an expression to a variable. In fact, = is really an operator in the sense that an
assignment can itself be used as an expression or as part of a more complex expression.
The value of an assignment such as A=B is the same as the value that is assigned to A.
So, if you want to assign the value of B to A and test at the same time whether that value is
zero, you could say:
if ( (A=B) == 0 )...

Usually, I would say, don’t do things like that!

In general, the type of the expression on the right-hand side of an assignment statement
must be the same as the type of the variable on the left-hand side. However, in some cases,
the computer will automatically convert the value computed by the expression to match the
type of the variable. Consider the list of numeric types: byte, short, int, long, float, double. A
value of a type that occurs earlier in this list can be converted automatically to a value that
occurs later. For example:
int A;
double X;
short B;
2.5. DETAILS OF EXPRESSIONS 49
A=17;

X=A; // OK; A is converted to a double

B=A; // illegal; no automatic conversion
// from int to short

The idea is that conversion should only be done automatically when it can be done without
changing the semantics of the value. Any int can be converted to a double with the same
numeric value. However, there are int values that lie outside the legal range of shorts. There
is simply no way to represent the int 100000 as a short, for example, since the largest value
of type short is 32767.
In some cases, you might want to force a conversion that wouldn’t be done
automatically. For this, you can use what is called a type cast . A type cast is indicated by
putting a type name, in parentheses, in front of the value you want to convert. For example,
int A;
short B;
A=17;
B = (short)A; // OK; A is explicitly type cast
to a value of type short

You can do type casts from any numeric type to any other numeric type. However, you
should note that you might change the numeric value of a number by type-casting it. For
example, (short)100000 is -31072. (The -31072 is obtained by taking the 4-byte int
100000 and throwing away two of those bytes to obtain a short—you’ve lost the real
information that was in those two bytes.)
As another example of type casts, consider the problem of getting a random integer between 1
and 6. The function [Link]() gives a real number between 0.0 and 0.9999. . . , and so
6*[Link]() is between 0.0 and 5.999. . . . The type-cast operator, (int), can be used to
convert this to an integer: (int)(6*[Link]()). A real number is cast to an integer by
discarding the fractional part. Thus, (int)(6*[Link]()) is one of the integers 0, 1, 2, 3, 4,
and 5. To get a number between 1 and 6, we can add 1: “(int)(6*[Link]()) + 1”.
You can also type-cast between the type char and the numeric types. The numeric value
of a char is its Unicode code number. For example, (char)97 is ’a’, and (int)’+’ is
43. (However, a type conversion from char to int is automatic and does not have to be
indicated with an explicit type cast.)
Java has several variations on the assignment operator, which exist to save typing. For
example, “A += B” is defined to be the same as “A = A + B”. Every operator in Java that
applies to two operands gives rise to a similar assignment operator. For example:
x -= y; // same as: x = x - y;
x *= y; // same as: x = x * y;
x /= y; // same as: x = x / y;
x %= y; // same as: x = x % y; (for integers x and y)
q &&= p; // same as: q = q && p; (for booleans q and p)

The combined assignment operator += even works with strings. Recall that when the +
operator is used with a string as one of the operands, it represents concatenation. Since
str += x is equivalent to str = str + x, when += is used with a string on the left-
hand side, it appends the value on the right-hand side onto the string. For example, if str
has the value “tire”, then the statement str += ’d’; changes the value of str to “tired”.
50 CHAPTER 2. NAMES AND THINGS

2.5.7 Type Conversion of Strings

In addition to automatic type conversions and explicit type casts, there are some other
cases where you might want to convert a value of one type into a value of a di fferent type.
One common example is the conversion of a String value into some other type, such as
converting the string "10" into the int value 10 or the string "17.42e-2" into the double
value 0.1742. In Java, these conversions are handled by built-in functions.
There is a standard class named Integer that contains several subroutines and variables related
to the int data type. (Recall that since int is not a class, int itself can’t contain any subroutines or
variables.) In particular, if str is any expression of type String, then [Link](str) is a
function call that attempts to convert the value of str into a value of type int. For example, the value
of [Link]("10") is the int value 10. If the parameter to [Link] does
not represent a legal int value, then an error occurs.
Similarly, the standard class named Double includes a function [Link]
that tries to convert a parameter of type String into a value of type double. For example, the
value of the function call [Link]("3.14") is the double value 3.14. (Of
course, in practice, the parameter used in [Link] or
[Link] would be a variable or expression rather than a constant string.)
Type conversion functions also exist for converting strings into enumerated type values.
(Enumerated types, or enums, were introduced in Subsection 2.3.3.) For any enum type, a
predefined function named valueOf is automatically defined for that type. This is a
function that takes a string as parameter and tries to convert it to a value belonging to the
enum. The valueOf function is part of the enum type, so the name of the enum is part of
the full name of the function. For example, if an enum Suit is defined as
enum Suit { SPADE, DIAMOND, CLUB, HEART }

then the name of the type conversion function would be [Link]. The value of the
function call [Link]("CLUB") would be the enumerated type value [Link].
For the conversion to succeed, the string must exactly match the simple name of one of the
enumerated type constants (without the “Suit.” in front).

2.5.8 Precedence Rules

If you use several operators in one expression, and if you don’t use parentheses to explicitly
indicate the order of evaluation, then you have to worry about the precedence rules that
deter-mine the order of evaluation. (Advice: don’t confuse yourself or the reader of your
program; use parentheses liberally.)
Here is a listing of the operators discussed in this section, listed in order from highest
precedence (evaluated first) to lowest precedence (evaluated last):
Unary operators: ++, --, !, unary - and +, type-cast
Multiplication and division: *, /, %
Addition and subtraction: +, -
Relational operators: <, >, <=, >=
Equality and inequality: ==, !=
Boolean and: &&
Boolean or: ||
Conditional operator: ?:
Assignment operators: =, +=, -=, *=, /=, %=
2.6. PROGRAMMING ENVIRONMENTS 51

Operators on the same line have the same precedence. When operators of the same
precedence are strung together in the absence of parentheses, unary operators and
assignment operators are evaluated right-to-left, while the remaining operators are
evaluated left-to-right. For example, A*B/C means (A*B)/C, while A=B=C means
A=(B=C). (Can you see how the expression A=B=C might be useful, given that the value of
B=C as an expression is the same as the value that is assigned to B?)

2.6 Programming Environments

Although the Java language is highly standardized, the procedures for creating, compil-ing, and
editing Java programs vary widely from one programming environment to another. There are two
basic approaches: a command line environment , where the user types com-mands and the
computer responds, and an integrated development environment (IDE), where the user uses
the keyboard and mouse to interact with a graphical user interface. While there is just one
common command line environment for Java programming, there is a wide variety of IDEs.

I cannot give complete or definitive information on Java programming environments in this

section, but I will try to give enough information to let you compile and run the examples from
this textbook, at least in a command line environment. There are many IDEs, and I can’t cover
them all here. I will concentrate on Eclipse, one of the most popular IDEs for Java programming,
but some of the information that is presented will apply to other IDEs as well.
One thing to keep in mind is that you do not have to pay any money to do Java
programming (aside from buying a computer, of course). Everything that you need can be
downloaded for free on the Internet.

2.6.1 Java Development Kit

The basic development system for Java programming is usually referred to as the JDK
(Java Development Kit). It is a part of J2SE, the Java 2 Platform Standard Edition. This book
requires J2SE version 5.0 (or higher). Confusingly, the JDK that is part of J2SE version 5.0
is sometimes referred to as JDK 1.5 instead of 5.0. Note that J2SE comes in two versions, a
Development Kit version and a Runtime version. The Runtime can be used to run Java
programs and to view Java applets in Web pages, but it does not allow you to compile your
own Java programs. The Development Kit includes the Runtime and adds to it the JDK
which lets you compile programs. You need a JDK for use with this textbook.
Java was developed by Sun Microsystems, Inc., which makes its JDK for Windows and Linux
available for free download at its Java Web site, [Link]. If you have a Windows computer,
it might have come with a Java Runtime, but you might still need to download the JDK. Some
versions of Linux come with the JDK either installed by default or on the installation media. If you
need to download and install the JDK, be sure to get JDK 5.0 (or higher). As of June, 2006, the
download page for JDK 5.0 can be found at [Link]
Mac OS comes with Java. The version included with Mac OS 10.4 is 1.4.2, the version
previous to Java 5.0. However, JDK Version 5.0 is available for Mac OS 10.4 on Apple’s Web
site and can also be installed through the standard Mac OS Software Update application.
If a JDK is installed on your computer, you can use the command line environment to
compile and run Java programs. Some IDEs depend on the JDK, so even if you plan to use
an IDE for programming, you might still need a JDK.
52 CHAPTER 2. NAMES AND THINGS

2.6.2 Command Line Environment

Many modern computer users find the command line environment to be pretty alien and
unin-tuitive. It is certainly very different from the graphical user interfaces that most people
are used to. However, it takes only a little practice to learn the basics of the command line
environment and to become productive using it.
To use a command line programming environment, you will have to open a window
where you can type in commands. In Windows, you can open such a command window by
running the program named cmd . One way to run cmd is to use the “Run Program” feature
in the Start menu, and enter “cmd” as the name of the program. In Mac OS, you want to run
the Terminal program, which can be be found in the Utilities folder inside the Applications
folder. In Linux, there are several possibilities, including Konsole, gterm , and xterm .
No matter what type of computer you are using, when you open a command window, it
will display a prompt of some sort. Type in a command at the prompt and press return. The
computer will carry out the command, displaying any output in the command window, and
will then redisplay the prompt so that you can type another command. One of the central
concepts in the command line environment is the current directory which contains the files
to which commands that you type apply. (The words “directory” and “folder” mean the same
thing.) Often, the name of the current directory is part of the command prompt. You can get
a list of the files in the current directory by typing in the command dir (on Windows) or ls (on
Linux and Mac OS). When the window first opens, the current directory is your home
directory , where all your files are stored. You can change the current directory using the
cd command with the name of the directory that you want to use. For example, to change
into your Desktop directory, type in the command cd Desktop and press return.
You should create a directory (that is, a folder) to hold your Java work. For example, create a
directory named javawork in your home directory. You can do this using your computer’s GUI;
another way to do it is to open a command window and enter the command mkdir javawork.
When you want to work on programming, open a command window and enter the command cd
javawork to change into your work directory. Of course, you can have more than one working
directory for your Java work; you can organize your files any way you like.
∗∗∗
The most basic commands for using Java on the command line are javac and java ; javac
is used to compile Java source code, and java is used to run Java stand-alone applications. If
a JDK is correctly installed on your computer, it should recognize these commands when you
type them in on the command line. Try typing the commands java -version and javac -
version which should tell you which version of Java is installed. If you get a message such as
“Command not found,” then Java is not correctly installed. If the “java” command works, but
“javac” does not, it means that a Java Runtime is installed rather than a Development Kit.
To test the javac command, place a copy of [Link] into your working directory. (If you
downloaded the Web site of this book, you can find it in the directory named source; you can
use your computer’s GUI to copy-and-paste this file into your working directory. Alternatively,
you can navigate to [Link] on the book’s Web site and use the “Save As” command in your
Web browser to save a copy of the file into your working directory.) Type the command:
javac [Link]

This will compile [Link] and will create a bytecode file named [Link] in the same
directory. Note that if the command succeeds, you will not get any response from the computer;
it will just redisplay the command prompt to tell you it’s ready for another command.
2.6. PROGRAMMING ENVIRONMENTS 53

To test the java command, copy sample program [Link] from this book’s
source directory into your working directory. First, compile the program with the command
javac [Link]

Remember that for this to succeed, TextIO must already be in the same directory. Then you
can execute the program using the command
java Interest2

Be careful to use just the name of the program, Interest2, not the name of the Java source
code file or the name of the compiled class file. When you give this command, the program
will run. You will be asked to enter some information, and you will respond by typing your
answers into the command window, pressing return at the end of the line. When the
program ends, you will see the command prompt, and you can enter another command.
You can follow the same procedure to run all of the examples in the early sections of this
book. When you start work with applets, you will need a di fferent command to execute the
applets. That command will be introduced later in the book.
∗∗∗
To create your own programs, you will need a text editor . A text editor is a computer
program that allows you to create and save documents that contain plain text. It is important that
the documents be saved as plain text, that is without any special encoding or formatting
information. Word processor documents are not appropriate, unless you can get your word
processor to save as plain text. A good text editor can make programming a lot more pleasant.
Linux comes with several text editors. On Windows, you can use notepad in a pinch, but you will
probably want something better. For Mac OS, you might download the free TextWrangler
application. One possibility that will work on any platform is to use jedit , a good programmer’s
text editor that is itself written in Java and that can be downloaded for free from [Link].
To create your own programs, you should open a command line window and cd into the
working directory where you will store your source code files. Start up your text editor program,
such as by double-clicking its icon or selecting it from a Start menu. Type your code into the
editor window, or open an existing source code file that you want to modify. Save the file.
Remember that the name of a Java source code file must end in “.java”, and the rest of the file
name must match the name of the class that is defined in the file. Once the file is saved in your
working directory, go to the command window and use the javac command to compile it, as
discussed above. If there are syntax errors in the code, they will be listed in the command
window. Each error message contains the line number in the file where the computer found the
error. Go back to the editor and try to fix the errors, save your changes, and they try the javac
command again. (It’s usually a good idea to just work on the first few errors; sometimes fixing
those will make other errors go away.) Remember that when the javac command finally
succeeds, you will get no message at all. Then you can use the java command to run your
program, as described above. Once you’ve compiled the program, you can run it as many times
as you like without recompiling it.
That’s really all there is to it: Keep both editor and command-line window open. Edit,
save, and compile until you have eliminated all the syntax errors. (Always remember to save
the file before compiling it—the compiler only sees the saved file, not the version in the
editor window.) When you run the program, you might find that it has semantic errors that
cause it to run incorrectly. It that case, you have to go back to the edit/save/compile loop to
try to find and fix the problem.
54 CHAPTER 2. NAMES AND THINGS

2.6.3 IDEs and Eclipse

In an Integrated Development Environment, everything you need to create, compile, and run
programs is integrated into a single package, with a graphical user interface that will be familiar
to most computer users. There are many different IDEs for Java program development, ranging
from fairly simple wrappers around the JDK to highly complex applications with a multitude of
features. For a beginning programmer, there is a danger in using an IDE, since the di fficulty of
learning to use the IDE, on top of the di fficulty of learning to program, can be overwhelming.
Recently, however, I have begun using one IDE, Eclipse, in my introductory programming
courses. Eclipse has a variety of features that are very useful for a beginning programmer. And
even though it has many advanced features, its design makes it possible to use Eclipse without
understanding its full complexity. It is likely that other modern IDEs have similar properties, but
my only in-depth experience is with Eclipse. Eclipse is used by many professional programmers
and is probably the most commonly used Java IDE. (In fact, Eclipse is actually a general
development platform that can be used for other purposes besides Java development, but its
most common use is Java.)
Eclipse is itself written in Java. It requires Java 1.4 (or higher) to run, so it works on any
computer platform that supports Java 1.4, including Linux, Windows, and recent versions of
Mac OS. If you want to use Eclipse to compile and run Java 5.0 programs, you need Eclipse
version 3.1 (or higher). Furthermore, Eclipse requires a JDK. You should make sure that
JDK 5.0 (or higher) is installed on your computer, as described above, before you install
Eclipse. Eclipse can be downloaded for free from [Link].
The first time you start Eclipse, you will be asked to specify a workspace, which is the
directory where all your work will be stored. You can accept the default name, or provide
one of your own. When startup is complete, the Eclipse window will be filled by a large
“Welcome” screen that includes links to extensive documentation and tutorials. You can
close this screen, by clicking the “X” next to the word “Welcome”; you can get back to it later
by choosing “Welcome” from the “Help” menu.
The Eclipse GUI consists of one large window that is divided into several sections. Each
section contains one or more views. If there are several views in one section, there there will be
tabs at the top of the section to select the view that is displayed in that section. Each view
displays a different type of information. The whole set of views is called a perspective. Eclipse
uses different perspectives, that is different sets of views of di fferent types of information, for
different tasks. The only perspective that you will need is the “Java Perspective.” Select the
“Java Perspective” from the “Open Perspective” submenu of the “Window” menu. (You will only
have to do this once, the first time you start Eclipse.) The Java perspective includes a large area
in the center of the window where you will create and edit your Java programs. To the left of this
is the Package Explorer view, which will contain a list of your Java projects and source code
files. To the right is an “Outline” view which shows an outline of the file that you are currently
editing; I don’t find this very useful, and I suggest that you close the Outline view by clicking the
“X” next to the word Outline. Several other views that will be useful while you are compiling and
running programs appear in a section of the window below the editing area. If you accidently
close one of the important views, such as the Package Explorer, you can get it back by selecting
it form the “Show View” submenu of the “Window” menu.
∗∗∗
To do any work in Eclipse, you need a project . To start a Java project, go to the “New”
submenu in the “File” menu, and select the “Project” command. In the window that pops
2.6. PROGRAMMING ENVIRONMENTS 55

up, make sure “Java Project” is selected, and click the “Next” button. In the next window, it
should only be necessary to fill in a “Project Name” for the project and click the “Finish”
button. The project should appear in the “Package Explorer” view. Click on the small triangle
next to the project name to see the contents of the project. At the beginning, it contains only
the “JRE System Library”; this is the collection of standard built-in classes that come with
Java.
To run the TextIO based examples from this textbook, you must add the source code file
[Link] to your project. If you have downloaded the Web site of this book, you can find
a copy of [Link] in the source directory. Alternatively, you can navigate to the file on-
line and use the “Save As” command of your Web browser to save a copy of the file onto
your computer. The easiest way to get TextIO into your project is to locate the source code
file on your computer and drag the file icon onto the project name in the Eclipse window. If
that doesn’t work, you can try using copy-and-paste: Right-click the file icon (or control-click
on Mac OS), select “Copy” from the pop-up menu, right-click the project name in the Eclipse
window, and select “Paste”. If you also have trouble with that, you can try using the “Import”
command in the “File” menu; select “File system” in the window that pops up, click “Next”,
and provide the necessary information in the next window. (Unfortunately, using the file
import window is rather complicated. If you find that you have to use it, you should consult
the Eclipse documentation about it.) In any case, TextIO should appear in your project,
inside a package named “default package”. You will need to click the small triangle next to
“default package” to see the file. Once a file is in this list, you can open it by double-clicking
it; it will appear in the editing area of the Eclipse window.
To run any of the Java programs from this textbook, copy the source code file into your
Eclipse Java project. To run the program, right-click the file name in the Package Explorer
view (or control-click in Mac OS). In the menu that pops up, go to the “Run As” submenu,
and select “Java Application”. The program will be executed. If the program writes to
standard output, the output will appear in the “Console” view, under the editing area. If the
program uses TextIO for input, you will have to type the required input into the “Console”
view—click the “Console” view before you start typing, so that the characters that you type
will be sent to the correct part of the window. (Note that if you don’t like doing I/O in the
“Console” view, you can use an alternative version of [Link] that opens a separate
window for I/O. You can find this “GUI” version of TextIO in a directory named TextIO-GUI
inside this textbook’s source directory.)
You can have more than one program in the same Eclipse project, or you can create
addi-tional projects to organize your work better. Remember to place a copy of [Link]
in any project that requires it.
∗∗∗
To create your own Java program, you must create a new Java class. To do this, right-
click the Java project name in the “Project Explorer” view. Go to the “New” submenu of the
popup menu, and select “Class”. In the window that opens, type in the name of the class,
and click the “Finish” button. Note that you want the name of the class, not the name of the
source code file, so don’t add “.java” at the end of the name. The class should appear inside
the “default package,” and it should automatically open in the editing area so that you can
start typing in your program.
Eclipse has several features that aid you as you type your code. It will underline any syntax
error with a jagged red line, and in some cases will place an error marker in the left border of the
edit window. If you hover the mouse cursor over the error marker, a description of the
56 CHAPTER 2. NAMES AND THINGS

error will appear. Note that you do not have to get rid of every error immediately as you type;
some errors will go away as you type in more of the program. If an error marker displays a
small “light bulb,” Eclipse is offering to try to fix the error for you. Click the light bulb to get a
list of possible fixes, then double click the fix that you want to apply. For example, if you use
an undeclared variable in your program, Eclipse will offer to declare it for you. You can
actually use this error-correcting feature to get Eclipse to write certain types of code for you!
Unfortunately, you’ll find that you won’t understand a lot of the proposed fixes until you learn
more about the Java language.
Another nice Eclipse feature is code assist . Code assist can be invoked by typing
Control-Space. It will offer possible completions of whatever you are typing at the moment.
For example, if you type part of an identifier and hit Control-Space, you will get a list of
identifiers that start with the characters that you have typed; use the up and down arrow
keys to select one of the items in the list, and press Return or Enter. (Or hit Escape to
dismiss the list.) If there is only one possible completion when you hit Control-Space, it will
be inserted automatically. By default, Code Assist will also pop up automatically, after a
short delay, when you type a period or certain other characters. For example, if you type
“TextIO.” and pause for just a fraction of a second, you will get a list of all the subroutines
in the TextIO class. Personally, I find this auto-activation annoying. You can disable it in the
Eclipse Preferences. (Look under Java / Editor / Code Assist, and turn o ff the “Enable auto
activation” option.) You can still call up Code Assist manually with Control-Space.
Once you have an error-free program, you can run it as described above, by right-
clicking its name in the Package Explorer and using “Run As / Java Application”. If you find
a problem when you run it, it’s very easy to go back to the editor, make changes, and run it
again. Note that using Eclipse, there is no explicit “compile” command. The source code files
in your project are automatically compiled, and are re-compiled whenever you modify them.
Although I have only talked about Eclipse here, if you are using a di fferent IDE, you will
probably find a lot of similarities. Most IDEs use the concept of a “project” to which you have
to add your source code files, and most of them have menu commands for running a
program. All of them, of course, come with built-in text editors.

2.6.4 The Problem of Packages

Every class in Java is contained in something called a package. Classes that are not
explicitly put into a different package are in the “default” package. Almost all the examples in
this textbook are in the default package, and I will not even discuss packages in any depth
until Section 4.5. However, some IDEs might force you to pay attention to packages.
When you create a class in Eclipse, you might notice a message that says that “The use
of the default package is discouraged.” Although this is true, I have chosen to use it anyway,
since it seems easier for beginning programmers to avoid the whole issue of packages, at
least at first. Some IDEs might be even less willing than Eclipse to use the default package.
If you create a class in a package, the source code starts with a line that specifies which
package the class is in. For example, if the class is in a package named testpkg, then the
first line of the source code will be
package testpkg;

In an IDE, this will not cause any problem unless the program you are writing depends on
TextIO. You will not be able to use TextIO in a program unless TextIO is placed into the
same package as the program. This means that you have to modify the source code file
[Link]
2.6. PROGRAMMING ENVIRONMENTS 57

to specify the package; just add a package statement using the same package name as
the program. Then add the modified [Link] to the same folder that contains the
program source code. Once you’ve done this, the example should run in the same way as if
it were in the default package.
By the way, if you use packages in a command-line environment, other complications arise.
For example, if a class is in a package named testpkg, then the source code file must be in a
subdirectory named testpkg that is inside your main Java working directory. Nevertheless,
when you compile or execute the program, you should be in the main directory, not in the
subdirectory. When you compile the source code file, you have to include the name of the
directory in the command: Use “javac testpkg/[Link]” on Linux or Mac OS, or
“javac testpkg\[Link]” on Windows. The command for executing the program is
then “java [Link]”, with a period separating the package name from the class
name. Since packages can contain subpackages, it can get even worse than this! However, you
will not need to worry about any of that when using the examples in this book.
58 CHAPTER 2. NAMES AND THINGS

Exercises for Chapter 2

Write a program that will print your initials to standard output in letters that are nine lines
tall. Each big letter should be made up of a bunch of *’s. For example, if your initials
were “DJE”, then the output would look something like:
****** ************* **********
** ** ** **
** ** ** **
** ** ** **
** ** ** ********
** ** ** ** **
** ** ** ** **
** ** ** ** **
***** **** **********

Write a program that simulates rolling a pair of dice. You can simulate rolling one die by
choosing one of the integers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, or 6 at random. The number you pick represents
the number on the die after it is rolled. As pointed out in Section 2.5, The expression
(int)([Link]()*6) + 1

does the computation you need to select a random integer between 1 and 6. You can
assign this value to a variable to represent one of the dice that are being rolled. Do this
twice and add the results together to get the total roll. Your program should report the
number showing on each die as well as the total roll. For example:
The first die comes up 3
The second die comes up 5
Your total roll is 8

Write a program that asks the user’s name, and then greets the user by name. Before
outputting the user’s name, convert it to upper case letters. For example, if the user’s
name is Fred, then the program should respond “Hello, FRED, nice to meet you!”.

Write a program that helps the user count his change. The program should ask how many
quarters the user has, then how many dimes, then how many nickels, then how many
pennies. Then the program should tell the user how much money he has, expressed in
dollars.

If you have N eggs, then you have N/12 dozen eggs, with N%12 eggs left over. (This is
essentially the definition of the / and % operators for integers.) Write a program that
asks the user how many eggs she has and then tells the user how many dozen eggs
she has and how many extra eggs are left over.
A gross of eggs is equal to 144 eggs. Extend your program so that it will tell the user
how many gross, how many dozen, and how many left over eggs she has. For example, if
the user says that she has 1342 eggs, then your program would respond with

Your number of eggs is 9 gross, 3 dozen, and 10

Exercises 59

since 1342 is equal to 9*144 + 3*12 + 10.

Suppose that a file named “[Link]” contains the following information: The first line of
the file is the name of a student. Each of the next three lines contains an integer. The
integers are the student’s scores on three exams. Write a program that will read the
information in the file and display (on standard output) a message the contains the
name of the student and the student’s average grade on the three exams. The average
is obtained by adding up the individual exam grades and then dividing by the number of
exams.
60 CHAPTER 2. NAMES AND THINGS

Quiz on Chapter 2

Briefly explain what is meant by the syntax and the semantics of a programming language. Give
an example to illustrate the difference between a syntax error and a semantics error.

What does the computer do when it executes a variable declaration statement. Give an
example.

What is a type, as this term relates to programming?

One of the primitive types in Java is boolean. What is the boolean type? Where are
boolean values used? What are its possible values?

Give the meaning of each of the following Java operators:

++
&&
!=

Explain what is meant by an assignment statement, and give an example. What are
assignment statements used for?

What is meant by precedence of operators?

What is a literal ?

In Java, classes have two fundamentally different purposes. What are they?

What is the difference between the statement “x = [Link]();” and the

state-ment “x = [Link]();”

Explain why the value of the expression 2 + 3 + "test" is the string "5test" while the value
of the expression "test" + 2 + 3 is the string "test23". What is the value of
"test" + 2 * 3 ?

Integrated Development Environments such as Eclipse often use syntax coloring , which
assigns various colors to the characters in a program to reflect the syntax of the
language. A student notices that Eclipse colors the word String di fferently from int,
double, and boolean. The student asks why String should be a different color, since all
these words are names of types. What’s the answer to the student’s question?
Chapter 3

Programming in the Small II:

Control

The basic building blocks of programs—variables, expressions, assignment statements, and

subroutine call statements—were covered in the previous chapter. Starting with this chapter, we
look at how these building blocks can be put together to build complex programs with more
interesting behavior.
Since we are still working on the level of “programming in the small” in this chapter, we
are interested in the kind of complexity that can occur within a single subroutine. On this
level, complexity is provided by control structures. The two types of control structures,
loops and branches, can be used to repeat a sequence of statements over and over or to
choose among two or more possible courses of action. Java includes several control
structures of each type, and we will look at each of them in some detail.
This chapter will also begin the study of program design. Given a problem, how can you
come up with a program to solve that problem? We’ll look at a partial answer to this question
in Section 3.2.

3.1 Blocks, Loops, and Branches

The ability of a computer to perform complex tasks is built on just a few ways of combining
simple commands into control structures. In Java, there are just six such structures that are used
to determine the normal flow of control in a program—and, in fact, just three of them would be
enough to write programs to perform any task. The six control structures are: the block , the
while loop, the do..while loop, the for loop, the if statement , and the switch statement .
Each of these structures is considered to be a single “statement,” but each is in fact a
structured statement that can contain one or more other statements inside itself.

3.1.1 Blocks

The block is the simplest type of structured statement. Its purpose is simply to group a
sequence of statements into a single statement. The format of a block is:
{
statements
}

61
62 CHAPTER 3. CONTROL

That is, it consists of a sequence of statements enclosed between a pair of braces, “ {” and “}”.
(In fact, it is possible for a block to contain no statements at all; such a block is called an empty
block , and can actually be useful at times. An empty block consists of nothing but an empty pair
of braces.) Block statements usually occur inside other statements, where their purpose is to
group together several statements into a unit. However, a block can be legally used wherever a
statement can occur. There is one place where a block is required: As you might have already
noticed in the case of the main subroutine of a program, the definition of a subroutine is a
block, since it is a sequence of statements enclosed inside a pair of braces.
I should probably note again at this point that Java is what is called a free-format
language. There are no syntax rules about how the language has to be arranged on a page.
So, for example, you could write an entire block on one line if you want. But as a matter of
good programming style, you should lay out your program on the page in a way that will
make its structure as clear as possible. In general, this means putting one statement per line
and using indentation to indicate statements that are contained inside control structures.
This is the format that I will generally use in my examples.
Here are two examples of blocks:
{
[Link]("The answer is ");
[Link](ans);
}

{ // This block exchanges the values of x and y

int temp; // A temporary variable for use in this block.
temp = x; // Save a copy of the value of x in temp.
x = y; // Copy the value of y into x.
y = temp; // Copy the value of temp into y.
}

In the second example, a variable, temp, is declared inside the block. This is perfectly
legal, and it is good style to declare a variable inside a block if that variable is used nowhere
else but inside the block. A variable declared inside a block is completely inaccessible and
invisible from outside that block. When the computer executes the variable declaration
statement, it allocates memory to hold the value of the variable. When the block ends, that
memory is discarded (that is, made available for reuse). The variable is said to be local to
the block. There is a general concept called the “scope” of an identifier. The scope of an
identifier is the part of the program in which that identifier is valid. The scope of a variable
defined inside a block is limited to that block, and more specifically to the part of the block
that comes after the declaration of the variable.

3.1.2 The Basic While Loop

The block statement by itself really doesn’t affect the flow of control in a program. The five
remaining control structures do. They can be divided into two classes: loop statements and
branching statements. You really just need one control structure from each category in order
to have a completely general-purpose programming language. More than that is just
convenience. In this section, I’ll introduce the while loop and the if statement. I’ll give
the full details of these statements and of the other three control structures in later sections.
A while loop is used to repeat a given statement over and over. Of course, it’s not likely
that you would want to keep repeating it forever. That would be an infinite loop, which is
3.1. BLOCKS, LOOPS, AND BRANCHES 63

generally a bad thing. (There is an old story about computer pioneer Grace Murray Hopper, who
read instructions on a bottle of shampoo telling her to “lather, rinse, repeat.” As the story goes,
she claims that she tried to follow the directions, but she ran out of shampoo. (In case you don’t
get it, this is a joke about the way that computers mindlessly follow instructions.))
To be more specific, a while loop will repeat a statement over and over, but only so
long as a specified condition remains true. A while loop has the form:
while ( boolean-expression )
statement

Since the statement can be, and usually is, a block, many while loops have the form:
while ( boolean-expression ) {
statements
}

The semantics of this statement go like this: When the computer comes to a while
state-ment, it evaluates the boolean-expression , which yields either true or false as
the value. If the value is false, the computer skips over the rest of the while loop and
proceeds to the next command in the program. If the value of the expression is true, the
computer executes the statement or block of statements inside the loop. Then it returns to
the beginning of the while loop and repeats the process. That is, it re-evaluates the
boolean-expression , ends the loop if the value is false, and continues it if the value is
true. This will continue over and over until the value of the expression is false; if that
never happens, then there will be an infinite loop.
Here is an example of a while loop that simply prints out the numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5:
int number; // The number to be printed.
number = 1; // Start with 1.
while ( number < 6 ) { // Keep going as long as number is < 6.
[Link](number);
number = number + 1; // Go on to the next number.
}
[Link]("Done!");

The variable number is initialized with the value 1. So the first time through the while loop,
when the computer evaluates the expression “number < 6”, it is asking whether 1 is less than
6, which is true. The computer therefor proceeds to execute the two statements inside the
loop. The first statement prints out “1”. The second statement adds 1 to number and stores the
result back into the variable number; the value of number has been changed to 2. The
computer has reached the end of the loop, so it returns to the beginning and asks again whether
number is less than 6. Once again this is true, so the computer executes the loop again, this
time printing out 2 as the value of number and then changing the value of number to 3. It
continues in this way until eventually number becomes equal to 6. At that point, the expression
“number < 6” evaluates to false. So, the computer jumps past the end of the loop to the next
statement and prints out the message “Done!”. Note that when the loop ends, the value of
number is 6, but the last value that was printed was 5.
By the way, you should remember that you’ll never see a while loop standing by itself in a
real program. It will always be inside a subroutine which is itself defined inside some class. As
an example of a while loop used inside a complete program, here is a little program that
computes the interest on an investment over several years. This is an improvement over
examples from the previous chapter that just reported the results for one year:
64 CHAPTER 3. CONTROL

public class Interest3 {

/*
This class implements a simple program that
will compute the amount of interest that is
earned on an investment over a period of
5 years. The initial amount of the
investment and the interest rate are input
by the user. The value of the investment
at the end of each year is output.
*/

public static void main(String[] args) {

double principal; // The value of the investment.

double rate; // The annual interest rate.

/* Get the initial investment and interest rate from the user. */

[Link]("Enter the initial investment:

"); principal = [Link]();

[Link]("Enter the annual interest

rate: "); rate = [Link]();

/* Simulate the investment for 5 years. */

int years; // Counts the number of years that have passed.

years = 0;
while (years < 5) {
double interest; // Interest for this year.
interest = principal * rate;
principal = principal + interest; // Add it to principal.
years = years + 1; // Count the current year.
[Link]("The value of the investment after ");
[Link](years);
[Link](" years is $");
[Link]("%1.2f", principal);
[Link]();
} // end of while

loop } // end of main()

} // end of class Interest3

You should study this program, and make sure that you understand what the computer does
step-by-step as it executes the while loop.

3.1.3 The Basic If Statement

An if statement tells the computer to take one of two alternative courses of action,
depending on whether the value of a given boolean-valued expression is true or false. It is
an example of a “branching” or “decision” statement. An if statement has the form:
3.1. BLOCKS, LOOPS, AND BRANCHES 65

if ( boolean-expression )
statement
else
statement

When the computer executes an if statement, it evaluates the boolean expression. If the value is
true, the computer executes the first statement and skips the statement that follows the “else”. If
the value of the expression is false, then the computer skips the first statement and executes the
second one. Note that in any case, one and only one of the two statements inside the if statement
is executed. The two statements represent alternative courses of action; the computer decides
between these courses of action based on the value of the boolean expression.
In many cases, you want the computer to choose between doing something and not
doing it. You can do this with an if statement that omits the else part:
if ( boolean-expression )
statement

To execute this statement, the computer evaluates the expression. If the value is true, the
computer executes the statement that is contained inside the if statement; if the value is
false, the computer skips that statement .
Of course, either or both of the statement ’s in an if statement can be a block, so that
an if statement often looks like:
if ( boolean-expression ) {
statements
}
else {
statements
}

or:
if ( boolean-expression ) {
statements
}

As an example, here is an if statement that exchanges the value of two variables, x and
y, but only if x is greater than y to begin with. After this if statement has been executed, we
can be sure that the value of x is definitely less than or equal to the value of y:
if ( x > y ) {
int temp; // A temporary variable for use in this block.
temp = x; // Save a copy of the value of x in temp.
x = y; // Copy the value of y into x.
y = temp; // Copy the value of temp into y.
}

Finally, here is an example of an if statement that includes an else part. See if you
can figure out what it does, and why it would be used:
if ( years > 1 ) { // handle case for 2 or more
years [Link]("The value of the
investment after "); [Link](years);
[Link](" years is $");
}
else { // handle case for 1 year
66 CHAPTER 3. CONTROL

[Link]("The value of the investment after 1 year is $");

} // end of if statement
[Link]("%1.2f", principal); // this is done in any case

I’ll have more to say about control structures later in this chapter. But you already know
the essentials. If you never learned anything more about control structures, you would
already know enough to perform any possible computing task. Simple looping and
branching are all you really need!

3.2 Algorithm Development

Programming is difficult (like many activities that are useful and worthwhile—and like most of
those activities, it can also be rewarding and a lot of fun). When you write a program, you have
to tell the computer every small detail of what to do. And you have to get everything exactly right,
since the computer will blindly follow your program exactly as written. How, then, do people write
any but the most simple programs? It’s not a big mystery, actually. It’s a matter of learning to
think in the right way.
A program is an expression of an idea. A programmer starts with a general idea of a task for
the computer to perform. Presumably, the programmer has some idea of how to perform the task
by hand, at least in general outline. The problem is to flesh out that outline into a complete,
unambiguous, step-by-step procedure for carrying out the task. Such a procedure is called an
“algorithm.” (Technically, an algorithm is an unambiguous, step-by-step procedure that
terminates after a finite number of steps; we don’t want to count procedures that go on forever.)
An algorithm is not the same as a program. A program is written in some particular programming
language. An algorithm is more like the idea behind the program, but it’s the idea of the steps
the program will take to perform its task, not just the idea of the task itself. The steps of the
algorithm don’t have to be filled in in complete detail, as long as the steps are unambiguous and
it’s clear that carrying out the steps will accomplish the assigned task. An algorithm can be
expressed in any language, including English. Of course, an algorithm can only be expressed as
a program if all the details have been filled in.
So, where do algorithms come from? Usually, they have to be developed, often with a lot
of thought and hard work. Skill at algorithm development is something that comes with
practice, but there are techniques and guidelines that can help. I’ll talk here about some
techniques and guidelines that are relevant to “programming in the small,” and I will return to
the subject several times in later chapters.

3.2.1 Pseudocode and Stepwise Refinement

When programming in the small, you have a few basics to work with: variables, assignment
statements, and input/output routines. You might also have some subroutines, objects, or other
building blocks that have already been written by you or someone else. (Input/output routines fall
into this class.) You can build sequences of these basic instructions, and you can also combine
them into more complex control structures such as while loops and if statements.
Suppose you have a task in mind that you want the computer to perform. One way to
proceed is to write a description of the task, and take that description as an outline of the
algorithm you want to develop. Then you can refine and elaborate that description, gradually
adding steps and detail, until you have a complete algorithm that can be translated directly
into programming language. This method is called stepwise refinement , and it is a type of
3.2. ALGORITHM DEVELOPMENT 67

top-down design. As you proceed through the stages of stepwise refinement, you can write
out descriptions of your algorithm in pseudocode—informal instructions that imitate the
structure of programming languages without the complete detail and perfect syntax of actual
program code.
As an example, let’s see how one might develop the program from the previous section,
which computes the value of an investment over five years. The task that you want the
program to perform is: “Compute and display the value of an investment for each of the next
five years, where the initial investment and interest rate are to be specified by the user.” You
might then write—or at least think—that this can be expanded as:
Get the user’s input
Compute the value of the investment after 1 year
Display the value
Compute the value after 2 years
Display the value
Compute the value after 3 years
Display the value
Compute the value after 4 years
Display the value
Compute the value after 5 years
Display the value

This is correct, but rather repetitive. And seeing that repetition, you might notice an
opportunity to use a loop. A loop would take less typing. More important, it would be more
general: Essentially the same loop will work no matter how many years you want to
process. So, you might rewrite the above sequence of steps as:
Get the user’s input
while there are more years to process:
Compute the value after the next year
Display the value

Following this algorithm would certainly solve the problem, but for a computer, we’ll have
to be more explicit about how to “Get the user’s input,” how to “Compute the value after the
next year,” and what it means to say “there are more years to process.” We can expand the
step, “Get the user’s input” into
Ask the user for the initial investment
Read the user’s response
Ask the user for the interest rate
Read the user’s response

To fill in the details of the step “Compute the value after the next year,” you have to know
how to do the computation yourself. (Maybe you need to ask your boss or professor for
clarification?) Let’s say you know that the value is computed by adding some interest to the
previous value. Then we can refine the while loop to:
while there are more years to process:
Compute the interest
Add the interest to the value
Display the value

As for testing whether there are more years to process, the only way that we can do that is
by counting the years ourselves. This displays a very common pattern, and you should expect to
use something similar in a lot of programs: We have to start with zero years, add one each
68 CHAPTER 3. CONTROL

time we process a year, and stop when we reach the desired number of years. So the
while loop becomes:
years = 0
while years < 5:
years = years + 1
Compute the interest
Add the interest to the value
Display the value

We still have to know how to compute the interest. Let’s say that the interest is to be
computed by multiplying the interest rate by the current value of the investment. Putting this
together with the part of the algorithm that gets the user’s inputs, we have the complete
algorithm:
Ask the user for the initial investment
Read the user’s response
Ask the user for the interest rate
Read the user’s response
years = 0
while years < 5:
years = years + 1
Compute interest = value * interest rate
Add the interest to the value
Display the value

Finally, we are at the point where we can translate pretty directly into proper programming-
language syntax. We still have to choose names for the variables, decide exactly what we want
to say to the user, and so forth. Having done this, we could express our algorithm in Java as:
double principal, rate, interest; // declare the
variables int years;
[Link]("Type initial investment:
"); principal = [Link]();
[Link]("Type interest rate: ");
rate = [Link](); years = 0;

while (years < 5) {

years = years + 1;
interest = principal * rate;
principal = principal + interest;
[Link](principal);
}

This still needs to be wrapped inside a complete program, it still needs to be commented,
and it really needs to print out more information in a nicer format for the user. But it’s essentially
the same program as the one in the previous section. (Note that the pseudocode algorithm uses
indentation to show which statements are inside the loop. In Java, indentation is completely
ignored by the computer, so you need a pair of braces to tell the computer which statements are
in the loop. If you leave out the braces, the only statement inside the loop would be “years =
years + 1;". The other statements would only be executed once, after the loop ends. The nasty
thing is that the computer won’t notice this error for you, like it would if you left out the
parentheses around “(years < 5)”. The parentheses are required by the syntax of
3.2. ALGORITHM DEVELOPMENT 69

the while statement. The braces are only required semantically. The computer can
recognize syntax errors but not semantic errors.)
One thing you should have noticed here is that my original specification of the problem—
“Compute and display the value of an investment for each of the next five years”—was far
from being complete. Before you start writing a program, you should make sure you have a
complete specification of exactly what the program is supposed to do. In particular, you
need to know what information the program is going to input and output and what
computation it is going to perform. Here is what a reasonably complete specification of the
problem might look like in this example:
“Write a program that will compute and display the value of
an investment for each of the next five years. Each year,
interest is added to the value. The interest is computed by
multiplying the current value by a fixed interest rate. Assume
that the initial value and the rate of interest are to be input by
the user when the program is run.”

3.2.2 The 3N+1 Problem

Let’s do another example, working this time with a program that you haven’t already seen. The
assignment here is an abstract mathematical problem that is one of my favorite programming
exercises. This time, we’ll start with a more complete specification of the task to be performed:
“Given a positive integer, N, define the ’3N+1’ sequence
start-ing from N as follows: If N is an even number, then divide
N by two; but if N is odd, then multiply N by 3 and add 1.
Continue to generate numbers in this way until N becomes
equal to 1. For example, starting from N = 3, which is odd, we
multiply by 3 and add 1, giving N = 3*3+1 = 10. Then, since N
is even, we divide by 2, giving N = 10/2 = 5. We continue in this
way, stopping when we reach 1, giving the complete sequence:
3, 10, 5, 16, 8, 4, 2, 1.
“Write a program that will read a positive integer from the
user and will print out the 3N+1 sequence starting from that
integer. The program should also count and print out the
number of terms in the sequence.”
A general outline of the algorithm for the program we want is:
Get a positive integer N from the user;
Compute, print, and count each number in the sequence;
Output the number of terms;

The bulk of the program is in the second step. We’ll need a loop, since we want to keep
computing numbers until we get 1. To put this in terms appropriate for a while loop, we want to
continue as long as the number is not 1. So, we can expand our pseudocode algorithm to:
Get a positive integer N from the user;
while N is not 1:
Compute N = next term;
Output N;
Count this term;
Output the number of terms;
70 CHAPTER 3. CONTROL

In order to compute the next term, the computer must take di fferent actions depending
on whether N is even or odd. We need an if statement to decide between the two cases:
Get a positive integer N from the user;
while N is not 1:
if N is even:
Compute N = N/2;
else
Compute N = 3 * N + 1;
Output N;
Count this term;
Output the number of terms;

We are almost there. The one problem that remains is counting. Counting means that
you start with zero, and every time you have something to count, you add one. We need a
variable to do the counting. (Again, this is a common pattern that you should expect to see
over and over.) With the counter added, we get:
Get a positive integer N from the user;
Let counter = 0;
while N is not 1:
if N is even:
Compute N = N/2;
else
Compute N = 3 * N + 1;
Output N;
Add 1 to counter;
Output the counter;

We still have to worry about the very first step. How can we get a positive integer from
the user? If we just read in a number, it’s possible that the user might type in a negative
number or zero. If you follow what happens when the value of N is negative or zero, you’ll
see that the program will go on forever, since the value of N will never become equal to 1.
This is bad. In this case, the problem is probably no big deal, but in general you should try to
write programs that are foolproof. One way to fix this is to keep reading in numbers until the
user types in a positive number:
Ask user to input a positive number;
Let N be the user’s response;
while N is not positive:
Print an error message;
Read another value for N;
Let counter = 0;
while N is not 1:
if N is even:
Compute N = N/2;
else
Compute N = 3 * N + 1;
Output N;
Add 1 to counter;
Output the counter;

The first while loop will end only when N is a positive number, as required. (A common
beginning programmer’s error is to use an if statement instead of a while statement here: “If N is
not positive, ask the user to input another value.” The problem arises if the second
3.2. ALGORITHM DEVELOPMENT 71

number input by the user is also non-positive. The if statement is only executed once, so
the second input number is never tested. With the while loop, after the second number is
input, the computer jumps back to the beginning of the loop and tests whether the second
number is positive. If not, it asks the user for a third number, and it will continue asking for
numbers until the user enters an acceptable input.)
Here is a Java program implementing this algorithm. It uses the operators <= to mean
“is less than or equal to” and != to mean “is not equal to.” To test whether N is even, it uses
“N % 2 == 0”. All the operators used here were discussed in Section 2.5.
/**
This program prints out a 3N+1 sequence starting from a positive
integer specified by the user. It also counts the number of
terms in the sequence, and prints out that number.
*/
public class ThreeN1 {

public static void main(String[] args) {

int N; // for computing terms in the sequence

int counter; // for counting the terms

[Link]("Starting point for sequence: ");

N = [Link]();
while (N <= 0) {
[Link]("The starting point must be positive. Please try
again: "); N = [Link]();
}
// At this point, we know that N > 0

counter = 0;
while (N != 1) {
if (N % 2 == 0)
N=N/2;
else
N=3*N+1;
[Link](N);
counter = counter + 1;
}

[Link]();
[Link]("There were ");
[Link](counter);
[Link](" terms in the sequence.");

} // end of main()

} // end of class ThreeN1

Two final notes on this program: First, you might have noticed that the first term of the
sequence—the value of N input by the user—is not printed or counted by this program. Is
this an error? It’s hard to say. Was the specification of the program careful enough to
decide? This is the type of thing that might send you back to the boss/professor for
clarification. The problem (if it is one!) can be fixed easily enough. Just replace the line
“counter = 0” before the while loop with the two lines:
72 CHAPTER 3. CONTROL

[Link](N); // print out initial term

counter = 1; // and count it

Second, there is the question of why this problem is at all interesting. Well, it’s interesting
to mathematicians and computer scientists because of a simple question about the problem
that they haven’t been able to answer: Will the process of computing the 3N+1 sequence
finish after a finite number of steps for all possible starting values of N? Although individual
sequences are easy to compute, no one has been able to answer the general question. To
put this another way, no one knows whether the process of computing 3N+1 sequences can
properly be called an algorithm, since an algorithm is required to terminate after a finite
number of steps! (This discussion assumes that the value of N can take on arbitrarily large
integer values, which is not true for a variable of type int in a Java program.)

3.2.3 Coding, Testing, Debugging

It would be nice if, having developed an algorithm for your program, you could relax, press a
button, and get a perfectly working program. Unfortunately, the process of turning an
algorithm into Java source code doesn’t always go smoothly. And when you do get to the
stage of a working program, it’s often only working in the sense that it does something.
Unfortunately not what you want it to do.
After program design comes coding: translating the design into a program written in Java
or some other language. Usually, no matter how careful you are, a few syntax errors will
creep in from somewhere, and the Java compiler will reject your program with some kind of
error message. Unfortunately, while a compiler will always detect syntax errors, it’s not very
good about telling you exactly what’s wrong. Sometimes, it’s not even good about telling you
where the real error is. A spelling error or missing “{” on line 45 might cause the compiler to
choke on line 105. You can avoid lots of errors by making sure that you really understand
the syntax rules of the language and by following some basic programming guidelines. For
example, I never type a “{” without typing the matching “}”. Then I go back and fill in the
statements between the braces. A missing or extra brace can be one of the hardest errors to
find in a large program. Always, always indent your program nicely. If you change the
program, change the indentation to match. It’s worth the trouble. Use a consistent naming
scheme, so you don’t have to struggle to remember whether you called that variable
interestrate or interestRate. In general, when the compiler gives multiple error
messages, don’t try to fix the second error message from the compiler until you’ve fixed the
first one. Once the compiler hits an error in your program, it can get confused, and the rest
of the error messages might just be guesses. Maybe the best advice is: Take the time to
understand the error before you try to fix it. Programming is not an experimental science.
When your program compiles without error, you are still not done. You have to test the
program to make sure it works correctly. Remember that the goal is not to get the right
output for the two sample inputs that the professor gave in class. The goal is a program
that will work correctly for all reasonable inputs. Ideally, when faced with an unreasonable
input, it will respond by gently chiding the user rather than by crashing. Test your
program on a wide variety of inputs. Try to find a set of inputs that will test the full range
of functionality that you’ve coded into your program. As you begin writing larger
programs, write them in stages and test each stage along the way. You might even have
to write some extra code to do the testing—for example to call a subroutine that you’ve
just written. You don’t want to be faced, if you can avoid it, with 500 newly written lines of
code that have an error in there somewhere.
3.3. WHILE AND DO..WHILE 73

The point of testing is to find bugs—semantic errors that show up as incorrect behavior
rather than as compilation errors. And the sad fact is that you will probably find them. Again, you
can minimize bugs by careful design and careful coding, but no one has found a way to avoid
them altogether. Once you’ve detected a bug, it’s time for debugging . You have to track down
the cause of the bug in the program’s source code and eliminate it. Debugging is a skill that, like
other aspects of programming, requires practice to master. So don’t be afraid of bugs. Learn
from them. One essential debugging skill is the ability to read source code—the ability to put
aside preconceptions about what you think it does and to follow it the way the computer does—
mechanically, step-by-step—to see what it really does. This is hard. I can still remember the time
I spent hours looking for a bug only to find that a line of code that I had looked at ten times had a
“1” where it should have had an “i”, or the time when I wrote a subroutine named
WindowClosing which would have done exactly what I wanted except that the computer was
looking for windowClosing (with a lower case “w”). Sometimes it can help to have someone
who doesn’t share your preconceptions look at your code.
Often, it’s a problem just to find the part of the program that contains the error. Most
programming environments come with a debugger , which is a program that can help you find
bugs. Typically, your program can be run under the control of the debugger. The debugger
allows you to set “breakpoints” in your program. A breakpoint is a point in the program where the
debugger will pause the program so you can look at the values of the program’s variables. The
idea is to track down exactly when things start to go wrong during the program’s execution. The
debugger will also let you execute your program one line at a time, so that you can watch what
happens in detail once you know the general area in the program where the bug is lurking.
I will confess that I only rarely use debuggers myself. A more traditional approach to
debugging is to insert debugging statements into your program. These are output
statements that print out information about the state of the program. Typically, a debugging
statement would say something like
[Link]("At start of while loop, N = "+ N);

You need to be able to tell from the output where in your program the output is coming from,
and you want to know the value of important variables. Sometimes, you will find that the
computer isn’t even getting to a part of the program that you think it should be executing.
Remember that the goal is to find the first point in the program where the state is not what
you expect it to be. That’s where the bug is.
And finally, remember the golden rule of debugging: If you are absolutely sure that
every-thing in your program is right, and if it still doesn’t work, then one of the things that you
are absolutely sure of is wrong.

3.3 The while and do..while Statements

Statements in Java can be either simple statements or compound statements. Simple statements,
such as assignment statements and subroutine call statements, are the basic building blocks of a
program. Compound statements, such as while loops and if statements, are used to organize
simple statements into complex structures, which are called control structures because they control
the order in which the statements are executed. The next five sections explore the details of control
structures that are available in Java, starting with the while statement and the do..while
statement in this section. At the same time, we’ll look at examples of programming with each control
structure and apply the techniques for designing algorithms
74 CHAPTER 3. CONTROL

that were introduced in the previous section.

3.3.1 The while Statement

The while statement was already introduced in Section 3.1. A while loop has the form
while ( boolean-expression )
statement

The statement can, of course, be a block statement consisting of several statements grouped
together between a pair of braces. This statement is called the body of the loop. The body of
the loop is repeated as long as the boolean-expression is true. This boolean expression is
called the continuation condition, or more simply the test , of the loop. There are a few points
that might need some clarification. What happens if the condition is false in the first place, before
the body of the loop is executed even once? In that case, the body of the loop is never executed
at all. The body of a while loop can be executed any number of times, including zero. What
happens if the condition is true, but it becomes false somewhere in the middle of the loop body?
Does the loop end as soon as this happens? It doesn’t, because the computer continues
executing the body of the loop until it gets to the end. Only then does it jump back to the
beginning of the loop and test the condition, and only then can the loop end.
Let’s look at a typical problem that can be solved using a while loop: finding the average of
a set of positive integers entered by the user. The average is the sum of the integers, divided by
the number of integers. The program will ask the user to enter one integer at a time. It will keep
count of the number of integers entered, and it will keep a running total of all the numbers it has
read so far. Here is a pseudocode algorithm for the program:
Let sum = 0
Let count = 0
while there are more integers to process:
Read an integer
Add it to the sum
Count it
Divide sum by count to get the average
Print out the average

But how can we test whether there are more integers to process? A typical solution is to
tell the user to type in zero after all the data have been entered. This will work because we
are assuming that all the data are positive numbers, so zero is not a legal data value. The
zero is not itself part of the data to be averaged. It’s just there to mark the end of the real
data. A data value used in this way is sometimes called a sentinel value. So now the test in
the while loop becomes “while the input integer is not zero”. But there is another problem!
The first time the test is evaluated, before the body of the loop has ever been executed, no
integer has yet been read. There is no “input integer” yet, so testing whether the input
integer is zero doesn’t make sense. So, we have to do something before the while loop to
make sure that the test makes sense. Setting things up so that the test in a while loop
makes sense the first time it is executed is called priming the loop. In this case, we can
simply read the first integer before the beginning of the loop. Here is a revised algorithm:
Let sum = 0
Let count = 0
Read an integer
while the integer is not zero:
3.3. WHILE AND DO..WHILE 75

Add the integer to the sum

Count it
Read an integer
Divide sum by count to get the average
Print out the average

Notice that I’ve rearranged the body of the loop. Since an integer is read before the loop,
the loop has to begin by processing that integer. At the end of the loop, the computer reads
a new integer. The computer then jumps back to the beginning of the loop and tests the
integer that it has just read. Note that when the computer finally reads the sentinel value, the
loop ends before the sentinel value is processed. It is not added to the sum, and it is not
counted. This is the way it’s supposed to work. The sentinel is not part of the data. The
original algorithm, even if it could have been made to work without priming, was incorrect
since it would have summed and counted all the integers, including the sentinel. (Since the
sentinel is zero, the sum would still be correct, but the count would be off by one. Such so-
called off-by-one errors are very common. Counting turns out to be harder than it looks!)
We can easily turn the algorithm into a complete program. Note that the program cannot
use the statement “average = sum/count;” to compute the average. Since sum and
count are both variables of type int, the value of sum/count is an integer. The average
should be a real number. We’ve seen this problem before: we have to convert one of the int
values to a double to force the computer to compute the quotient as a real number. This can
be done by type-casting one of the variables to type double. The type cast “(double)sum”
converts the value of sum to a real number, so in the program the average is computed as
“average = ((double)sum) / count;”. Another solution in this case would have been
to declare sum to be a variable of type double in the first place.
One other issue is addressed by the program: If the user enters zero as the first input
value, there are no data to process. We can test for this case by checking whether count
is still equal to zero after the while loop. This might seem like a minor point, but a careful
programmer should cover all the bases.
Here is the program:
/*
This program reads a sequence of positive integers input
by the user, and it will print out the average of those
integers. The user is prompted to enter one integer at a
time. The user must enter a 0 to mark the end of the
data. (The zero is not counted as part of the data to
be averaged.) The program does not check whether the
user’s input is positive, so it will actually work for
both positive and negative input values.
*/
public class ComputeAverage {
public static void main(String[] args) {
int inputNumber; // One of the integers input by the user.
int sum; // The sum of the positive integers.
int count; // The number of positive integers.
double average; // The average of the positive integers.

/* Initialize the summation and counting variables. */

sum = 0;
76 CHAPTER 3. CONTROL

count = 0;
/* Read and process the user’s input. */

[Link]("Enter your first positive

integer: "); inputNumber = [Link]();

while (inputNumber != 0) {
sum += inputNumber; // Add inputNumber to running sum.
count++; // Count the input by adding 1 to count.
[Link]("Enter your next positive integer, or 0 to
end: "); inputNumber = [Link]();
}
/* Display the result. */
if (count == 0) {
[Link]("You didn’t enter any data!");
}
else {
average = ((double)sum) / count;
[Link]();
[Link]("You entered " + count + " positive integers.");
[Link]("Their average is %1.3f.\n", average);
}
} // end main()
} // end class ComputeAverage

3.3.2 The do..while Statement

Sometimes it is more convenient to test the continuation condition at the end of a loop,
instead of at the beginning, as is done in the while loop. The do..while statement is
very similar to the while statement, except that the word “while,” along with the condition
that it tests, has been moved to the end. The word “do” is added to mark the beginning of
the loop. A do..while statement has the form
do
statement
while ( boolean-expression );

or, since, as usual, the statement can be a block,

do {
statements
} while ( boolean-expression );

Note the semicolon, ’;’, at the very end. This semicolon is part of the statement, just as the
semicolon at the end of an assignment statement or declaration is part of the statement.
Omitting it is a syntax error. (More generally, every statement in Java ends either with a
semicolon or a right brace, ’}’.)
To execute a do loop, the computer first executes the body of the loop—that is, the statement or
statements inside the loop—and then it evaluates the boolean expression. If the value of the
expression is true, the computer returns to the beginning of the do loop and repeats the process; if
the value is false, it ends the loop and continues with the next part of the program.
3.3. WHILE AND DO..WHILE 77

Since the condition is not tested until the end of the loop, the body of a do loop is always
executed at least once.
For example, consider the following pseudocode for a game-playing program. The do
loop makes sense here instead of a while loop because with the do loop, you know there
will be at least one game. Also, the test that is used at the end of the loop wouldn’t even
make sense at the beginning:
do {
Play a Game
Ask user if he wants to play another game
Read the user’s response
} while ( the user’s response is yes );

Let’s convert this into proper Java code. Since I don’t want to talk about game playing at
the moment, let’s say that we have a class named Checkers, and that the Checkers
class contains a static member subroutine named playGame() that plays one game of
checkers against the user. Then, the pseudocode “Play a game” can be expressed as the
subroutine call statement “[Link]();”. We need a variable to store the
user’s response. The TextIO class makes it convenient to use a boolean variable to store
the answer to a yes/no question. The input function [Link]() allows the
user to enter the value as “yes” or “no”. “Yes” is considered to be true, and “no” is
considered to be false. So, the algorithm can be coded as
boolean wantsToContinue; // True if user wants to play again.
do {
[Link]();
[Link]("Do you want to play again? ");
wantsToContinue = [Link]();
} while (wantsToContinue == true);

When the value of the boolean variable is set to false, it is a signal that the loop should
end. When a boolean variable is used in this way—as a signal that is set in one part of the
program and tested in another part—it is sometimes called a flag or flag variable (in the
sense of a signal flag).
By the way, a more-than-usually-pedantic programmer would sneer at the test
“while (wantsToContinue == true)”. This test is exactly equivalent to “while
(wantsToContinue)”. Testing whether “wantsToContinue == true” is true amounts
to the same thing as testing whether “wantsToContinue” is true. A little less offensive is
an expression of the form “flag == false”, where flag is a boolean variable. The value
of “flag == false” is exactly the same as the value of “!flag”, where ! is the boolean
negation operator. So you can write “while (!flag)” instead of “while (flag ==
false)”, and you can write “if (!flag)” instead of “if (flag == false)”.
Although a do..while statement is sometimes more convenient than a while statement,
having two kinds of loops does not make the language more powerful. Any problem that can be
solved using do..while loops can also be solved using only while statements, and vice
versa. In fact, if doSomething represents any block of program code, then
do {
doSomething
} while (boolean-expression );

has exactly the same effect as

78 CHAPTER 3. CONTROL

doSomething
while ( boolean-expression ) {
doSomething
}

Similarly,
while ( boolean-expression ) {
doSomething
}

can be replaced by
if ( boolean-expression ) {
do {
doSomething
} while (boolean-expression );
}

without changing the meaning of the program in any way.

3.3.3 break and continue

The syntax of the while and do..while loops allows you to test the continuation
condition at either the beginning of a loop or at the end. Sometimes, it is more natural to
have the test in the middle of the loop, or to have several tests at different places in the
same loop. Java provides a general method for breaking out of the middle of any loop. It’s
called the break statement, which takes the form
break;

When the computer executes a break statement in a loop, it will immediately jump out
of the loop. It then continues on to whatever follows the loop in the program. Consider for
example:
while (true) { // looks like it will run forever!
[Link]("Enter a positive number: ");
N = [Link]();
if (N > 0) // input is OK; jump out of
loop break;
[Link]("Your answer must be > 0.");
}
// continue here after break

If the number entered by the user is greater than zero, the break statement will be executed
and the computer will jump out of the loop. Otherwise, the computer will print out “Your answer
must be > 0.” and will jump back to the start of the loop to read another input value.
(The first line of this loop, “while (true)” might look a bit strange, but it’s perfectly
legitimate. The condition in a while loop can be any boolean-valued expression. The computer
evaluates this expression and checks whether the value is true or false. The boolean literal
“true” is just a boolean expression that always evaluates to true. So “while (true)” can be
used to write an infinite loop, or one that will be terminated by a break statement.)
A break statement terminates the loop that immediately encloses the break statement. It is
possible to have nested loops, where one loop statement is contained inside another. If you use
a break statement inside a nested loop, it will only break out of that loop, not out of
3.4. THE FOR STATEMENT 79

the loop that contains the nested loop. There is something called a labeled break statement
that allows you to specify which loop you want to break. This is not very common, so I will go
over it quickly. Labels work like this: You can put a label in front of any loop. A label consists
of a simple identifier followed by a colon. For example, a while with a label might look like
“mainloop: while...”. Inside this loop you can use the labeled break statement “break
mainloop;” to break out of the labeled loop. For example, here is a code segment that
checks whether two strings, s1 and s2, have a character in common. If a common
character is found, the value of the flag variable nothingInCommon is set to false, and
a labeled break is is used to end the processing at that point:
boolean nothingInCommon;
nothingInCommon = true; // Assume s1 and s2 have no chars in common.
int i,j; // Variables for iterating through the chars in s1 and s2.

i = 0;
bigloop: while (i < [Link]()) {
j = 0;
while (j < [Link]()) {
if ([Link](i) == [Link](j)) { // s1 and s2 have a comman char.
nothingInCommon = false;
break bigloop; // break out of BOTH loops
}
j++; // Go on to the next char in s2.
}
i++; //Go on to the next char in s1.
}

The continue statement is related to break, but less commonly used. A continue
state-ment tells the computer to skip the rest of the current iteration of the loop. However,
instead of jumping out of the loop altogether, it jumps back to the beginning of the loop and
continues with the next iteration (including evaluating the loop’s continuation condition to
see whether any further iterations are required). As with break, when a continue is in a
nested loop, it will continue the loop that directly contains it; a “labeled continue” can be
used to continue the containing loop instead.
break and continue can be used in while loops and do..while loops. They can
also be used in for loops, which are covered in the next section. In Section 3.6, we’ll see
that break can also be used to break out of a switch statement. A break can occur
inside an if statement, but in that case, it does not mean to break out of the if. Instead,
it breaks out of the loop or switch statement that contains the if statement. If the if
statement is not contained inside a loop or switch, then the if statement cannot legally
contain a break. A similar consideration applies to continue statements inside ifs.

3.4 The for Statement

We turn in this section to another type of loop, thefor statement. Any for loop is equivalent
to some while loop, so the language doesn’t get any additional power by having for
statements. But for a certain type of problem, a for loop can be easier to construct and easier
to read than the corresponding while loop. It’s quite possible that in real programs, for loops
actually outnumber while loops.
80 CHAPTER 3. CONTROL

3.4.1 For Loops

The for statement makes a common type of while loop easier to write. Many while loops
have the general form:
initialization
while ( continuation-condition ) {
statements
update
}

For example, consider this example, copied from an example in Section 3.2:
years = 0; // initialize the variable years
while ( years < 5 ) { // condition for continuing loop

interest = principal * rate; //

principal += interest; // do three statements
[Link](principal); //
years++; // update the value of the variable, years
}

This loop can be written as the following equivalent for statement:

for ( years = 0; years < 5; years++ ) {
interest = principal * rate;
principal += interest;
[Link](principal);
}

The initialization, continuation condition, and updating have all been combined in the first
line of the for loop. This keeps everything involved in the “control” of the loop in one place,
which helps makes the loop easier to read and understand. The for loop is executed in
exactly the same way as the original code: The initialization part is executed once, before
the loop begins. The continuation condition is executed before each execution of the loop,
and the loop ends when this condition is false. The update part is executed at the end of
each execution of the loop, just before jumping back to check the condition.
The formal syntax of the for statement is as follows:
for ( initialization ; continuation-condition ;
update )
statement

or, using a block statement:

for ( initialization ; continuation-condition ;
update ) { statements
}

The continuation-condition must be a boolean-valued expression. The initialization can

be any expression, but is usually an assignment statement. The update can also be any
expression, but is usually an increment, a decrement, or an assignment statement. Any of
the three can be empty. If the continuation condition is empty, it is treated as if it were “true,”
so the loop will be repeated forever or until it ends for some other reason, such as a break
statement. (Some people like to begin an infinite loop with “for (;;)” instead of “while (true) ”.)
3.4. THE FOR STATEMENT 81

Usually, the initialization part of a for statement assigns a value to some variable, and the
update changes the value of that variable with an assignment statement or with an increment or
decrement operation. The value of the variable is tested in the continuation condition, and the
loop ends when this condition evaluates to false. A variable used in this way is called a loop
control variable. In the for statement given above, the loop control variable is years.
Certainly, the most common type of for loop is the counting loop, where a loop
control variable takes on all integer values between some minimum and some maximum
value. A counting loop has the form
for ( variable = min ; variable <= max ; variable ++ ) {
statements
}

where min and max are integer-valued expressions (usually constants). The variable takes
on the values min , min +1, min +2, . . . , max . The value of the loop control variable is
often used in the body of the loop. The for loop at the beginning of this section is a counting
loop in which the loop control variable, years, takes on the values 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Here is an even
simpler example, in which the numbers 1, 2, . . . , 10 are displayed on standard output:
for ( N = 1 ; N <= 10 ; N++ )
[Link]( N );

For various reasons, Java programmers like to start counting at 0 instead of 1, and they
tend to use a “<” in the condition, rather than a “<=”. The following variation of the above
loop prints out the ten numbers 0, 1, 2, . . . , 9:
for ( N = 0 ; N < 10 ; N++ )
[Link]( N );

Using < instead of <= in the test, or vice versa, is a common source of o ff-by-one errors in
programs. You should always stop and think, Do I want the final value to be processed or not?
It’s easy to count down from 10 to 1 instead of counting up. Just start with 10, decrement
the loop control variable instead of incrementing it, and continue as long as the variable is
greater than or equal to one.
for ( N = 10 ; N >= 1 ; N-- )
[Link]( N );

Now, in fact, the official syntax of a for statemenent actually allows both the initialization
part and the update part to consist of several expressions, separated by commas. So we can
even count up from 1 to 10 and count down from 10 to 1 at the same time!
for ( i=1, j=10; i <= 10; i++, j-- ) {
[Link]("%5d", i); // Output i in a 5-character wide column.
[Link]("%5d", j); // Output j in a 5-character column
[Link](); // and end the line.
}

As a final example, let’s say that we want to use a for loop that prints out just the even
numbers between 2 and 20, that is: 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14, 16, 18, 20. There are several ways
to do this. Just to show how even a very simple problem can be solved in many ways, here
are four different solutions (three of which would get full credit):
82 CHAPTER 3. CONTROL

// There are 10 numbers to print.

Use a for loop to count 1, 2,
..., 10. The numbers we want
to print are 2*1, 2*2, ... 2*10.
for (N = 1; N <= 10; N++) {
[Link]( 2*N );
}

// Use a for loop that counts

2, 4, ..., 20 directly by
adding 2 to N each time through
the loop.
for (N = 2; N <= 20; N = N + 2) {
[Link]( N );
}

// Count off all the numbers

2, 3, 4, ..., 19, 20, but
only print out the numbers
that are even.
for (N = 2; N <= 20; N++) {
if ( N % 2 == 0 ) // is N even?
[Link]( N );
}

// Irritate the professor with

a solution that follows the
letter of this silly assignment
while making fun of it.
for (N = 1; N <= 1; N++) {
[Link]("2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20");
}

Perhaps it is worth stressing one more time that a for statement, like any statement,
never occurs on its own in a real program. A statement must be inside the main routine of
a program or inside some other subroutine. And that subroutine must be defined inside a
class. I should also remind you that every variable must be declared before it can be used,
and that includes the loop control variable in a for statement. In all the examples that you
have seen so far in this section, the loop control variables should be declared to be of type
int. It is not required that a loop control variable be an integer. Here, for example, is a for
loop in which the variable, ch, is of type char, using the fact that the ++ operator can be
applied to characters as well as to numbers:
Print out the alphabet on one line of output.
char ch; // The loop control variable;
one of the letters to be printed.
for ( ch = ’A’; ch <= ’Z’; ch+
+ ) [Link](ch);
[Link]();
3.4. THE FOR STATEMENT 83

3.4.2 Example: Counting Divisors

Let’s look at a less trivial problem that can be solved with a for loop. If N and D are
positive integers, we say that D is a divisor of N if the remainder when D is divided into N
is zero. (Equivalently, we could say that N is an even multiple of D.) In terms of Java
programming, D is a divisor of N if N % D is zero.
Let’s write a program that inputs a positive integer, N, from the user and computes how
many different divisors N has. The numbers that could possibly be divisors of N are 1, 2, . . . ,
N. To compute the number of divisors of N, we can just test each possible divisor of N and
count the ones that actually do divide N evenly. In pseudocode, the algorithm takes the form
Get a positive integer, N, from the user
Let divisorCount = 0
for each number, testDivisor, in the range from 1 to N:
if testDivisor is a divisor of N:
Count it by adding 1 to divisorCount
Output the count

This algorithm displays a common programming pattern that is used when some, but not all,
of a sequence of items are to be processed. The general pattern is
for each item in the sequence:
if the item passes the test:
process it
The for loop in our divisor-counting algorithm can be translated into Java code as
for (testDivisor = 1; testDivisor <= N;
testDivisor++) { if ( N % testDivisor == 0 )
divisorCount++;
}

On a modern computer, this loop can be executed very quickly. It is not impossible to run it
even for the largest legal int value, 2147483647. (If you wanted to run it for even larger values,
you could use variables of type long rather than int.) However, it does take a noticeable amount
of time for very large numbers. So when I implemented this algorithm, I decided to output a dot
every time the computer has tested one million possible divisors. In the improved version of the
program, there are two types of counting going on. We have to count the number of divisors and
we also have to count the number of possible divisors that have been tested. So the program
needs two counters. When the second counter reaches 1000000, the program outputs a ’.’ and
resets the counter to zero so that we can start counting the next group of one million. Reverting
to pseudocode, the algorithm now looks like
Get a positive integer, N, from the user
Let divisorCount = 0 // Number of divisors found.
Let numberTested = 0 // Number of possible divisors tested
since the last period was output.
for each number, testDivisor, in the range from
1 to N: if testDivisor is a divisor of N:
Count it by adding 1 to
divisorCount Add 1 to numberTested
if numberTested is 1000000:
print out a ’.’
Let numberTested
= 0 Output the count
84 CHAPTER 3. CONTROL

Finally, we can translate the algorithm into a complete Java program:

/**
This program reads a positive integer from the user.
It counts how many divisors that number has, and
then it prints the result.
*/
public class CountDivisors {
public static void main(String[] args) {
int N; // A positive integer entered by the user.
// Divisors of this number will be counted.

int testDivisor; // A number between 1 and N

that is a // possible divisor of
N.
int divisorCount; // Number of divisors of N that have been found.

int numberTested; // Used to count how many possible divisors

of N have been tested. When the number
reaches 1000000, a period is output and
the value of numberTested is reset to zero.
/* Get a positive integer from the user. */
while (true) {
[Link]("Enter a positive integer: ");
N = [Link]();
if (N > 0)
break;
[Link]("That number is not positive. Please try again.");
}
/* Count the divisors, printing a "." after every 1000000 tests. */
divisorCount = 0;
numberTested = 0;

for (testDivisor = 1; testDivisor <= N;

testDivisor++) { if ( N % testDivisor == 0 )
divisorCount++;
numberTested++;
if (numberTested == 1000000) {
[Link](’.’);
numberTested = 0;
}
}
/* Display the result. */
[Link]();
[Link]("The number of divisors of
" + N + " is " + divisorCount);
} // end main()

} // end class CountDivisors

3.4. THE FOR STATEMENT 85

3.4.3 Nested for Loops

Control structures in Java are statements that contain statements. In particular, control
struc-tures can contain control structures. You’ve already seen several examples of if
statements inside loops, and one example of a while loop inside another while, but any
combination of one control structure inside another is possible. We say that one structure is
nested inside another. You can even have multiple levels of nesting, such as a while loop
inside an if statement inside another while loop. The syntax of Java does not set a limit
on the number of levels of nesting. As a practical matter, though, it’s di fficult to understand a
program that has more than a few levels of nesting.
Nested for loops arise naturally in many algorithms, and it is important to understand
how they work. Let’s look at a couple of examples. First, consider the problem of printing out
a multiplication table like this one:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20 22 24
3 6 9 12 15 18 21 24 27 30 33 36
4 8 12 16 20 24 28 32 36 40 44 48
5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 60
6 12 18 24 30 36 42 48 54 60 66 72
7 14 21 28 35 42 49 56 63 70 77 84
8 16 24 32 40 48 56 64 72 80 88 96
9 18 27 36 45 54 63 72 81 90 99 108
10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 110 120
11 22 33 44 55 66 77 88 99 110 121 132
12 24 36 48 60 72 84 96 108 120 132 144

The data in the table are arranged into 12 rows and 12 columns. The process of printing
them out can be expressed in a pseudocode algorithm as
for each rowNumber = 1, 2, 3, ..., 12:
Print the first twelve multiples of rowNumber on
one line Output a carriage return

The first step in the for loop can itself be expressed as a for loop. We can expand “Print
the first twelve multiples of rowNumber on one line” as:
for N = 1, 2, 3, ..., 12:
Print N * rowNumber
so a refined algorithm for printing the table has one for loop nested inside another:
for each rowNumber = 1, 2, 3, ..., 12:
for N = 1, 2, 3, ..., 12:
Print N * rowNumber
Output a carriage return

We want to print the output in neat columns, with each output number taking up four spaces.
This can be done using formatted output with format specifier %4d. Assuming that rowNumber
and N have been declared to be variables of type int, the algorithm can be expressed in Java as
for ( rowNumber = 1; rowNumber <= 12; rowNumber+
+ ) { for ( N = 1; N <= 12; N++ ) {
// print in 4-character columns
[Link]( "%4d;", N * rowNumber ); // No carriage return
!
}
86 CHAPTER 3. CONTROL

[Link](); // Add a carriage return at end of the line.

}

This section has been weighed down with lots of examples of numerical processing. For
our next example, let’s do some text processing. Consider the problem of finding which of
the 26 letters of the alphabet occur in a given string. For example, the letters that occur in
“Hello World” are D, E, H, L, O, R, and W. More specifically, we will write a program that will
list all the letters contained in a string and will also count the number of di fferent letters. The
string will be input by the user. Let’s start with a pseudocode algorithm for the program.
Ask the user to input a string
Read the response into a variable, str
Let count = 0 (for counting the number of different letters)
for each letter of the alphabet:
if the letter occurs in str:
Print the letter
Add 1 to count
Output the count

Since we want to process the entire line of text that is entered by the user, we’ll use
[Link]() to read it. The line of the algorithm that reads “for each letter of the al-
phabet” can be expressed as “for (letter=’A’; letter<=’Z’; letter++)”. But the
body of this for loop needs more thought. How do we check whether the given letter, letter,
occurs in str? One idea is to look at each character in the string in turn, and check whether
that character is equal to letter. We can get the i-th character of str with the function call
[Link](i), where i ranges from 0 to [Link]() - 1. One more difficulty: A letter
such as ’A’ can occur in str in either upper or lower case, ’A’ or ’a’. We have to check for both
of these. But we can avoid this difficulty by converting str to upper case before processing it.
Then, we only have to check for the upper case letter. We can now flesh out the algorithm fully.
Note the use of break in the nested for loop. It is required to avoid printing or counting a
given letter more than once (in the case where it occurs more than once in the string). The
break statement breaks out of the inner for loop, but not the outer for loop. Upon executing
the break, the computer continues the outer loop with the next value of letter.
Ask the user to input a string
Read the response into a variable, str
Convert str to upper case
Let count = 0
for letter = ’A’, ’B’, ..., ’Z’:
for i = 0, 1, ..., [Link]()-1:
if letter == [Link](i):
Print letter
Add 1 to count
break // jump out of the loop
Output the count

Here is the complete program:

/**
This program reads a line of text entered by the user.
It prints a list of the letters that occur in the text,
and it reports how many different letters were
found. */
3.4. THE FOR STATEMENT 87

public class ListLetters {

public static void main(String[] args) {
String str; // Line of text entered by the user.
int count; // Number of different letters found in str.
char letter; // A letter of the alphabet.

[Link]("Please type in a line of

text."); str = [Link]();
str = [Link]();
count = 0;
[Link]("Your input contains the following letters:");
[Link]();
[Link](" ");
for ( letter = ’A’; letter <= ’Z’; letter++ )
{ int i; // Position of a character in str.
for ( i = 0; i < [Link](); i++ ) {
if ( letter == [Link](i) ) {
[Link](letter);
[Link](’ ’);
count++;
break;
}
}
}
[Link]();
[Link]();
[Link]("There were " + count + " different letters.");
} // end main()
} // end class ListLetters

In fact, there is actually an easier way to determine whether a given letter occurs in a string,
str. The built-in function [Link](letter) will return -1 if letter does not occur in
the string. It returns a number greater than or equal to zero if it does occur. So, we could check
whether letter occurs in str simply by checking “if ([Link](letter) >= 0)”. If
we used this technique in the above program, we wouldn’t need a nested for loop. This gives
you a preview of how subroutines can be used to deal with complexity.

3.4.4 Enums and for-each Loops

Java 5.0 introduces a new “enhanced” form of the for loop that is designed to be
convenient for processing data structures. A data structure is a collection of data items,
considered as a unit. For example, a list is a data structure that consists simply of a
sequence of items. The enhanced for loop makes it easy to apply the same processing to
every element of a list or other data structure. Data structures are a major topic in computer
science, but we won’t encounter them in any serious way until Chapter 7. However, one of
the applications of the enhanced for loop is to enum types, and so we consider it briefly
here. (Enums were introduced in Subsection 2.3.3.)
88 CHAPTER 3. CONTROL

The enhanced for loop can be used to perform the same processing on each of the enum
constants that are the possible values of an enumerated type. The syntax for doing this is:
for ( enum-type-name variable-name : enum-type-name .values() )
statement
or
for ( enum-type-name variable-name : enum-type-name .values() ) {
statements
}

If MyEnum is the name of any enumerated type, then [Link]() is a function call
that returns a list containing all of the values of the enum. (values() is a static member
function in MyEnum and of any other enum.) For this enumerated type, the for loop would
have the form:
for ( MyEnum variable-name : [Link]() )
statement

The intent of this is to execute the statement once for each of the possible values of the
MyEnum type. The variable-name is the loop control variable. In the statement , it repre-
sents the enumerated type value that is currently being processed. This variable should not
be declared before the for loop; it is essentially being declared in the loop itself.
To give a concrete example, suppose that the following enumerated type has been
defined to represent the days of the week:
enum Day { MONDAY, TUESDAY, WEDNESDAY, THURSDAY, FRIDAY, SATURDAY, SUNDAY }

Then we could write:

for ( Day d : [Link]() ) {
[Link]( d );
[Link](" is day number ");
[Link]( [Link]() );
}

[Link]() represents the list containing the seven constants that make up the enumerated
type. The first time through this loop, the value of d would be the first enumerated type value
[Link], which has ordinal number 0, so the output would be “MONDAY is day number 0”.
The second time through the loop, the value of d would be [Link], and so on through
[Link]. The body of the loop is executed once for each item in the list [Link](),
with d taking on each of those values in turn. The full output from this loop would be:
MONDAY is day number 0
TUESDAY is day number 1
WEDNESDAY is day number 2
THURSDAY is day number 3
FRIDAY is day number 4
SATURDAY is day number 5
SUNDAY is day number 6

Since the intent of the enhanced for loop is to do something “for each” item in a data
structure, it is often called a for-each loop. The syntax for this type of loop is unfortunate. It
would be better if it were written something like “foreach Day d in [Link]()”, which
conveys the meaning much better and is similar to the syntax used in other programming
languages for similar types of loops. It’s helpful to think of the colon (:) in the loop as
meaning “in.”
3.5. THE IF STATEMENT 89

3.5 The if Statement

The first of the two branching statements in Java is the if statement, which you have already
seen in Section 3.1. It takes the form
if ( boolean-expression )
statement-1
else
statement-2

As usual, the statements inside an if statements can be blocks. The if statement

represents a two-way branch. The else part of an if statement—consisting of the word
“else” and the statement that follows it—can be omitted.

3.5.1 The Dangling else Problem

Now, an if statement is, in particular, a statement. This means that either statement-1 or
statement-2 in the above if statement can itself be an if statement. A problem arises,
however, if statement-1 is an if statement that has no else part. This special case is
effectively forbidden by the syntax of Java. Suppose, for example, that you type
if ( x > 0 )
if (y > 0)
[Link]("First case");
else
[Link]("Second case");

Now, remember that the way you’ve indented this doesn’t mean anything at all to the
computer. You might think that the else part is the second half of your “if (x > 0)”
statement, but the rule that the computer follows attaches the else to “if (y > 0)”,
which is closer. That is, the computer reads your statement as if it were formatted:
if ( x > 0 )
if (y > 0)
[Link]("First case");
else
[Link]("Second case");

You can force the computer to use the other interpretation by enclosing the nested if in a
block:
if ( x > 0 ) {
if (y > 0)
[Link]("First case");
}
else
[Link]("Second case");

These two if statements have different meanings: In the case when x <= 0, the first
statement doesn’t print anything, but the second statement prints “Second case.”.

3.5.2 The if...else if Construction

Much more interesting than this technicality is the case where statement-2 , the else part
of the if statement, is itself an if statement. The statement would look like this (perhaps
without the final else part):
90 CHAPTER 3. CONTROL

if ( boolean-expression-1 )
statement-1
else
if ( boolean-expression-2 )
statement-2
else
statement-3

However, since the computer doesn’t care how a program is laid out on the page, this is
almost always written in the format:
if ( boolean-expression-1 )
statement-1
else if ( boolean-expression-2 )
statement-2
else
statement-3

You should think of this as a single statement representing a three-way branch. When the
computer executes this, one and only one of the three statements— statement-1 , statement-
, or statement-3 —will be executed. The computer starts by evaluating boolean-expression-
1 . If it is true, the computer executes statement-1 and then jumps all the way to the end
of the outer if statement, skipping the other two statement s. If boolean-expression-1 is
false, the computer skips statement-1 and executes the second, nested if statement. To
do this, it tests the value of boolean-expression-2 and uses it to decide between
statement-2 and statement-3 .
Here is an example that will print out one of three different messages, depending on the
value of a variable named temperature:
if (temperature < 50)
[Link]("It’s cold.");
else if (temperature < 80)
[Link]("It’s nice.");
else
[Link]("It’s hot.");

If temperature is, say, 42, the first test is true. The computer prints out the message
“It’s cold”, and skips the rest—without even evaluating the second condition. For a
temperature of 75, the first test is false, so the computer goes on to the second test. This
test is true, so the computer prints “It’s nice” and skips the rest. If the temperature is 173,
both of the tests evaluate to false, so the computer says “It’s hot” (unless its circuits have
been fried by the heat, that is).
You can go on stringing together “else-if ’s” to make multi-way branches with any
number of cases:
if ( boolean-expression-1 )
statement-1
else if ( boolean-expression-2 )
statement-2
else if ( boolean-expression-3 )
statement-3
.
// (more cases)
3.5. THE IF STATEMENT 91

else if ( boolean-expression-N )
statement-N
else
statement-(N+1)

The computer evaluates boolean expressions one after the other until it comes to one that is
true. It executes the associated statement and skips the rest. If none of the boolean
expressions evaluate to true, then the statement in the else part is executed. This
statement is called a multi-way branch because only one of the statements will be executed.
The final else part can be omitted. In that case, if all the boolean expressions are false,
none of the statements is executed. Of course, each of the statements can be a block,
consisting of a number of statements enclosed between { and }. (Admittedly, there is lot of
syntax here; as you study and practice, you’ll become comfortable with it.)

3.5.3 If Statement Examples

As an example of using if statements, lets suppose that x, y, and z are variables of type
int, and that each variable has already been assigned a value. Consider the problem of
printing out the values of the three variables in increasing order. For examples, if the values
are 42, 17, and 20, then the output should be in the order 17, 20, 42.
One way to approach this is to ask, where does x belong in the list? It comes first if it’s
less than both y and z. It comes last if it’s greater than both y and z. Otherwise, it comes
in the middle. We can express this with a 3-way if statement, but we still have to worry
about the order in which y and z should be printed. In pseudocode,
if (x < y && x < z) {
output x, followed by y and z in their correct order
}
else if (x > y && x > z) {
output y and z in their correct order, followed by x
}
else {
output x in between y and z in their correct order
}

Determining the relative order of y and z requires another if statement, so this becomes
if (x < y && x < z) { // x comes first
if (y < z)
[Link]( x + " " + y + " " + z );
else
[Link]( x + " " + z + " " + y );
}
else if (x > y && x > z) { // x comes last
if (y < z)
[Link]( y + " " + z + " "
+ x ); else
[Link]( z + " " + y + " " + x );
}
else { // x in the middle if (y < z)

[Link]( y + " " + x + " "

+ z); else
92 CHAPTER 3. CONTROL

[Link]( z + " " + x + " " + y);

}

You might check that this code will work correctly even if some of the values are the same. If
the values of two variables are the same, it doesn’t matter which order you print them in.
Note, by the way, that even though you can say in English “if x is less than y and z,”, you
can’t say in Java “if (x < y && z)”. The && operator can only be used between
boolean values, so you have to make separate tests, x<y and x<z, and then combine the
two tests with &&.
There is an alternative approach to this problem that begins by asking, “which order
should x and y be printed in?” Once that’s known, you only have to decide where to stick in
z. This line of thought leads to different Java code:
if ( x < y ) { // x comes before y
if ( z < x ) // z comes first
[Link]( z + " " + x + " " + y);
else if ( z > y ) // z comes last
[Link]( x + " " + y + " " + z);
else // z is in the middle
[Link]( x + " " + z + " " + y);
}
else { // y comes before x
if ( z < y ) // z comes first
[Link]( z + " " + y + " "
+ x); else if ( z > x ) // z comes last
[Link]( y + " " + x + " "
+ z); else // z is in the middle
[Link]( y + " " + z + " " + x);
}

Once again, we see how the same problem can be solved in many di fferent ways. The
two approaches to this problem have not exhausted all the possibilities. For example, you
might start by testing whether x is greater than y. If so, you could swap their values. Once
you’ve done that, you know that x should be printed before y.
∗∗∗
Finally, let’s write a complete program that uses an if statement in an interesting way. I
want a program that will convert measurements of length from one unit of measurement to
another, such as miles to yards or inches to feet. So far, the problem is extremely under-
specified. Let’s say that the program will only deal with measurements in inches, feet, yards,
and miles. It would be easy to extend it later to deal with other units. The user will type in a
measurement in one of these units, such as “17 feet” or “2.73 miles”. The output will show
the length in terms of each of the four units of measure. (This is easier than asking the user
which units to use in the output.) An outline of the process is
Read the user’s input measurement and units of measure
Express the measurement in inches, feet, yards, and miles
Display the four results

The program can read both parts of the user’s input from the same line by using
[Link]() to read the numerical measurement and [Link]() to read the unit of
measure. The conversion into different units of measure can be simplified by first
3.5. THE IF STATEMENT 93

converting the user’s input into inches. From there, the number of inches can easily be con-
verted into feet, yards, and miles. Before converting into inches, we have to test the input to
determine which unit of measure the user has specified:
Let measurement = [Link]()
Let units = [Link]()
if the units are inches
Let inches = measurement
else if the units are feet
Let inches = measurement * 12 // 12 inches per foot
else if the units are yards
Let inches = measurement * 36 // 36 inches per yard
else if the units are miles
Let inches = measurement * 12 * 5280 // 5280 feet per mile
else
The units are illegal!
Print an error message and stop processing
Let feet = inches / 12.0
Let yards = inches / 36.0
Let miles = inches / (12.0 * 5280.0)
Display the results

Since units is a String, we can use [Link]("inches") to check whether

the spec-ified unit of measure is “inches”. However, it would be nice to allow the units to be
spec-ified as “inch” or abbreviated to “in”. To allow these three possibilities, we can check
if ([Link]("inches") || [Link]("inch") ||
[Link]("in")). It would also be nice to allow upper case letters, as in “Inches” or
“IN”. We can do this by converting units to lower case before testing it or by substituting
the function [Link] for [Link].
In my final program, I decided to make things more interesting by allowing the user to
enter a whole sequence of measurements. The program will end only when the user inputs
0. To do this, I just have to wrap the above algorithm inside a while loop, and make sure
that the loop ends when the user inputs a 0. Here’s the complete program:
/*
This program will convert measurements expressed in inches,
feet, yards, or miles into each of the possible units of
measure. The measurement is input by the user, followed by
the unit of measure. For example: "17 feet", "1 inch",
"2.73 mi". Abbreviations in, ft, yd, and mi are accepted.
The program will continue to read and convert measurements
until the user enters an input of 0.
*/
public class LengthConverter {
public static void main(String[] args) {

double measurement; // Numerical measurement, input by

String units; user. // The unit of measure for the
input, also // specified by the user.

double inches, feet, yards, miles; // Measurement expressed in

// each possible unit of
// measure.
94 CHAPTER 3. CONTROL

[Link]("Enter measurements in inches, feet, yards, or miles.");

[Link]("For example: 1 inch 17 feet 2.73 miles");
[Link]("You can use abbreviations: in ft yd mi");
[Link]("I will convert your input into the other units");
[Link]("of measure.");
[Link]();
while (true) {
/* Get the user’s input, and convert units to lower case. */

[Link]("Enter your measurement, or 0 to

end: "); measurement = [Link](); if
(measurement == 0)
break; // Terminate the while loop.
units = [Link]();
units = [Link]();
/* Convert the input measurement to inches. */
if ([Link]("inch") || [Link]("inches")
|| [Link]("in")) {
inches = measurement;
}
else if ([Link]("foot") || [Link]("feet") ||
[Link]("ft")) {
inches = measurement * 12;
}
else if ([Link]("yard") || [Link]("yards") ||
[Link]("yd")) {
inches = measurement * 36;
}
else if ([Link]("mile") || [Link]("miles")
|| [Link]("mi")) {
inches = measurement * 12 * 5280;
}
else {
[Link]("Sorry, but I don’t understand \""
+ units + "\".");
continue; // back to start of while loop
}
/* Convert measurement in inches to feet, yards, and miles. */

feet = inches / 12;

yards = inches / 36;
miles = inches / (12*5280);
/* Output measurement in terms of each unit of measure. */
[Link]();
[Link]("That’s equivalent to:");
[Link]("%12.5g", inches);
[Link](" inches");
[Link]("%12.5g", feet);
[Link](" feet");
[Link]("%12.5g", yards);
3.5. THE IF STATEMENT 95

[Link](" yards");
[Link]("%12.5g", miles);
[Link](" miles");
[Link]();
} // end while
[Link]();
[Link]("OK! Bye for now.");

} // end main()
} // end class LengthConverter

(Note that this program uses formatted output with the “g” format specifier. In this pro-gram,
we have no control over how large or how small the numbers might be. It could easily make
sense for the user to enter very large or very small measurements. The “g” format will print a real
number in exponential form if it is very large or very small, and in the usual decimal form
otherwise. Remember that in the format specification %12.5g, the 5 is the total number of
significant digits that are to be printed, so we will always get the same number of signifant digits
in the output, no matter what the size of the number. If we had used an “f” format specifier such
as %12.5f, the output would be in decimal form with 5 digits after the decimal point. This would
print the number 0.0000000007454 as 0.00000, with no significant digits at all! With the “g”
format specifier, the output would be 7.454e-10.)

3.5.4 The Empty Statement

As a final note in this section, I will mention one more type of statement in Java: the empty
statement . This is a statement that consists simply of a semicolon and which tells the
computer to do nothing. The existence of the empty statement makes the following legal,
even though you would not ordinarily see a semicolon after a } :
if (x < 0) {
x = -x;
};

The semicolon is legal after the }, but the computer considers it to be an empty statement,
not part of the if statement. Occasionally, you might find yourself using the empty statement
when what you mean is, in fact, “do nothing”. For example, the rather contrived if statement
if ( done )
// Empty statement
else
[Link]( "Not done yet. );

does nothing when the boolean variable done is true, and prints out “Not done yet” when it
is false. You can’t just leave out the semicolon in this example, since Java syntax requires
an actual statement between the if and the else. I prefer, though, to use an empty block,
consisting of { and } with nothing between, for such cases.
Occasionally, stray empty statements can cause annoying, hard-to-find errors in a program.
For example, the following program segment prints out “Hello” just once, not ten times:
for (int i = 0; i < 10; i++);
[Link]("Hello");
96 CHAPTER 3. CONTROL

Why? Because the “;” at the end of the first line is a statement, and it is this statement
that is executed ten times. The [Link] statement is not really inside the
for statement at all, so it is executed just once, after the for loop has completed.

3.6 The switch Statement

The second branching statement in Java is the switch statement, which is introduced in this
section. The switch statement is used far less often than the if statement, but it is
sometimes useful for expressing a certain type of multi-way branch.

3.6.1 The Basic switch Statement

A switch statement allows you to test the value of an expression and, depending on that
value, to jump directly to some location within the switch statement. Only expressions of
certain types can be used. The value of the expression can be one of the primitive integer
types int, short, or byte. It can be the primitive char type. Or, as we will see later in this
section, it can be an enumuerated type. In particular, the expression cannot be a String or a
real number. The positions that you can jump to are marked with case labels that take the
form: “case constant :”. This marks the position the computer jumps to when the expression
evaluates to the given constant . As the final case in a switch statement you can, optionally,
use the label “default:”, which provides a default jump point that is used when the value of
the expression is not listed in any case label.
A switch statement, as it is most oftern used, has the form:
switch ( expression ) {
case constant-1 :
statements-1
break;
case constant-2 :
statements-2
break;
.
// (more cases)

case constant-N :
statements-N
break;
default: // optional default case
statements-(N+1)
} // end of switch statement

The break statements are technically optional. The effect of a break is to make the
computer jump to the end of the switch statement. If you leave out the break statement, the
computer will just forge ahead after completing one case and will execute the statements
associated with the next case label. This is rarely what you want, but it is legal. (I will note
here—although you won’t understand it until you get to the next chapter—that inside a
subroutine, the break statement is sometimes replaced by a return statement.)
Note that you can leave out one of the groups of statements entirely (including the break ). You
then have two case labels in a row, containing two different constants. This just means
3.6. THE SWITCH STATEMENT 97

that the computer will jump to the same place and perform the same action for each of the
two constants.
Here is an example of a switch statement. This is not a useful example, but it should be
easy for you to follow. Note, by the way, that the constants in the case labels don’t have to
be in any particular order, as long as they are all different:
switch ( N ) { // (Assume N is an integer variable.)
case 1:
[Link]("The number is 1.");
break;
case 2:
case 4:
case 8:
[Link]("The number is 2, 4,
or 8."); [Link]("(That’s a
power of 2!)"); break;
case 3:
case 6:
case 9:
[Link]("The number is 3, 6, or
9."); [Link]("(That’s a
multiple of 3!)"); break;
case 5:
[Link]("The number is 5.");
break;
default:
[Link]("The number is 7 or is outside the range 1 to 9.");
}

The switch statement is pretty primitive as control structures go, and it’s easy to make
mis-takes when you use it. Java takes all its control structures directly from the older
programming languages C and C++. The switch statement is certainly one place where the
designers of Java should have introduced some improvements.

3.6.2 Menus and switch Statements

One application of switch statements is in processing menus. A menu is a list of options.
The user selects one of the options. The computer has to respond to each possible choice
in a different way. If the options are numbered 1, 2, . . . , then the number of the chosen
option can be used in a switch statement to select the proper response.
In a TextIO-based program, the menu can be presented as a numbered list of options,
and the user can choose an option by typing in its number. Here is an example that could be
used in a variation of the LengthConverter example from the previous section:
int optionNumber; // Option number from menu, selected by user.
double measurement; // A numerical measurement, input by the user.
// The unit of measurement depends on which
// option the user has selected.
double inches; // The same measurement, converted into inches.
/* Display menu and get user’s selected option number. */

[Link]("What unit of measurement does your input use?");

[Link]();
98 CHAPTER 3. CONTROL
[Link](" 1. inches");

[Link](" 2. feet");
[Link](" 3. yards");
[Link](" 4. miles");
[Link]();
[Link]("Enter the number of your
choice: "); optionNumber = [Link]();

/* Read user’s measurement and convert to inches. */

switch ( optionNumber ) {
case 1:
[Link]("Enter the number of inches:
"); measurement = [Link]();
inches = measurement;
break;
case 2:
[Link]("Enter the number of feet: ");
measurement = [Link]();
inches = measurement * 12;
break;
case 3:
[Link]("Enter the number of yards: ");
measurement = [Link]();
inches = measurement * 36;
break;
case 4:
[Link]("Enter the number of miles: ");
measurement = [Link]();
inches = measurement * 12 * 5280;
break;
default:
[Link]("Error! Illegal option number! I
quit!"); [Link](1);
} // end switch
/* Now go on to convert inches to feet, yards, and miles... */

3.6.3 Enums in switch Statements

The type of the expression in a switch can be an enumerated type. In that case, the
constants in the case labels must be values from the enumerated type. For example, if the
type of the expression is the enumerated type Season defined by
enum Season { SPRING, SUMMER, FALL, WINTER }

then the constants in the case label must be chosen from among the values
[Link], [Link], [Link], or [Link]. However, there is
another quirk in the syn-tax: when an enum constant is used in a case label, only the simple
name, such as “SPRING” can be used, not the full name “[Link]”. Of course, the
computer already knows that the value in the case label must belong to the enumerated
type, since it can tell that from the type of expression used, so there is really no need to
specify the type name in the constant. As an example, suppose that currentSeason is a
variable of type Season. Then we could have the switch statement:
3.6. THE SWITCH STATEMENT 99

switch ( currentSeason ) {
case WINTER: // ( NOT [Link] ! )
[Link]("December, January,
February"); break;
case SPRING:
[Link]("March, April, May");
break;
case SUMMER:
[Link]("June, July, August");
break;
case FALL:
[Link]("September, October,
November"); break;
}

3.6.4 Definite Assignment

As a somwhat more realistic example, the following switch statement makes a ran-dom
choice among three possible alternatives. Recall that the value of the expression (int)
(3*[Link]()) is one of the integers 0, 1, or 2, selected at random with equal
probability, so the switch statement below will assign one of the values "Rock",
"Scissors", "Paper" to computerMove, with probability 1/3 for each case. Although
the switch statement in this example is correct, this code segment as a whole illustrates a
subtle syntax error that sometimes comes up:
String computerMove;
switch ( (int)(3*[Link]()) ) {
case 0:
computerMove = "Rock";
break;
case 1:
computerMove = "Scissors";
break;
case 2:
computerMove = "Paper";
break;
}
[Link]("Computer’s move is " + computerMove); // ERROR!

You probably haven’t spotted the error, since it’s not an error from a human point of view. The
computer reports the last line to be an error, because the variable computerMove might not have
been assigned a value. In Java, it is only legal to use the value of a variable if a value has already
been definitely assigned to that variable. This means that the computer must be able to prove, just
from looking at the code when the program is compiled, that the variable must have been assigned a
value. Unfortunately, the computer only has a few simple rules that it can apply to make the
determination. In this case, it sees a switch statement in which the type of expression is int and in
which the cases that are covered are 0, 1, and 2. For other values of the expression, computerMove
is never assigned a value. So, the computer thinks computerMove might still be undefined after the
switch statement. Now, in fact, this isn’t true: 0, 1, and 2 are actually the only possible values of the
expression (int)(3*[Link]()), but the computer isn’t smart enough to figure that out. The
easiest way to fix the problem is
100 CHAPTER 3. CONTROL

to replace the case label case 2 with default. The computer can see that a value is
assigned to computerMove in all cases.
More generally, we say that a value has been definitely assigned to a variable at a given
point in a program if every execution path leading from the declaration of the variable to that
point in the code includes an assignment to the variable. This rule takes into account loops
and if statements as well as switch statements. For example, the following two if
statements both do the same thing as the switch statement given above, but only the one
on the right definitely assigns a value to computerMove:
String computerMove; String computerMove;
int rand; int rand;
rand = (int)(3*[Link]()); rand = (int)(3*[Link]());
if ( rand == 0 ) if ( rand == 0 )
computerMove = "Rock"; computerMove = "Rock";
else if ( rand == 1 ) else if ( rand == 1 )
computerMove = "Scissors"; computerMove = "Scissors";
else if ( rand == 2 ) else
computerMove = "Paper"; computerMove = "Paper";

In the code on the left, the test “if ( rand == 2 )” in the final else clause is
unnecessary because if rand is not 0 or 1, the only remaining possibility is that rand ==
2. The computer, however, can’t figure that out.

3.7 Introduction to Exceptions and try..catch

In addition to the control structures that determine the normal flow of control in a pro-gram, Java
has a way to deal with “exceptional” cases that throw the flow of control o ff its normal track.
When an error occurs during the execution of a program, the default behavior is to terminate the
program and to print an error message. However, Java makes it possible to “catch” such errors
and program a response different from simply letting the program crash. This is done with the
try..catch statement. In this section, we will take a preliminary, incom-plete look at using
try..catch to handle errors. Error handling is a complex topic, which we will return to in
Chapter 8.

3.7.1 Exceptions
The term exception is used to refer to the type of error that one might want to handle with a
try..catch. An exception is an exception to the normal flow of control in the program. The
term is used in preference to “error” because in some cases, an exception might not be
considered to be an error at all. You can sometimes think of an exception as just another
way to organize a program.
Exceptions in Java are represented as objects of type Exception. Actual exceptions are de-fined
by subclasses of Exception. Different subclasses represent different types of exceptions We will look
at only two types of exception in this section: NumberFormatException and IllegalArgu-
mentException.
A NumberFormatException can occur when an attempt is made to convert a string
into a number. Such conversions are done by the functions [Link]
and [Link]. (See Subsection 2.5.7.) Consider the function call
[Link](str) where str is a variable of type String. If the value of str is the string "42",
then the function call will correctly convert the string into the int 42. However,
3.7. EXCEPTIONS AND TRY..CATCH 101

if the value of str is, say, "fred", the function call will fail because "fred" is not a legal
string representation of an int value. In this case, an exception of type NumberFormatException
occurs. If nothing is done to handle the exception, the program will crash.
An IllegalArgumentException can occur when an illegal value is passed as a parameter
to a subroutine. For example, if a subroutine requires that a parameter be greater than or
equal to zero, an IllegalArgumentException might occur when a negative value is passed to
the subroutine. How to respond to the illegal value is up to the person who wrote the
subroutine, so we can’t simply say that every illegal parameter value will result in an
IllegalArgumentException. However, it is a common response.
One case where an IllegalArgumentException can occur is in the valueOf function of
an enumerated type. Recall from Subsection 2.3.3 that this function tries to convert a string
into one of the values of the enumerated type. If the string that is passed as a parameter to
valueOf is not the name of one of the enumerated type’s values, then an
IllegalArgumentException occurs. For example, given the enumerated type
enum Toss { HEADS, TAILS }

[Link]("HEADS") correctly returns the value [Link], while

[Link]("FEET") results in an IllegalArgumentException.

3.7.2 try..catch
When an exception occurs, we say that the exception is “thrown”. For example, we say that
[Link](str) throws an exception of type NumberFormatException when
the value of str is illegal. When an exception is thrown, it is possible to “catch” the
exception and prevent it from crashing the program. This is done with a try..catch
statement. In somewhat simplified form, the syntax for a try..catch is:
try {
statements-1
}
catch ( exception-class-name variable-name )
{ statements-2
}

The exception-class-name could be NumberFormatException, IllegalArgumentException,

or some other exception class. When the computer executes this statement, it executes the
state-ments in the try part. If no error occurs during the execution of statements-1 , then
the computer just skips over the catch part and proceeds with the rest of the program.
However, if an exception of type exception-class-name occurs during the execution of
statements-1 , the computer immediately jumps to the catch part and executes
statements-2 , skipping any remaining statements in statements-1 . During the execution
of statements-2 , the variable-name represents the exception object, so that you can, for
example, print it out. At the end of the catch part, the computer proceeds with the rest of
the program; the exception has been caught and handled and does not crash the program.
Note that only one type of exception is caught; if some other type of exception occurs during
the execution of statements-1 , it will crash the program as usual.
(By the way, note that the braces, { and }, are part of the syntax of the try..catch
statement. They are required even if there is only one statement between the braces. This is
different from the other statements we have seen, where the braces around a single
statement are optional.)
102 CHAPTER 3. CONTROL

As an example, suppose that str is a variable of type String whose value might or
might not represent a legal real number. Then we could say:
try {
double x;
x = [Link](str);
[Link]( "The number is " + x );
}
catch ( NumberFormatException e )
{ [Link]( "Not a legal
number." );
}

If an error is thrown by the call to [Link](str), then the output statement

in the try part is skipped, and the statement in the catch part is executed.
It’s not always a good idea to catch exceptions and continue with the program. Often that
can just lead to an even bigger mess later on, and it might be better just to let the exception
crash the program at the point where it occurs. However, sometimes it’s possible to recover
from an error. For example, suppose that we have the enumerated type
enum Day { MONDAY, TUESDAY, WEDNESDAY, THURSDAY, FRIDAY, SATURDAY, SUNDAY }

and we want the user to input a value belonging to this type. TextIO does not know about this
type, so we can only read the user’s response as a string. The function [Link] can be
used to convert the user’s response to a value of type Day. This will throw an exception of type
IllegalArgumentException if the user’s response is not the name of one of the values of type
Day, but we can respond to the error easily enough by asking the user to enter another
response. Here is a code segment that does this. (Converting the user’s response to upper case
will allow responses such as “Monday” or “monday” in addition to “MONDAY”.)
Day weekday; // User’s response as a value of type Day.
while ( true ) {
String response; // User’s response as a
String. [Link]("Please enter a day of
the week: "); response = [Link]();
response = [Link]();
try {
weekday = [Link](response);
break;
}
catch ( IllegalArgumentException e ) {
[Link]( response + " is not the name of a day of the week." );
}
}

The break statement will be reached only if the user’s response is acceptable, and so the
loop will end only when a legal value has been assigned to weekday.

3.7.3 Exceptions in TextIO

When TextIO reads a numeric value from the user, it makes sure that the user’s response is
legal, using a technique similar to the while loop and try..catch in the previous example.
However, TextIO can read data from other sources besides the user. (See Subsection 2.4.5.)
When it is reading from a file, there is no reasonable way for TextIO to recover from an illegal
value in the input, so it responds by throwing an exception. To keep things simple, TextIO only
3.7. EXCEPTIONS AND TRY..CATCH 103

throws exceptions of type IllegalArgumentException, no matter what type of error it

encounters. For example, an exception will occur if an attempt is made to read from a file
after all the data in the file has already been read. In TextIO, the exception is of type
IllegalArgumentException. If you have a better response to file errors than to let the program
crash, you can use a try..catch to catch exceptions of type IllegalArgumentException.
For example, suppose that a file contains nothing but real numbers, and we want a program
that will read the numbers and find their sum and their average. Since it is unknown how many
numbers are in the file, there is the question of when to stop reading. One approach is simply to
try to keep reading indefinitely. When the end of the file is reached, an exception occurs. This
exception is not really an error—it’s just a way of detecting the end of the data, so we can catch
the exception and finish up the program. We can read the data in a while (true) loop and
break out of the loop when an exception occurs. This is an example of the somewhat unusual
technique of using an exception as part of the expected flow of control in a program.
To read from the file, we need to know the file’s name. To make the program more
general, we can let the user enter the file name, instead of hard-coding a fixed file name in
the program. However, it is possible that the user will enter the name of a file that does not
exist. When we use [Link] to open a file that does not exist, an exception of
type IllegalArgu-mentException occurs. We can catch this exception and ask the user to
enter a different file name. Here is a complete program that uses all these ideas:
/**
This program reads numbers from a file. It computes the sum and
the average of the numbers that it reads. The file should contain
nothing but numbers of type double; if this is not the case, the
output will be the sum and average of however many numbers were
successfully read from the file. The name of the file will be
input by the user.
*/
public class ReadNumbersFromFile {
public static void main(String[] args) {
while (true) {
String fileName; // The name of the file, to be input by the user.
[Link]("Enter the name of the file: ");
fileName = [Link]();
try {
[Link]( fileName ); // Try to open the file for input.
break; // If that succeeds, break out of the loop.
}
catch ( IllegalArgumentException e ) {
[Link]("Can’t read from the file \"" + fileName
+ "\"."); [Link]("Please try again.\n");
}
}
// At this point, TextIO is reading from the file.
double number; // A number read from the data file.
double sum; // The sum of all the numbers read so far.
int count; // The number of numbers that were read.

sum = 0;
104 CHAPTER 3. CONTROL

count = 0;
try {
while (true) { // Loop ends when an exception occurs.
number = [Link]();
count++; // This is skipped when the exception
occurs sum += number;
}
}
catch ( IllegalArgumentException e ) {
We expect this to occur when the end-of-file is encountered.
We don’t consider this to be an error, so there is nothing to do
in this catch clause. Just proceed with the rest of the program.
}
// At this point, we’ve read the entire file.
[Link]();
[Link]("Number of data values read: " + count);
[Link]("The sum of the data values: "
+ sum); if ( count == 0 )
[Link]("Can’t compute an average of 0
values."); else
[Link]("The average of the values: " + (sum/count));

}
}

3.8 Introduction to GUI Programming

For the past two chapters, you’ve been learning the sort of programming that is done inside a
single subroutine. In the rest of the text, we’ll be more concerned with the larger scale structure
of programs, but the material that you’ve already learned will be an important foundation for
everything to come.
In this section, before moving on to programming-in-the-large, we’ll take a look at how
programming-in-the-small can be used in other contexts besides text-based, command-line-
style programs. We’ll do this by taking a short, introductory look at applets and graphical
programming.
An applet is a Java program that runs on a Web page. An applet is not a stand-alone
application, and it does not have a main() routine. In fact, an applet is an object rather than a
class. When Java first appeared on the scene, applets were one of its major appeals. Since
then, they have become less important, although they can still be very useful. When we study
GUI programming in Chapter 6, we will concentrate on stand-alone GUI programs rather than on
applets, but applets are a good place to start for our first look at the subject.
When an applet is placed on a Web page, it is assigned a rectangular area on the page. It is
the job of the applet to draw the contents of that rectangle. When the region needs to be drawn,
the Web page calls a subroutine in the applet to do so. This is not so di fferent from what
happens with stand-alone programs. When such a program needs to be run, the system calls
the main() routine of the program. Similarly, when an applet needs to be drawn, the Web page
calls the paint() routine of the applet. The programmer specifies what happens when these routines are
called by filling in the bodies of the routines. Programming in the
3.8. GUI PROGRAMMING 105

small! Applets can do other things besides draw themselves, such as responding when the
user clicks the mouse on the applet. Each of the applet’s behaviors is defined by a
subroutine. The programmer specifies how the applet behaves by filling in the bodies of the
appropriate subroutines.
A very simple applet, which does nothing but draw itself, can be defined by a class that
contains nothing but a paint() routine. The source code for the class would then have the
form:
import [Link].*;
import [Link].*;
public class name-of-applet extends Applet {

public void paint(Graphics g) {

statements
}
}

where name-of-applet is an identifier that names the class, and the statements are the code
that actually draws the applet. This looks similar to the definition of a stand-alone program, but
there are a few things here that need to be explained, starting with the first two lines.
When you write a program, there are certain built-in classes that are available for you to
use. These built-in classes include System and Math. If you want to use one of these
classes, you don’t have to do anything special. You just go ahead and use it. But Java also
has a large number of standard classes that are there if you want them but that are not
automatically available to your program. (There are just too many of them.) If you want to
use these classes in your program, you have to ask for them first. The standard classes are
grouped into so-called “packages.” Two of these packages are called “[Link]” and
“[Link]”. The directive “import [Link].*;” makes all the classes from the package
[Link] available for use in your program. The [Link] package contains classes related to
graphical user interface programming, including a class called Graphics. The Graphics
class is referred to in the paint() routine above. The [Link] package contains classes
specifically related to applets, including the class named Applet.
The first line of the class definition above says that the class “extends Applet.”
Applet is a standard class that is defined in the [Link] package. It defines all the basic
properties and behaviors of applet objects. By extending the Applet class, the new class
we are defining inherits all those properties and behaviors. We only have to define the ways
in which our class differs from the basic Applet class. In our case, the only difference is
that our applet will draw itself differently, so we only have to define the paint() routine
that does the drawing. This is one of the main advantages of object-oriented programming.
(Actually, in the future, our applets will be defined to extend JApplet rather than
Applet. The JApplet class is itself an extension of Applet. The Applet class has
existed since the original version of Java, while JApplet is part of the newer “Swing” set of
graphical user interface components. For the moment, the distinction is not important.)
One more thing needs to be mentioned—and this is a point where Java’s syntax gets un-
fortunately confusing. Applets are objects, not classes. Instead of being static members of a
class, the subroutines that define the applet’s behavior are part of the applet object. We say that
they are “non-static” subroutines. Of course, objects are related to classes because every object
is described by a class. Now here is the part that can get confusing: Even though a non-static
subroutine is not actually part of a class (in the sense of being part of the behavior
106 CHAPTER 3. CONTROL

of the class), it is nevertheless defined in a class (in the sense that the Java code that defines
the subroutine is part of the Java code that defines the class). Many objects can be described by
the same class. Each object has its own non-static subroutine. But the common definition of
those subroutines—the actual Java source code—is physically part of the class that describes all
the objects. To put it briefly: static subroutines in a class definition say what the class does; non-
static subroutines say what all the objects described by the class do. An applet’s paint()
routine is an example of a non-static subroutine. A stand-alone program’s main() routine is an
example of a static subroutine. The distinction doesn’t really matter too much at this point: When
working with stand-alone programs, mark everything with the reserved word, “static”; leave it
out when working with applets. However, the distinction between static and non-static will
become more important later in the course.
∗∗∗
Let’s write an applet that draws something. In order to write an applet that draws some-
thing, you need to know what subroutines are available for drawing, just as in writing text-
oriented programs you need to know what subroutines are available for reading and writing
text. In Java, the built-in drawing subroutines are found in objects of the class Graphics,
one of the classes in the [Link] package. In an applet’s paint() routine, you can use
the Graphics object g for drawing. (This object is provided as a parameter to the
paint() routine when that routine is called.) Graphics objects contain many subroutines.
I’ll mention just three of them here. You’ll encounter more of them in Chapter 6.
[Link](c), is called to set the color that is used for drawing. The parameter, c is an
object belonging to a class named Color, another one of the classes in the [Link]
package. About a dozen standard colors are available as static member variables in the
Color class. These standard colors include [Link], [Link],
[Link], [Link], and [Link]. For example, if you want to draw in red,
you would say “[Link]([Link]);”. The specified color is used for all
subsequent drawing oper-ations up until the next time setColor is called.
[Link](x,y,w,h) draws the outline of a rectangle. The parameters x, y, w, and h
must be integer-valued expressions. This subroutine draws the outline of the rectangle
whose top-left corner is x pixels from the left edge of the applet and y pixels down from
the top of the applet. The width of the rectangle is w pixels, and the height is h pixels.
[Link](x,y,w,h) is similar to drawRect except that it fills in the inside of the
rect-angle instead of just drawing an outline.
This is enough information to write an applet that will draw the following image on a Web
page:
3.8. GUI PROGRAMMING 107

The applet first fills its entire rectangular area with red. Then it changes the drawing color
to black and draws a sequence of rectangles, where each rectangle is nested inside the
previous one. The rectangles can be drawn with a while loop. Each time through the loop,
the rectangle gets smaller and it moves down and over a bit. We’ll need variables to hold the
width and height of the rectangle and a variable to record how far the top-left corner of the
rectangle is inset from the edges of the applet. The while loop ends when the rectangle
shrinks to nothing. In general outline, the algorithm for drawing the applet is
Set the drawing color to red (using the [Link] subroutine)
Fill in the entire applet (using the [Link] subroutine)
Set the drawing color to black
Set the top-left corner inset to be 0
Set the rectangle width and height to be as big as the
applet while the width and height are greater than zero:
draw a rectangle (using the [Link] subroutine)
increase the inset
decrease the width and the height

In my applet, each rectangle is 15 pixels away from the rectangle that surrounds it, so the
inset is increased by 15 each time through the while loop. The rectangle shrinks by 15
pixels on the left and by 15 pixels on the right, so the width of the rectangle shrinks by 30
each time through the loop. The height also shrinks by 30 pixels each time through the loop.
It is not hard to code this algorithm into Java and use it to define the paint() method
of an applet. I’ve assumed that the applet has a height of 160 pixels and a width of 300
pixels. The size is actually set in the source code of the Web page where the applet
appears. In order for an applet to appear on a page, the source code for the page must
include a command that specifies which applet to run and how big it should be. (We’ll see
how to do that later.) It’s not a great idea to assume that we know how big the applet is
going to be. On the other hand, it’s also not a great idea to write an applet that does nothing
but draw a static picture. I’ll address both these issues before the end of this section. But for
now, here is the source code for the applet:
import [Link].*;
import [Link];
public class StaticRects extends Applet {
public void paint(Graphics g) {
Draw a set of nested black rectangles on a red background.
Each nested rectangle is separated by 15 pixels on
all sides from the rectangle that encloses it.
int inset; // Gap between borders of applet
and one of the rectangles.
int rectWidth, rectHeight; // The size of one of the rectangles.

[Link]([Link]);
[Link](0,0,300,160); // Fill the entire applet with red.

[Link]([Link]); // Draw the rectangles in black.

inset = 0;
rectWidth = 299; // Set size of first rect to size of applet.
108 CHAPTER 3. CONTROL

rectHeight = 159;
while (rectWidth >= 0 && rectHeight >= 0) {
[Link](inset, inset, rectWidth, rectHeight);
inset += 15; // Rects are 15 pixels apart.
rectWidth -= 30; // Width decreases by 15 pixels
// on left and 15 on right.
rectHeight -= 30; // Height decreases by 15 pixels
// on top and 15 on bottom.
}
} // end paint()
} // end class StaticRects

(You might wonder why the initial rectWidth is set to 299, instead of to 300, since the
width of the applet is 300 pixels. It’s because rectangles are drawn as if with a pen whose
nib hangs below and to the right of the point where the pen is placed. If you run the pen
exactly along the right edge of the applet, the line it draws is actually outside the applet and
therefore is not seen. So instead, we run the pen along a line one pixel to the left of the
edge of the applet. The same reasoning applies to rectHeight. Careful graphics
programming demands attention to details like these.)
∗∗∗
When you write an applet, you get to build on the work of the people who wrote the Applet
class. The Applet class provides a framework on which you can hang your own work. Any
programmer can create additional frameworks that can be used by other programmers as a
basis for writing specific types of applets or stand-alone programs. I’ve written a small framework
that makes it possible to write applets that display simple animations. One example that we will
consider is an animated version of the nested rectangles applet from earlier in this section. You
can see the applet in action at the bottom of the on-line version of this page.
A computer animation is really just a sequence of still images. The computer displays
the images one after the other. Each image differs a bit from the preceding image in the
sequence. If the differences are not too big and if the sequence is displayed quickly enough,
the eye is tricked into perceiving continuous motion.
In the example, rectangles shrink continually towards the center of the applet, while new
rectangles appear at the edge. The perpetual motion is, of course, an illusion. If you think
about it, you’ll see that the applet loops through the same set of images over and over. In
each image, there is a gap between the borders of the applet and the outermost rectangle.
This gap gets wider and wider until a new rectangle appears at the border. Only it’s not a
new rectangle. What has really happened is that the applet has started over again with the
first image in the sequence.
The problem of creating an animation is really just the problem of drawing each of the still
images that make up the animation. Each still image is called a frame. In my framework for
animation, which is based on a non-standard class called SimpleAnimationApplet2, all you
have to do is fill in the code that says how to draw one frame. The basic format is as follows:
import [Link].*;
public class name-of-class extends SimpleAnimationApplet2 {

public void drawFrame(Graphics g) {

statements // to draw one frame of the animation
3.8. GUI PROGRAMMING 109

}
}

The “import [Link].*;” is required to get access to graphics-related classes such as

Graphics and Color. You get to fill in any name you want for the class, and you get to fill
in the statements inside the subroutine. The drawFrame() subroutine will be called by the
system each time a frame needs to be drawn. All you have to do is say what happens when
this subroutine is called. Of course, you have to draw a different picture for each frame, and
to do that you need to know which frame you are drawing. The class
SimpleAnimationApplet2 provides a function named getFrameNumber() that you
can call to find out which frame to draw. This function returns an integer value that
represents the frame number. If the value returned is 0, you are supposed to draw the first
frame; if the value is 1, you are supposed to draw the second frame, and so on.
In the sample applet, the thing that differs from one frame to another is the distance
between the edges of the applet and the outermost rectangle. Since the rectangles are 15
pixels apart, this distance increases from 0 to 14 and then jumps back to 0 when a “new”
rectangle appears. The appropriate value can be computed very simply from the frame
number, with the statement “inset = getFrameNumber() % 15;”. The value of the
expression getFrameNumber() % 15 is between 0 and 14. When the frame number
reaches 15 or any multiple of 15, the value of getFrameNumber() % 15 jumps back to 0.
Drawing one frame in the sample animated applet is very similar to drawing the single image
of the StaticRects applet, as given above. The paint() method in the StaticRects
applet becomes, with only minor modification, the drawFrame() method of my MovingRects
animation applet. I’ve chosen to make one improvement: The StaticRects applet assumes
that the applet is 300 by 160 pixels. The MovingRects applet will work for any applet size. To
implement this, the drawFrame() routine has to know how big the applet is. There are two
functions that can be called to get this information. The function getWidth() returns an integer
value representing the width of the applet, and the function getHeight() returns the height.
The width and height, together with the frame number, are used to compute the size of the first
rectangle that is drawn. Here is the complete source code:
import [Link].*;
public class MovingRects extends SimpleAnimationApplet2 {
public void drawFrame(Graphics g) {
Draw one frame in the animation by filling in the background
with a solid red and then drawing a set of nested black
rectangles. The frame number tells how much the first
rectangle is to be inset from the borders of the applet.
int width; // Width of the applet, in pixels.
int height; // Height of the applet, in pixels.
int inset; // Gap between borders of applet and a rectangle.
// The inset for the outermost rectangle goes
// from 0 to 14 then back to 0, and so on,
// as the frameNumber varies.

int rectWidth, rectHeight; // The size of one of the rectangles.

width = getWidth(); // Find out the size of the drawing area.

110 CHAPTER 3. CONTROL

height = getHeight();

[Link]([Link]); // Fill the frame with red.

[Link](0,0,width,height);

[Link]([Link]); // Switch color to black.

inset = getFrameNumber() % 15; // Get the inset for the

// outermost rect.

rectWidth = width - 2*inset - 1; // Set size of outermost rect.

rectHeight = height - 2*inset - 1;
while (rectWidth >= 0 && rectHeight >= 0) {
[Link](inset,inset,rectWidth,rectHeight);
inset += 15; // Rects are 15 pixels apart.
rectWidth -= 30; // Width decreases by 15 pixels
// on left and 15 on right.
rectHeight -= 30; // Height decreases by 15 pixels
// on top and 15 on bottom.
}
} // end drawFrame()
} // end class MovingRects

The main point here is that by building on an existing framework, you can do interesting
things using the type of local, inside-a-subroutine programming that was covered in Chapter
2 and Chapter 3. As you learn more about programming and more about Java, you’ll be able
to do more on your own—but no matter how much you learn, you’ll always be dependent on
other people’s work to some extent.
Exercises 111

Exercises for Chapter 3

How many times do you have to roll a pair of dice before they come up snake eyes? You
could do the experiment by rolling the dice by hand. Write a computer program that
simulates the experiment. The program should report the number of rolls that it makes
before the dice come up snake eyes. (Note: “Snake eyes” means that both dice show a
value of 1.) Exercise 2.2 explained how to simulate rolling a pair of dice.

Which integer between 1 and 10000 has the largest number of divisors, and how many
divisors does it have? Write a program to find the answers and print out the results. It is
possible that several integers in this range have the same, maximum number of
divisors. Your program only has to print out one of them. Subsection 3.4.2 discussed
divisors. The source code for that example is [Link].
You might need some hints about how to find a maximum value. The basic idea is
to go through all the integers, keeping track of the largest number of divisors that
you’ve seen so far. Also, keep track of the integer that had that number of divisors.

Write a program that will evaluate simple expressions such as 17 + 3 and 3.14159 * 4.7.
The expressions are to be typed in by the user. The input always consist of a number,
followed by an operator, followed by another number. The operators that are allowed
are +, -, *, and /. You can read the numbers with [Link]() and the
operator with [Link](). Your program should read an expression, print its
value, read another expression, print its value, and so on. The program should end
when the user enters 0 as the first number on the line.

Write a program that reads one line of input text and breaks it up into words. The words
should be output one per line. A word is defined to be a sequence of letters. Any
characters in the input that are not letters should be discarded. For example, if the user
inputs the line
He said, "That’s not a good idea."

then the output of the program should be

He
said
that
s
not
a
good
idea

An improved version of the program would list “that’s” as a single word. An apostrophe can
be considered to be part of a word if there is a letter on each side of the apostrophe.
To test whether a character is a letter, you might use (ch >= ’a’ && ch <=
’z’) || (ch >= ’A’ && ch <= ’Z’). However, this only works in English and
similar languages. A better choice is to call the standard function
[Link](ch), which returns a boolean value of true if ch is a letter
and false if it is not. This works for any Unicode character.
112 CHAPTER 3. CONTROL

Suppose that a file contains information about sales figures for a company in various
cities. Each line of the file contains a city name, followed by a colon (:) followed by the
data for that city. The data is a number of type double. However, for some cities, no
data was available. In these lines, the data is replaced by a comment explaining why
the data is missing. For example, several lines from the file might look like:
San Francisco: 19887.32
Chicago: no report received
New York: 298734.12
Write a program that will compute and print the total sales from all the cities together.
The program should also report the number of cities for which data was not available.
The name of the file is “[Link]”.
To complete this program, you’ll need one fact about file input with TextIO that was
not covered in Subsection 2.4.5. Since you don’t know in advance how many lines
there are in the file, you need a way to tell when you have gotten to the end of the file.
When TextIO is reading from a file, the function [Link]() can be used to test
for end of file. This boolean-valued function returns true if the file has been entirely
read and returns false if there is more data to read in the file. This means that you
can read the lines of the file in a loop while ([Link]() == false).... The
loop will end when all the lines of the file have been read.
Suggestion: For each line, read and ignore characters up to the colon. Then read
the rest of the line into a variable of type String. Try to convert the string into a number,
and use try..catch to test whether the conversion succeeds.

Write an applet that draws a checkerboard. Assume that the size of the applet is 160 by
160 pixels. Each square in the checkerboard is 20 by 20 pixels. The checkerboard
contains 8 rows of squares and 8 columns. The squares are red and black. Here is a
tricky way to determine whether a given square is red or black: If the row number and
the column number are either both even or both odd, then the square is red.
Otherwise, it is black. Note that a square is just a rectangle in which the height is equal
to the width, so you can use the subroutine [Link]() to draw the squares. Here
is an image of the checkerboard:

(To run an applet, you need a Web page to display it. A very simple page will do.
Assume that your applet class is called Checkerboard, so that when you compile it you get
a class file named [Link] Make a file that contains only the lines:
Exercises 113

<applet code="[Link]" width=160

height=160> </applet>

Call this file [Link]. This is the source code for a simple Web page
that shows nothing but your applet. You can open the file in a Web browser or with
Sun’s appletviewer program. The compiled class file, [Link], must
be in the same directory with the Web-page file, [Link].
(If you are using the Eclipse Integrated Development Environment, you can simply
right-click the name of the source code file in the Package Explorer. In the pop-up
menu, go to “Run As” then to “Java Applet”. This will open the window in which the
applet appears. The default size for the window is bigger than 160-by-160, so the
drawing of the checkerboard will not fill the entire window.)

Write an animation applet that shows a checkerboard pattern in which the even numbered
rows slide to the left while the odd numbered rows slide to the right. You can assume
that the applet is 160 by 160 pixels. Each row should be o ffset from its usual position
by the amount getFrameNumber() % 40. Hints: Anything you draw outside the
boundaries of the applet will be invisible, so you can draw more than 8 squares in a
row. You can use negative values of x in [Link](x,y,w,h). (Before trying to
do this exercise, it would be a good idea to look at a working applet, which can be
found in the on-line version of this book.)
Your applet will extend the non-standard class, SimpleAnimationApplet2, which was
introduced in Section 3.8. The compiled class files, [Link] and
SimpleAnimationApplet2$[Link], must be in the same directory as your Web-page
source file along with the compiled class file for your own class. These files are produced when
you compile [Link]. Assuming that the name of your class is
SlidingCheckerboard, then the source file for the Web page should contain the lines:
<applet code="[Link]" width=160
height=160> </applet>
114 CHAPTER 3. CONTROL

Quiz on Chapter 3

What is an algorithm?

Explain briefly what is meant by “pseudocode” and how is it useful in the development of
algorithms.
What is a block statement? How are block statements used in Java programs?
What is the main difference between a while loop and a do..while loop?

What does it mean to prime a loop?

Explain what is meant by an animation and how a computer displays an animation.

Write a for loop that will print out all the multiples of 3 from 3 to 36, that is: 3 6 9 12 15
18 21 24 27 30 33 36.

Fill in the following main() routine so that it will ask the user to enter an integer, read the user’s
response, and tell the user whether the number entered is even or odd. (You can use
[Link]() to read the integer. Recall that an integer n is even if n % 2 == 0.)
public static void main(String[] args) {
// Fill in the body of this subroutine!
}

Suppose that s1 and s2 are variables of type String, whose values are expected to be
string representations of values of type int. Write a code segment that will compute and
print the integer sum of those values, or will print an error message if the values cannot
successfully be converted into integers. (Use a try..catch statement.)

Show the exact output that would be produced by the following main() routine:
public static void main(String[] args) {
int N;
N=1;
while (N <= 32) {
N=2*N;
[Link](N);
}
}

Show the exact output produced by the following main() routine:

public static void main(String[] args) {
int x,y;
x = 5;
y = 1;
while (x > 0) {
x = x - 1;
y = y * x;
[Link](y);
}
}
Quiz 115

What output is produced by the following program segment? Why? (Recall that
[Link](i) is the i-th character in the string, name.)
String name;
int i;
boolean startWord;
name = "Richard M. Nixon";
startWord = true;
for (i = 0; i < [Link](); i++) {
if (startWord)
[Link]([Link](i));
if ([Link](i) == ’ ’)
startWord = true;
else
startWord = false;
}
116 CHAPTER 3. CONTROL
Chapter 4

Programming in the Large I:

Subroutines

One way to break up a complex program into manageable pieces is to use subroutines. A
subroutine consists of the instructions for carrying out a certain task, grouped together and given
a name. Elsewhere in the program, that name can be used as a stand-in for the whole set of
instructions. As a computer executes a program, whenever it encounters a subroutine name, it
executes all the instructions necessary to carry out the task associated with that subroutine.
Subroutines can be used over and over, at different places in the program. A subroutine
can even be used inside another subroutine. This allows you to write simple subroutines and
then use them to help write more complex subroutines, which can then be used in turn in
other subroutines. In this way, very complex programs can be built up step-by-step, where
each step in the construction is reasonably simple.
As mentioned in Section 3.8, subroutines in Java can be either static or non-static. This
chapter covers static subroutines only. Non-static subroutines, which are used in true object-
oriented programming, will be covered in the next chapter.

4.1 Black Boxes

A subroutine consists of instructions for performing some task, chunked together and given a
name. “Chunking” allows you to deal with a potentially very complicated task as a single
concept. Instead of worrying about the many, many steps that the computer might have to go
though to perform that task, you just need to remember the name of the subroutine. Whenever
you want your program to perform the task, you just call the subroutine. Subroutines are a major
tool for dealing with complexity.
A subroutine is sometimes said to be a “black box” because you can’t see what’s “inside”
it (or, to be more precise, you usually don’t want to see inside it, because then you would
have to deal with all the complexity that the subroutine is meant to hide). Of course, a black
box that has no way of interacting with the rest of the world would be pretty useless. A black
box needs some kind of interface with the rest of the world, which allows some interaction
between what’s inside the box and what’s outside. A physical black box might have buttons
on the outside that you can push, dials that you can set, and slots that can be used for
passing information back and forth. Since we are trying to hide complexity, not create it, we
have the first rule of black boxes:

117
118 CHAPTER 4. SUBROUTINES

The interface of a black box should be fairly straight-

forward, well-defined, and easy to understand.

Are there any examples of black boxes in the real world? Yes; in fact, you are
surrounded by them. Your television, your car, your VCR, your refrigerator. . . . You can turn
your television on and off, change channels, and set the volume by using elements of the
television’s interface— dials, remote control, don’t forget to plug in the power—without
understanding anything about how the thing actually works. The same goes for a VCR,
although if the stories are true about how hard people find it to set the time on a VCR, then
maybe the VCR violates the simple interface rule.
Now, a black box does have an inside—the code in a subroutine that actually performs
the task, all the electronics inside your television set. The inside of a black box is called its
implementation . The second rule of black boxes is that:
To use a black box, you shouldn’t need to know any-
thing about its implementation; all you need to know is its
interface.

In fact, it should be possible to change the implementation, as long as the behavior of

the box, as seen from the outside, remains unchanged. For example, when the insides of
TV sets went from using vacuum tubes to using transistors, the users of the sets didn’t even
need to know about it—or even know what it means. Similarly, it should be possible to
rewrite the inside of a subroutine, to use more efficient code, for example, without a ffecting
the programs that use that subroutine.
Of course, to have a black box, someone must have designed and built the implementation
in the first place. The black box idea works to the advantage of the implementor as well as of the
user of the black box. After all, the black box might be used in an unlimited number of di fferent
situations. The implementor of the black box doesn’t need to know about any of that. The
implementor just needs to make sure that the box performs its assigned task and interfaces
correctly with the rest of the world. This is the third rule of black boxes:

The implementor of a black box should not need to

know anything about the larger systems in which the box
will be used.
In a way, a black box divides the world into two parts: the inside (implementation) and
the outside. The interface is at the boundary, connecting those two parts.
∗∗∗
By the way, you should not think of an interface as just the physical connection between
the box and the rest of the world. The interface also includes a specification of what the
box does and how it can be controlled by using the elements of the physical interface. It’s
not enough to say that a TV set has a power switch; you need to specify that the power
switch is used to turn the TV on and off!
To put this in computer science terms, the interface of a subroutine has a semantic as well
as a syntactic component. The syntactic part of the interface tells you just what you have to type
in order to call the subroutine. The semantic component specifies exactly what task the
subroutine will accomplish. To write a legal program, you need to know the syntactic
specification of the subroutine. To understand the purpose of the subroutine and to use it
effectively, you need to know the subroutine’s semantic specification. I will refer to both parts of
the interface—syntactic and semantic—collectively as the contract of the subroutine.
4.2. STATIC SUBROUTINES AND VARIABLES 119

The contract of a subroutine says, essentially, “Here is what you have to do to use me,
and here is what I will do for you, guaranteed.” When you write a subroutine, the comments
that you write for the subroutine should make the contract very clear. (I should admit that in
practice, subroutines’ contracts are often inadequately specified, much to the regret and
annoyance of the programmers who have to use them.)
For the rest of this chapter, I turn from general ideas about black boxes and subroutines
in general to the specifics of writing and using subroutines in Java. But keep the general
ideas and principles in mind. They are the reasons that subroutines exist in the first place,
and they are your guidelines for using them. This should be especially clear in Section 4.6,
where I will discuss subroutines as a tool in program development.
∗∗∗
You should keep in mind that subroutines are not the only example of black boxes in
programming. For example, a class is also a black box. We’ll see that a class can have a
“public” part, representing its interface, and a “private” part that is entirely inside its hidden
implementation. All the principles of black boxes apply to classes as well as to subroutines.

4.2 Static Subroutines and Static Variables

Every subroutine in Java must be defined inside some class. This makes Java rather unusual
among programming languages, since most languages allow free-floating, independent
subroutines. One purpose of a class is to group together related subroutines and variables.
Perhaps the designers of Java felt that everything must be related to something. As a less
philosophical motivation, Java’s designers wanted to place firm controls on the ways things are
named, since a Java program potentially has access to a huge number of subroutines created
by many different programmers. The fact that those subroutines are grouped into named classes
(and classes are grouped into named “packages”) helps control the confusion that might result
from so many different names.
A subroutine that is a member of a class is often called a method , and “method” is the
term that most people prefer for subroutines in Java. I will start using the term “method”
occasionally; however, I will continue to prefer the more general term “subroutine” for static
subroutines. I will use the term “method” most often to refer to non-static subroutines, which
belong to objects rather than to classes. This chapter will deal with static subroutines almost
exclusively. We’ll turn to non-static methods and object-oriented programming in the next
chapter.

4.2.1 Subroutine Definitions

A subroutine definition in Java takes the form:
modifiers return-type subroutine-name ( parameter-list )
{ statements
}

It will take us a while—most of the chapter—to get through what all this means in detail. Of
course, you’ve already seen examples of subroutines in previous chapters, such as the
main() routine of a program and the paint() routine of an applet. So you are familiar
with the general format.
The statements between the braces, { and }, in a subroutine definition make up the body
of the subroutine. These statements are the inside, or implementation part, of the “black box”,
120 CHAPTER 4. SUBROUTINES

as discussed in the previous section. They are the instructions that the computer executes
when the method is called. Subroutines can contain any of the statements discussed in
Chapter 2 and Chapter 3.
The modifiers that can occur at the beginning of a subroutine definition are words that
set certain characteristics of the subroutine, such as whether it is static or not. The modifiers
that you’ve seen so far are “static” and “public”. There are only about a half-dozen
possible modifiers altogether.
If the subroutine is a function, whose job is to compute some value, then the return-type
is used to specify the type of value that is returned by the function. We’ll be looking at
functions and return types in some detail in Section 4.4. If the subroutine is not a function,
then the return-type is replaced by the special value void, which indicates that no value is
returned. The term “void” is meant to indicate that the return value is empty or non-existent.
Finally, we come to the parameter-list of the method. Parameters are part of the
interface of a subroutine. They represent information that is passed into the subroutine from
outside, to be used by the subroutine’s internal computations. For a concrete example,
imagine a class named Television that includes a method named changeChannel(). The
immediate question is: What channel should it change to? A parameter can be used to
answer this question. Since the channel number is an integer, the type of the parameter
would be int, and the declaration of the changeChannel() method might look like
public void changeChannel(int channelNum) { ... }

This declaration specifies that changeChannel() has a parameter named channelNum of

type int. However, channelNum does not yet have any particular value. A value for
channelNum is provided when the subroutine is called; for example: changeChannel(17);
The parameter list in a subroutine can be empty, or it can consist of one or more
parameter declarations of the form type parameter-name . If there are several declarations,
they are separated by commas. Note that each declaration can name only one parameter.
For example, if you want two parameters of type double, you have to say “double x,
double y”, rather than “double x, y”.
Parameters are covered in more detail in the next section.
Here are a few examples of subroutine definitions, leaving out the statements that define
what the subroutines do:
public static void playGame() {
"public" and "static" are modifiers; "void" is the
return-type; "playGame" is the subroutine-name;
the parameter-list is empty.
. . . // Statements that define what playGame does go here.
}
int getNextN(int N) {
There are no modifiers; "int" in the return-type
"getNextN" is the subroutine-name; the parameter-list
includes one parameter whose name is "N" and whose
type is "int".
. . . // Statements that define what getNextN does go here.
}
static boolean lessThan(double x, double y) {
"static" is a modifier; "boolean" is the
return-type; "lessThan" is the subroutine-name; the
4.2. STATIC SUBROUTINES AND VARIABLES 121

parameter-list includes two parameters whose names are

"x" and "y", and the type of each of these parameters
is "double".
. . . // Statements that define what lessThan does go here.
}

In the second example given here, getNextN is a non-static method, since its definition
does not include the modifier “static”—and so it’s not an example that we should be looking at
in this chapter! The other modifier shown in the examples is “public”. This modifier indicates
that the method can be called from anywhere in a program, even from outside the class where
the method is defined. There is another modifier, “private”, which indicates that the method
can be called only from inside the same class. The modifiers public and private are called
access specifiers. If no access specifier is given for a method, then by default, that method can
be called from anywhere in the “package” that contains the class, but not from outside that
package. (Packages were introduced in Subsection 2.6.4, and you’ll learn more about them later
in this chapter, in Section 4.5.) There is one other access modifier, protected, which will only
become relevant when we turn to object-oriented programming in Chapter 5.
Note, by the way, that the main() routine of a program follows the usual syntax rules
for a subroutine. In
public static void main(String[] args) { ... }

the modifiers are public and static, the return type is void, the subroutine name is main,
and the parameter list is “String[] args”. The only question might be about “String[]”,
which has to be a type if it is to match the syntax of a parameter list. In fact, String[]
represents a so-called “array type”, so the syntax is valid. We will cover arrays in Chapter 7.
(The parameter, args, represents information provided to the program when the main()
routine is called by the system. In case you know the term, the information consists of any
“command-line arguments” specified in the command that the user typed to run the program.)
You’ve already had some experience with filling in the implementation of a subroutine. In
this chapter, you’ll learn all about writing your own complete subroutine definitions, including
the interface part.

4.2.2 Calling Subroutines

When you define a subroutine, all you are doing is telling the computer that the subroutine
exists and what it does. The subroutine doesn’t actually get executed until it is called. (This
is true even for the main() routine in a class—even though you don’t call it, it is called by
the system when the system runs your program.) For example, the playGame() method
given as an example above could be called using the following subroutine call statement:
playGame();

This statement could occur anywhere in the same class that includes the definition of
playGame(), whether in a main() method or in some other subroutine. Since
playGame() is a public method, it can also be called from other classes, but in that
case, you have to tell the computer which class it comes from. Since playGame() is a
static method, its full name includes the name of the class in which it is defined. Let’s say,
for example, that playGame() is defined in a class named Poker. Then to call
playGame() from outside the Poker class, you would have to say
[Link]();
122 CHAPTER 4. SUBROUTINES

The use of the class name here tells the computer which class to look in to find the method. It also
lets you distinguish between [Link]() and other potential playGame() methods
defined in other classes, such as [Link]() or [Link]().
More generally, a subroutine call statement for a static subroutine takes the form
subroutine-name ( parameters );

if the subroutine that is being called is in the same class, or

class-name . subroutine-name ( parameters );

if the subroutine is defined elsewhere, in a different class. (Non-static methods belong to

objects rather than classes, and they are called using object names instead of class names.
More on that later.) Note that the parameter list can be empty, as in the playGame()
example, but the parentheses must be there even if there is nothing between them.

4.2.3 Subroutines in Programs

It’s time to give an example of what a complete program looks like, when it includes other
subroutines in addition to the main() routine. Let’s write a program that plays a guessing
game with the user. The computer will choose a random number between 1 and 100, and
the user will try to guess it. The computer tells the user whether the guess is high or low or
correct. If the user gets the number after six guesses or fewer, the user wins the game. After
each game, the user has the option of continuing with another game.
Since playing one game can be thought of as a single, coherent task, it makes sense to
write a subroutine that will play one guessing game with the user. The main() routine will
use a loop to call the playGame() subroutine over and over, as many times as the user
wants to play. We approach the problem of designing the playGame() subroutine the
same way we write a main() routine: Start with an outline of the algorithm and apply
stepwise refinement. Here is a short pseudocode algorithm for a guessing game program:
Pick a random number
while the game is not over:
Get the user’s guess
Tell the user whether the guess is high, low, or correct.

The test for whether the game is over is complicated, since the game ends if either the
user makes a correct guess or the number of guesses is six. As in many cases, the easiest
thing to do is to use a “while (true)” loop and use break to end the loop whenever we
find a reason to do so. Also, if we are going to end the game after six guesses, we’ll have to
keep track of the number of guesses that the user has made. Filling out the algorithm gives:
Let computersNumber be a random number between 1 and 100
Let guessCount = 0
while (true):
Get the user’s guess
Count the guess by adding 1 to guess count
if the user’s guess equals computersNumber:
Tell the user he won
break out of the loop
if the number of guesses is 6:
Tell the user he lost
break out of the loop
if the user’s guess is less than computersNumber:
4.2. STATIC SUBROUTINES AND VARIABLES 123

Tell the user the guess was low

else if the user’s guess is higher than computersNumber:
Tell the user the guess was high

With variable declarations added and translated into Java, this becomes the definition of the
playGame() routine. A random integer between 1 and 100 can be computed as (int)(100 *
[Link]()) + 1. I’ve cleaned up the interaction with the user to make it flow better.
static void playGame() {
int computersNumber; // A random number picked by the computer.
int usersGuess; // A number entered by user as a guess.
int guessCount; // Number of guesses the user has made.
computersNumber = (int)(100 * [Link]()) + 1;
The value assigned to computersNumber is a randomly
chosen integer between 1 and 100,
inclusive. guessCount = 0;
[Link]();
[Link]("What is your first
guess? "); while (true) {
usersGuess = [Link](); // Get the user’s
guess. guessCount++;
if (usersGuess == computersNumber)
{ [Link]("You got it in " +
guessCount
" guesses! My number was " + computersNumber);
break; // The game is over; the user has won.
}
if (guessCount == 6) {
[Link]("You didn’t get the number in 6 guesses.");
[Link]("You lose. My number was " + computersNumber);
break; // The game is over; the user has lost.
}
If we get to this point, the game continues.
Tell the user if the guess was too high or too
low. if (usersGuess < computersNumber)
[Link]("That’s too low. Try again:
"); else if (usersGuess > computersNumber)
[Link]("That’s too high. Try again: ");
}
[Link]();
} // end of playGame()

Now, where exactly should you put this? It should be part of the same class as the main()
routine, but not inside the main routine. It is not legal to have one subroutine physically nested
inside another. The main() routine will call playGame(), but not contain it physically. You
can put the definition of playGame() either before or after the main() routine. Java is not
very picky about having the members of a class in any particular order.
It’s pretty easy to write the main routine. You’ve done things like this before. Here’s what
the complete program looks like (except that a serious program needs more comments than
I’ve included here).
public class GuessingGame {
public static void main(String[] args) {
[Link]("Let’s play a game. I’ll pick a number between");
[Link]("1 and 100, and you try to guess it.");
124 CHAPTER 4. SUBROUTINES

boolean playAgain;
do {
playGame(); // call subroutine to play one
game [Link]("Would you like to play again?
"); playAgain = [Link]();
} while (playAgain);
[Link]("Thanks for playing.
Goodbye."); } // end of main()
static void playGame() {
int computersNumber; // A random number picked by the computer.
int usersGuess; // A number entered by user as a guess.
int guessCount; // Number of guesses the user has made.
computersNumber = (int)(100 * [Link]()) + 1;
The value assigned to computersNumber is a randomly
chosen integer between 1 and 100,
inclusive. guessCount = 0;
[Link]();
[Link]("What is your first
guess? "); while (true) {
usersGuess = [Link](); // Get the user’s
guess. guessCount++;
if (usersGuess == computersNumber)
{ [Link]("You got it in " +
guessCount
" guesses! My number was " + computersNumber);
break; // The game is over; the user has won.
}
if (guessCount == 6) {
[Link]("You didn’t get the number in 6 guesses.");
[Link]("You lose. My number was " + computersNumber);
break; // The game is over; the user has lost.
}
If we get to this point, the game continues.
Tell the user if the guess was too high or too
low. if (usersGuess < computersNumber)
[Link]("That’s too low. Try again:
"); else if (usersGuess > computersNumber)
[Link]("That’s too high. Try again: ");
}
[Link]();
} // end of playGame()
} // end of class GuessingGame

Take some time to read the program carefully and figure out how it works. And try to
convince yourself that even in this relatively simple case, breaking up the program into two
methods makes the program easier to understand and probably made it easier to write each
piece.

4.2.4 Member Variables

A class can include other things besides subroutines. In particular, it can also include variable
declarations. Of course, you can declare variables inside subroutines. Those are called local
variables. However, you can also have variables that are not part of any subroutine. To
4.2. STATIC SUBROUTINES AND VARIABLES 125

distinguish such variables from local variables, we call them member variables, since they
are members of a class.
Just as with subroutines, member variables can be either static or non-static. In this
chapter, we’ll stick to static variables. A static member variable belongs to the class itself,
and it exists as long as the class exists. Memory is allocated for the variable when the class
is first loaded by the Java interpreter. Any assignment statement that assigns a value to the
variable changes the content of that memory, no matter where that assignment statement is
located in the program. Any time the variable is used in an expression, the value is fetched
from that same memory, no matter where the expression is located in the program. This
means that the value of a static member variable can be set in one subroutine and used in
another subroutine. Static member variables are “shared” by all the static subroutines in the
class. A local variable in a subroutine, on the other hand, exists only while that subroutine is
being executed, and is completely inaccessible from outside that one subroutine.
The declaration of a member variable looks just like the declaration of a local variable
except for two things: The member variable is declared outside any subroutine (although it
still has to be inside a class), and the declaration can be marked with modifiers such as
static, public, and private. Since we are only working with static member variables
for now, every declaration of a member variable in this chapter will include the modifier
static. They might also be marked as public or private. For example:
static String usersName;
public static int numberOfPlayers;
private static double velocity, time;

A static member variable that is not declared to be private can be accessed from
outside the class where it is defined, as well as inside. When it is used in some other class,
it must be referred to with a compound identifier of the form class-name . variable-name .
For example, the System class contains the public static member variable named out, and
you use this variable in your own classes by referring to [Link]. If
numberOfPlayers is a public static member variable in a class named Poker, then
subroutines in the Poker class would refer to it simply as numberOfPlayers, while
subroutines in another class would refer to it as [Link].
As an example, let’s add a static member variable to the GuessingGame class that we wrote
earlier in this section. This variable will be used to keep track of how many games the user wins. We’ll
call the variable gamesWon and declare it with the statement “static int gamesWon;”. In the
playGame() routine, we add 1 to gamesWon if the user wins the game. At the end of the main()
routine, we print out the value of gamesWon. It would be impossible to do the same thing with a local
variable, since we need access to the same variable from both subroutines.
When you declare a local variable in a subroutine, you have to assign a value to that
variable before you can do anything with it. Member variables, on the other hand are
automatically initialized with a default value. For numeric variables, the default value is zero.
For boolean variables, the default is false. And for char variables, it’s the unprintable
character that has Unicode code number zero. (For objects, such as Strings, the default
initial value is a special value called null, which we won’t encounter officially until later.)
Since it is of type int, the static member variable gamesWon automatically gets assigned
an initial value of zero. This happens to be the correct initial value for a variable that is being
used as a counter. You can, of course, assign a different value to the variable at the
beginning of the main() routine if you are not satisfied with the default initial value.
126 CHAPTER 4. SUBROUTINES

Here’s a revised version of [Link] that includes the gamesWon

variable. The changes from the above version are shown in italic:
public class GuessingGame2 {
static int gamesWon; // The number of games won by
the user.
public static void main(String[] args) {
gamesWon = 0; // This is actually redundant, since 0 is
// the default initial value.
[Link]("Let’s play a game. I’ll pick a number
between"); [Link]("1 and 100, and you try to
guess it."); boolean playAgain;
do {
playGame(); // call subroutine to play one
game [Link]("Would you like to play again?
"); playAgain = [Link]();
} while (playAgain);
[Link]();
[Link]("You won " + gamesWon + " games.");
[Link]("Thanks for playing. Goodbye.");
} // end of main()
static void playGame() {
int computersNumber; // A random number picked by the computer.
int usersGuess; // A number entered by user as a guess.
int guessCount; // Number of guesses the user has made.
computersNumber = (int)(100 * [Link]()) + 1;
The value assigned to computersNumber is a randomly
chosen integer between 1 and 100,
inclusive. guessCount = 0;
[Link]();
[Link]("What is your first
guess? "); while (true) {
usersGuess = [Link](); // Get the user’s
guess. guessCount++;
if (usersGuess == computersNumber)
{ [Link]("You got it in " +
guessCount
" guesses! My number was " + computersNumber);
gamesWon++; // Count this game by incrementing gamesWon.
break; // The game is over; the user has won.
}
if (guessCount == 6) {
[Link]("You didn’t get the number in 6 guesses.");
[Link]("You lose. My number was " + computersNumber);
break; // The game is over; the user has lost.
}
If we get to this point, the game continues.
Tell the user if the guess was too high or too
low. if (usersGuess < computersNumber)
[Link]("That’s too low. Try again:
"); else if (usersGuess > computersNumber)
[Link]("That’s too high. Try again: ");
}
4.3. PARAMETERS 127

[Link]();
} // end of playGame()
} // end of class GuessingGame2

4.3 Parameters
If a subroutine is a black box, then a parameter provides a mechanism for passing infor-mation
from the outside world into the box. Parameters are part of the interface of a subroutine. They
allow you to customize the behavior of a subroutine to adapt it to a particular situation.
As an analogy, consider a thermostat—a black box whose task it is to keep your house
at a certain temperature. The thermostat has a parameter, namely the dial that is used to set
the desired temperature. The thermostat always performs the same task: maintaining a
constant temperature. However, the exact task that it performs—that is, which temperature
it maintains—is customized by the setting on its dial.

4.3.1 Using Parameters

As an example, let’s go back to the “3N+1” problem that was discussed in Subsection 3.2.2.
(Recall that a 3N+1 sequence is computed according to the rule, “if N is odd, multiply by 3
and add 1; if N is even, divide by 2; continue until N is equal to 1.” For example, starting
from N=3 we get the sequence: 3, 10, 5, 16, 8, 4, 2, 1.) Suppose that we want to write a
subroutine to print out such sequences. The subroutine will always perform the same task:
Print out a 3N+1 sequence. But the exact sequence it prints out depends on the starting
value of N. So, the starting value of N would be a parameter to the subroutine. The
subroutine could be written like this:
/**
This subroutine prints a 3N+1 sequence to standard output, using
startingValue as the initial value of N. It also prints the number
of terms in the sequence. The value of the parameter, startingValue,
must be a positive integer.
*/
static void print3NSequence(int startingValue) {
int N; // One of the terms in the sequence.
int count; // The number of terms.
N = startingValue; // The first term is whatever value
is passed to the subroutine as
a parameter.
int count = 1; // We have one term, the starting value, so far.

[Link]("The 3N+1 sequence starting from " + N);

[Link]();
[Link](N); // print initial term of sequence

while (N > 1) {
if (N % 2 == 1) // is N odd?
N=3*N+1;
else
N=N/2;
128 CHAPTER 4. SUBROUTINES

count++; // count this term

[Link](N); // print this term
}
[Link]();
[Link]("There were " + count + " terms in the sequence.");

} // end print3NSequence

The parameter list of this subroutine, “(int startingValue)”, specifies that the subroutine
has one parameter, of type int. Within the body of the subroutine, the parameter name can be
used in the same way as a variable name. However, the parameter gets its initial value from
outside the subroutine. When the subroutine is called, a value must be provided for this
parameter in the subroutine call statement. This value will be assigned to the parameter,
startingValue, before the body of the subroutine is executed. For example, the subrou-tine
could be called using the subroutine call statement “print3NSequence(17);”. When the
computer executes this statement, the computer assigns the value 17 to startingValue and
then executes the statements in the subroutine. This prints the 3N+1 sequence starting from
If K is a variable of type int, then when the computer executes the subroutine call state-
ment “print3NSequence(K);”, it will take the value of the variable K, assign that value to
startingValue, and execute the body of the subroutine.
The class that contains print3NSequence can contain a main() routine (or other
subrou-tines) that call print3NSequence. For example, here is a main() program that
prints out 3N+1 sequences for various starting values specified by the user:
public static void main(String[] args) {
[Link]("This program will print out 3N+1 sequences");
[Link]("for starting values that you specify.");
[Link]();
int K; // Input from user; loop ends when K < 0.
do {
[Link]("Enter a starting value;")
[Link]("To end the program, enter 0: ");
K = [Link](); // Get starting value from user.
if (K > 0) // Print sequence, but only if K is > 0.
print3NSequence(K);
} while (K > 0); // Continue only if K
> 0. } // end main

Remember that before you can use this program, the definitions of main and of
print3NSequence must both be wrapped inside a class definition.

4.3.2 Formal and Actual Parameters

Note that the term “parameter” is used to refer to two di fferent, but related, concepts. There
are parameters that are used in the definitions of subroutines, such as startingValue in the
above example. And there are parameters that are used in subroutine call statements, such
as the K in the statement “print3NSequence(K);”. Parameters in a subroutine definition are
called formal parameters or dummy parameters. The parameters that are passed to a
subroutine when it is called are called actual parameters or arguments. When a
subroutine is called, the actual parameters in the subroutine call statement are evaluated
and the values are assigned to the formal parameters in the subroutine ’s definition. Then the
body of the subroutine is executed.
4.3. PARAMETERS 129

A formal parameter must be a name, that is, a simple identifier. A formal parameter is
very much like a variable, and—like a variable—it has a specified type such as int, boolean,
or String. An actual parameter is a value, and so it can be specified by any expression,
provided that the expression computes a value of the correct type. The type of the actual
parameter must be one that could legally be assigned to the formal parameter with an
assignment statement. For example, if the formal parameter is of type double, then it would
be legal to pass an int as the actual parameter since ints can legally be assigned to doubles.
When you call a subroutine, you must provide one actual parameter for each formal
parameter in the subroutine’s definition. Consider, for example, a subroutine
static void doTask(int N, double x, boolean test)
{ // statements to perform the task go here
}

This subroutine might be called with the statement

doTask(17, [Link](z+1), z >= 10);

When the computer executes this statement, it has essentially the same effect as the block
of statements:
{
int N; // Allocate memory locations for the formal parameters.
double x;
boolean test;
N = 17; // Assign 17 to the first formal parameter, N.
x = [Link](z+1); // Compute [Link](z+1), and assign it to
// the second formal parameter, x.
test = (z >= 10); // Evaluate "z >= 10" and assign the resulting
true/false value to the third formal
parameter, test.
statements to perform the task go here
}

(There are a few technical differences between this and “ doTask(17,[Link](z+1),z>=10);”

—besides the amount of typing—because of questions about scope of variables and what hap-pens
when several variables or parameters have the same name.)
Beginning programming students often find parameters to be surprisingly confusing.
Call-ing a subroutine that already exists is not a problem—the idea of providing information
to the subroutine in a parameter is clear enough. Writing the subroutine definition is another
matter. A common mistake is to assign values to the formal parameters at the beginning of
the subrou-tine, or to ask the user to input their values. This represents a fundamental
misunderstanding. When the statements in the subroutine are executed, the formal
parameters will already have values. The values come from the subroutine call statement.
Remember that a subroutine is not independent. It is called by some other routine, and it is
the calling routine’s responsibility to provide appropriate values for the parameters.

4.3.3 Overloading
In order to call a subroutine legally, you need to know its name, you need to know how many formal
parameters it has, and you need to know the type of each parameter. This information is called the
subroutine’s signature. The signature of the subroutine doTask, used as an example above, can be
expressed as as: doTask(int,double,boolean). Note that the signature does
130 CHAPTER 4. SUBROUTINES

not include the names of the parameters; in fact, if you just want to use the subroutine, you
don’t even need to know what the formal parameter names are, so the names are not part of
the interface.
Java is somewhat unusual in that it allows two different subroutines in the same class to
have the same name, provided that their signatures are different. (The language C++ on
which Java is based also has this feature.) When this happens, we say that the name of the
subroutine is overloaded because it has several different meanings. The computer doesn’t
get the subroutines mixed up. It can tell which one you want to call by the number and types
of the actual parameters that you provide in the subroutine call statement. You have already
seen overloading used in the TextIO class. This class includes many different methods
named putln, for example. These methods all have different signatures, such as:
putln(int) putln(double)
putln(String) putln(char)
putln(boolean) putln()

The computer knows which of these subroutines you want to use based on the type of the
actual parameter that you provide. [Link](17) calls the subroutine with signature
putln(int), while [Link]("Hello") calls the subroutine with signature
putln(String). Of course all these different subroutines are semantically related, which
is why it is acceptable programming style to use the same name for them all. But as far as
the computer is concerned, printing out an int is very different from printing out a String,
which is different from printing out a boolean, and so forth—so that each of these operations
requires a different method.
Note, by the way, that the signature does not include the subroutine’s return type. It is
illegal to have two subroutines in the same class that have the same signature but that have
different return types. For example, it would be a syntax error for a class to contain two
methods defined as:
int getln() { ... }
double getln() { ... }

So it should be no surprise that in the TextIO class, the methods for reading di fferent types
are not all named getln(). In a given class, there can only be one routine that has the
name getln and has no parameters. So, the input routines in TextIO are distinguished by
having different names, such as getlnInt() and getlnDouble().
Java 5.0 introduced another complication: It is possible to have a single subroutine that takes
a variable number of actual parameters. You have already used subroutines that do this—the
formatted output routines [Link] and [Link]. When you call these
subroutines, the number of parameters in the subroutine call can be arbitrarily large, so it would
be impossible to have different subroutines to handle each case. Unfortunately, writing the
definition of such a subroutine requires some knowledge of arrays, which will not be covered
until Chapter 7. When we get to that chapter, you’ll learn how to write subroutines with a variable
number of parameters. For now, we will ignore this complication.

4.3.4 Subroutine Examples

Let’s do a few examples of writing small subroutines to perform assigned tasks. Of course, this is
only one side of programming with subroutines. The task performed by a subroutine is always a
subtask in a larger program. The art of designing those programs—of deciding how to
4.3. PARAMETERS 131

break them up into subtasks—is the other side of programming with subroutines. We’ll
return to the question of program design in Section 4.6.
As a first example, let’s write a subroutine to compute and print out all the divisors of a
given positive integer. The integer will be a parameter to the subroutine. Remember that the
syntax of any subroutine is:
modifiers return-type subroutine-name ( parameter-list )
{ statements
}

Writing a subroutine always means filling out this format. In this case, the statement of the
problem tells us that there is one parameter, of type int, and it tells us what the statements in
the body of the subroutine should do. Since we are only working with static subroutines for
now, we’ll need to use static as a modifier. We could add an access modifier (public or
private), but in the absence of any instructions, I’ll leave it out. Since we are not told to
return a value, the return type is void. Since no names are specified, we’ll have to make
up names for the formal parameter and for the subroutine itself. I’ll use N for the parameter
and printDivisors for the subroutine name. The subroutine will look like
static void printDivisors( int N ) {
statements
}

and all we have left to do is to write the statements that make up the body of the routine.
This is not difficult. Just remember that you have to write the body assuming that N already
has a value! The algorithm is: “For each possible divisor D in the range from 1 to N, if D
evenly divides N, then print D.” Written in Java, this becomes:
/**
Print all the divisors of N.
We assume that N is a positive
integer. */
static void printDivisors( int N ) {
int D; // One of the possible divisors of N.
[Link]("The divisors of " + N + " are:");
for ( D = 1; D <= N; D++ ) {
if ( N % D == 0 )
[Link](D);
}
}

I’ve added a comment before the subroutine definition indicating the contract of the
subroutine—that is, what it does and what assumptions it makes. The contract includes the
assumption that N is a positive integer. It is up to the caller of the subroutine to make sure
that this assumption is satisfied.
As a second short example, consider the problem: Write a subroutine named
printRow. It should have a parameter ch of type char and a parameter N of type int. The
subroutine should print out a line of text containing N copies of the character ch.
Here, we are told the name of the subroutine and the names of the two parameters, so
we don’t have much choice about the first line of the subroutine definition. The task in this
case is pretty simple, so the body of the subroutine is easy to write. The complete
subroutine is given by
132 CHAPTER 4. SUBROUTINES

/**
Write one line of output containing N copies of the
character ch. If N <= 0, an empty line is
output. */
static void printRow( char ch, int N ) {
int i; // Loop-control variable for counting off the copies.
for ( i = 1; i <= N; i++ ) {
[Link]( ch );
}
[Link]();
}

Note that in this case, the contract makes no assumption about N, but it makes it clear what
will happen in all cases, including the unexpected case that N < 0.
Finally, let’s do an example that shows how one subroutine can build on another. Let’s
write a subroutine that takes a String as a parameter. For each character in the string, it will
print a line of output containing 25 copies of that character. It should use the printRow()
subroutine to produce the output.
Again, we get to choose a name for the subroutine and a name for the parameter. I’ll call
the subroutine printRowsFromString and the parameter str. The algorithm is pretty
clear: For each position i in the string str, call printRow([Link](i),25) to
print one line of the output. So, we get:
/**
For each character in str, write a line of output
containing 25 copies of that character.
*/
static void printRowsFromString( String str ) {
int i; // Loop-control variable for counting off the chars.
for ( i = 0; i < [Link](); i++ ) {
printRow( [Link](i), 25 );
}
}
We could use printRowsFromString in a main() routine such as
public static void main(String[] args) {
String inputLine; // Line of text input by
user. [Link]("Enter a line of text:
"); inputLine = [Link]();
[Link]();
printRowsFromString( inputLine );
}

Of course, the three routines, main(), printRowsFromString(), and

printRow(), would have to be collected together inside the same class. The program is
rather useless, but it does demonstrate the use of subroutines. You’ll find the program in the
file [Link], if you want to take a look.

4.3.5 Throwing Exceptions

I have been talking about the “contract” of a subroutine. The contract says what the subroutine
will do, provided that the caller of the subroutine provides acceptable values for subroutine ’s
4.3. PARAMETERS 133

parameters. The question arises, though, what should the subroutine do when the caller
violates the contract by providing bad parameter values?
We’ve already seen that some subroutines respond to bad parameter values by throw-ing
exceptions. (See Section 3.7.) For example, the contract of the built-in subroutine
[Link] says that the parameter should be a string representation of a num-ber
of type double; if this is true, then the subroutine will convert the string into the equivalent
numeric value. If the caller violates the contract by passing an invalid string as the actual
parameter, the subroutine responds by throwing an exception of type NumberFormatException.
Many subroutines throw IllegalArgumentExceptions in response to bad parameter values.
You might want to take this response in your own subroutines. This can be done with a throw
statement . An exception is an object, and in order to throw an exception, you must create an
exception object. You won’t officially learn how to do this until Chapter 5, but for now, you can
use the following syntax for a throw statement that throws an IllegalArgumentException:
throw new IllegalArgumentException( error-message );

where error-message is a string that describes the error that has been detected. (The word
“new” in this statement is what creates the object.) To use this statement in a subroutine, you
would check whether the values of the parameters are legal. If not, you would throw the
exception. For example, consider the print3NSequence subroutine from the beginning of this
section. The parameter of print3NSequence is supposed to be a positive integer. We can
modify the subroutine definition to make it throw an exception when this condition is violated:
static void print3NSequence(int startingValue) {
if (startingValue <= 0) // The contract is violated!
throw new IllegalArgumentException( "Starting value must be positive." );
.
// (The rest of the subroutine is the same as before.)

If the start value is bad, the computer executes the throw statement. This will immediate
terminate the subroutine, without executing the rest of the body of the subroutine. Further-more,
the program as a whole will crash unless the exception is “caught” and handled elsewhere in the
program by a try..catch statement, as discussed in Section 3.7.

4.3.6 Global and Local Variables

I’ll finish this section on parameters by noting that we now have three di fferent sorts of vari-
ables that can be used inside a subroutine: local variables declared in the subroutine, formal
parameter names, and static member variables that are declared outside the subroutine but
inside the same class as the subroutine.
Local variables have no connection to the outside world; they are purely part of the
internal working of the subroutine. Parameters are used to “drop” values into the subroutine
when it is called, but once the subroutine starts executing, parameters act much like local
variables. Changes made inside a subroutine to a formal parameter have no e ffect on the
rest of the program (at least if the type of the parameter is one of the primitive types—things
are more complicated in the case of objects, as we’ll see later).
Things are different when a subroutine uses a variable that is defined outside the subroutine.
That variable exists independently of the subroutine, and it is accessible to other parts of the
program, as well as to the subroutine. Such a variable is said to be global to the subroutine,
134 CHAPTER 4. SUBROUTINES

as opposed to the local variables defined inside the subroutine. The scope of a global variable
includes the entire class in which it is defined. Changes made to a global variable can have
effects that extend outside the subroutine where the changes are made. You’ve seen how this
works in the last example in the previous section, where the value of the global variable,
gamesWon, is computed inside a subroutine and is used in the main() routine.
It’s not always bad to use global variables in subroutines, but you should realize that the
global variable then has to be considered part of the subroutine’s interface. The subroutine
uses the global variable to communicate with the rest of the program. This is a kind of
sneaky, back-door communication that is less visible than communication done through
parameters, and it risks violating the rule that the interface of a black box should be
straightforward and easy to understand. So before you use a global variable in a subroutine,
you should consider whether it’s really necessary.
I don’t advise you to take an absolute stand against using global variables inside
subroutines. There is at least one good reason to do it: If you think of the class as a whole
as being a kind of black box, it can be very reasonable to let the subroutines inside that box
be a little sneaky about communicating with each other, if that will make the class as a
whole look simpler from the outside.

4.4 Return Values

A subroutine that returns a value is called a function. A given function can only return a value of
a specified type, called the return type of the function. A function call generally occurs in a
position where the computer is expecting to find a value, such as the right side of an assignment
statement, as an actual parameter in a subroutine call, or in the middle of some larger
expression. A boolean-valued function can even be used as the test condition in an if, while,
for or do..while statement.
(It is also legal to use a function call as a stand-alone statement, just as if it were a reg-
ular subroutine. In this case, the computer ignores the value computed by the subroutine.
Sometimes this makes sense. For example, the function [Link](), with a return
type of String, reads and returns a line of input typed in by the user. Usually, the line that is
returned is assigned to a variable to be used later in the program, as in the statement “name
[Link]();”. However, this function is also useful as a subroutine call statement
“[Link]();”, which still reads all input up to and including the next carriage return.
Since the return value is not assigned to a variable or used in an expression, it is simply dis-
carded. So, the effect of the subroutine call is to read and discard some input. Sometimes,
discarding unwanted input is exactly what you need to do.)

4.4.1 The return statement

You’ve already seen how functions such as [Link]() and [Link]() can be
used. What you haven’t seen is how to write functions of your own. A function takes the same
form as a regular subroutine, except that you have to specify the value that is to be returned by
the subroutine. This is done with a return statement , which has the following syntax:
return expression ;

Such a return statement can only occur inside the definition of a function, and the type of
the expression must match the return type that was specified for the function. (More exactly, it must be
legal to assign the expression to a variable whose type is specified by the
4.4. RETURN VALUES 135

return type.) When the computer executes this return statement, it evaluates the
expression, terminates execution of the function, and uses the value of the expression as
the returned value of the function.
For example, consider the function definition
static double pythagoras(double x, double y) {
Computes the length of the hypotenuse of a right
triangle, where the sides of the triangle are x
and y. return [Link]( x*x + y*y );
}

Suppose the computer executes the statement “totalLength = 17 + pythagoras(12,5);”.

When it gets to the term pythagoras(12,5), it assigns the actual parameters 12 and 5 to the
formal parameters x and y in the function. In the body of the function, it evaluates
[Link](12.0*12.0 + 5.0*5.0), which works out to 13.0. This value is “returned” by the
function, so the 13.0 essentially replaces the function call in the statement “totalLength =
+ pythagoras(12,5);”. The return value is added to 17, and the result, 30.0, is stored
in the variable, totalLength. The effect is the same as if the statement had been
“totalLength = 17 + 13.0;”.
Note that a return statement does not have to be the last statement in the function
definition. At any point in the function where you know the value that you want to return, you can
return it. Returning a value will end the function immediately, skipping any subsequent
statements in the function. However, it must be the case that the function definitely does return
some value, no matter what path the execution of the function takes through the code.
You can use a return statement inside an ordinary subroutine, one with declared
return type “void”. Since a void subroutine does not return a value, the return statement
does not include an expression; it simply takes the form “return;”. The effect of this
statement is to terminate execution of the subroutine and return control back to the point in
the program from which the subroutine was called. This can be convenient if you want to
terminate execution somewhere in the middle of the subroutine, but return statements are
optional in non-function subroutines. In a function, on the other hand, a return statement,
with expression, is always required.

4.4.2 Function Examples

Here is a very simple function that could be used in a program to compute 3N+1 sequences.
(The 3N+1 sequence problem is one we’ve looked at several times already, including in the
previous section). Given one term in a 3N+1 sequence, this function computes the next term
of the sequence:
static int nextN(int currentN) {
if (currentN % 2 == 1) // test if current N is odd
return 3*currentN + 1; // if so, return this value
else
return currentN / 2; // if not, return this instead
}

This function has two return statements. Exactly one of the two return statements is
executed to give the value of the function. Some people prefer to use a single return
statement at the very end of the function when possible. This allows the reader to find the
return statement easily. You might choose to write nextN() like this, for example:
136 CHAPTER 4. SUBROUTINES

static int nextN(int currentN) {

int answer; // answer will be the value returned
if (currentN % 2 == 1) // test if current N is
odd answer = 3*currentN+1; // if so, this is
the answer
else
answer = currentN / 2; // if not, this is the answer
return answer; // (Don’t forget to return the answer!)
}

Here is a subroutine that uses this nextN function. In this case, the improvement from
the version of this subroutine in Section 4.3 is not great, but if nextN() were a long
function that performed a complex computation, then it would make a lot of sense to hide
that complexity inside a function:
static void print3NSequence(int startingValue) {
int N; // One of the terms in the sequence.
int count; // The number of terms found.
N = startingValue; // Start the sequence with startingValue.
count = 1;
[Link]("The 3N+1 sequence starting from " + N);
[Link]();
[Link](N); // print initial term of sequence

while (N > 1) {
N = nextN( N ); // Compute next term, using the function nextN.
count++; // Count this term.
[Link](N); // Print this term.
}

[Link]();
[Link]("There were " + count + " terms in the sequence.");
}

∗∗∗
Here are a few more examples of functions. The first one computes a letter grade corre-
sponding to a given numerical grade, on a typical grading scale:
/**
Returns the letter grade corresponding to the numerical
grade that is passed to this function as a
parameter. */
static char letterGrade(int numGrade) {
if (numGrade >= 90)
return ’A’; // 90 or above gets an A
else if (numGrade >= 80)
return ’B’; // 80 to 89 gets a B
else if (numGrade >= 65)
return ’C’; // 65 to 79 gets a C
else if (numGrade >= 50)
return ’D’; // 50 to 64 gets a D
else
4.4. RETURN VALUES 137

return ’F’; // anything else gets an F

} // end of function letterGrade

The type of the return value of letterGrade() is char. Functions can return values of any
type at all. Here’s a function whose return value is of type boolean. It demonstrates some
interesting programming points, so you should read the comments:
/**
The function returns true if N is a prime number. A prime number
is an integer greater than 1 that is not divisible by any positive
integer, except itself and 1. If N has any divisor, D, in the range
1 < D < N, then it has a divisor in the range 2 to [Link](N), namely
either D itself or N/D. So we only test possible divisors from 2 to
[Link](N).
*/
static boolean isPrime(int N) {
int divisor; // A number we will test to see whether it evenly divides N.
if (N <= 1)
return false; // No number <= 1 is a prime.

int maxToTry; // The largest divisor that we need to test.

maxToTry = (int)[Link](N);
We will try to divide N by numbers between 2 and maxToTry.
If N is not evenly divisible by any of these numbers, then
N is prime. (Note that since [Link](N) is defined to
return a value of type double, the value must be typecast
to type int before it can be assigned to maxToTry.)
for (divisor = 2; divisor <= maxToTry; divisor++) {
if ( N % divisor == 0 ) // Test if divisor evenly divides N.
return false; // If so, we know N is not prime.
// No need to continue testing!
}
If we get to this point, N must be prime. Otherwise,
the function would already have been terminated by
a return statement in the previous loop.
return true; // Yes, N is prime.

} // end of function isPrime

Finally, here is a function with return type String. This function has a String as parameter.
The returned value is a reversed copy of the parameter. For example, the reverse of “Hello
World” is “dlroW olleH”. The algorithm for computing the reverse of a string, str, is to start
with an empty string and then to append each character from str, starting from the last
character of str and working backwards to the first:
static String reverse(String str) {
String copy; // The reversed copy.
int i; // One of the positions in str,
// from [Link]() - 1 down to 0.
copy = ""; // Start with an empty string.
for ( i = [Link]() - 1; i >= 0; i-- ) {
138 CHAPTER 4. SUBROUTINES

Append i-th char of str to

copy. copy = copy + [Link](i);
}
return copy;
}

A palindrome is a string that reads the same backwards and forwards, such as “radar”. The
reverse() function could be used to check whether a string, word, is a palindrome by
testing “if ([Link](reverse(word)))”.
By the way, a typical beginner’s error in writing functions is to print out the answer, instead of
returning it. This represents a fundamental misunderstanding. The task of a function is to
compute a value and return it to the point in the program where the function was called. That’s
where the value is used. Maybe it will be printed out. Maybe it will be assigned to a variable.
Maybe it will be used in an expression. But it’s not for the function to decide.

4.4.3 3N+1 Revisited

I’ll finish this section with a complete new version of the 3N+1 program. This will give me a
chance to show the function nextN(), which was defined above, used in a complete
program. I’ll also take the opportunity to improve the program by getting it to print the terms
of the sequence in columns, with five terms on each line. This will make the output more
presentable. This idea is this: Keep track of how many terms have been printed on the
current line; when that number gets up to 5, start a new line of output. To make the terms
line up into neat columns, I use formatted output.
/**
A program that computes and displays several 3N+1 sequences. Starting
values for the sequences are input by the user. Terms in the sequence
are printed in columns, with five terms on each line of output.
After a sequence has been displayed, the number of terms in that
sequence is reported to the user.
*/
public class ThreeN2 {

public static void main(String[] args) {

[Link]("This program will print out 3N+1

sequences"); [Link]("for starting values that
you specify."); [Link]();
int K; // Starting point for sequence, specified by the user.
do {
[Link]("Enter a starting value;");
[Link]("To end the program, enter 0: ");
K = [Link](); // get starting value from user
if (K > 0) // print sequence, but only if K is > 0
print3NSequence(K);
} while (K > 0); // continue only if K > 0 }
// end main

/**
* print3NSequence prints a 3N+1 sequence to standard output, using
4.4. RETURN VALUES 139

startingValue as the initial value of N. It also prints the number

of terms in the sequence. The value of the parameter, startingValue,
must be a positive integer.
*/
static void print3NSequence(int startingValue) {

int N; // One of the terms in the sequence.

int count; // The number of terms found.
int onLine; // The number of terms that have been output
// so far on the current line.

N = startingValue; // Start the sequence with startingValue;

count = 1; // We have one term so far.

[Link]("The 3N+1 sequence starting from

" + N); [Link]();
[Link](N, 8); // Print initial term, using 8 characters.
onLine = 1; // There’s now 1 term on current output line.

while (N > 1) {
N = nextN(N); // compute next term
count++; // count this term
if (onLine == 5) { // If current output line is full
[Link](); // ...then output a carriage return
onLine = 0; // ...and note that there are no terms
// on the new line.
}
[Link]("%8d", N); // Print this term in an 8-char column.
onLine++; // Add 1 to the number of terms on this line.
}

[Link](); // end current line of output

[Link](); // and then add a blank line
[Link]("There were " + count + " terms in the sequence.");

} // end of Print3NSequence

/**
nextN computes and returns the next term in a 3N+1 sequence,
given that the current term is currentN.
*/
static int nextN(int currentN) {
if (currentN % 2 == 1)
return 3 * currentN + 1;
else
return currentN / 2;
} // end of nextN() }

// end of class ThreeN2

You should read this program carefully and try to understand how it works. (Try using 27 for
the starting value!)
140 CHAPTER 4. SUBROUTINES

4.5 APIs, Packages, and Javadoc

As computers and their user interfaces have become easier to use, they have also become
more complex for programmers to deal with. You can write programs for a simple console-style
user interface using just a few subroutines that write output to the console and read the user’s
typed replies. A modern graphical user interface, with windows, buttons, scroll bars, menus, text-
input boxes, and so on, might make things easier for the user, but it forces the programmer to
cope with a hugely expanded array of possibilities. The programmer sees this increased
complexity in the form of great numbers of subroutines that are provided for managing the user
interface, as well as for other purposes.

4.5.1 Toolboxes

Someone who wants to program for Macintosh computers—and to produce programs that look
and behave the way users expect them to—must deal with the Macintosh Toolbox, a collection
of well over a thousand different subroutines. There are routines for opening and closing
windows, for drawing geometric figures and text to windows, for adding buttons to windows, and
for responding to mouse clicks on the window. There are other routines for creating menus and
for reacting to user selections from menus. Aside from the user interface, there are routines for
opening files and reading data from them, for communicating over a network, for sending output
to a printer, for handling communication between programs, and in general for doing all the
standard things that a computer has to do. Microsoft Windows provides its own set of
subroutines for programmers to use, and they are quite a bit di fferent from the subroutines used
on the Mac. Linux has several different GUI toolboxes for the programmer to choose from.
The analogy of a “toolbox” is a good one to keep in mind. Every programming project
involves a mixture of innovation and reuse of existing tools. A programmer is given a set of
tools to work with, starting with the set of basic tools that are built into the language: things
like variables, assignment statements, if statements, and loops. To these, the programmer
can add existing toolboxes full of routines that have already been written for performing
certain tasks. These tools, if they are well-designed, can be used as true black boxes: They
can be called to perform their assigned tasks without worrying about the particular steps
they go through to accomplish those tasks. The innovative part of programming is to take all
these tools and apply them to some particular project or problem (word-processing, keeping
track of bank accounts, processing image data from a space probe, Web browsing,
computer games, . . . ). This is called applications programming .
A software toolbox is a kind of black box, and it presents a certain interface to the
program-mer. This interface is a specification of what routines are in the toolbox, what
parameters they use, and what tasks they perform. This information constitutes the API , or
Applications Programming Interface, associated with the toolbox. The Macintosh API is a
specification of all the routines available in the Macintosh Toolbox. A company that makes
some hard-ware device—say a card for connecting a computer to a network—might publish
an API for that device consisting of a list of routines that programmers can call in order to
communicate with and control the device. Scientists who write a set of routines for doing
some kind of complex computation—such as solving “differential equations,” say—would
provide an API to allow others to use those routines without understanding the details of the
computations they perform.
∗∗∗
4.5. APIS, PACKAGES, AND JAVADOC 141

The Java programming language is supplemented by a large, standard API. You’ve seen
part of this API already, in the form of mathematical subroutines such as [Link](),
the String data type and its associated routines, and the [Link]() routines.
The standard Java API includes routines for working with graphical user interfaces, for
network communication, for reading and writing files, and more. It’s tempting to think of
these routines as being built into the Java language, but they are technically subroutines
that have been written and made available for use in Java programs.
Java is platform-independent. That is, the same program can run on platforms as diverse as
Macintosh, Windows, Linux, and others. The same Java API must work on all these platforms.
But notice that it is the interface that is platform-independent; the implementation varies from
one platform to another. A Java system on a particular computer includes implementations of all
the standard API routines. A Java program includes only calls to those routines. When the Java
interpreter executes a program and encounters a call to one of the standard routines, it will pull
up and execute the implementation of that routine which is appropriate for the particular platform
on which it is running. This is a very powerful idea. It means that you only need to learn one API
to program for a wide variety of platforms.

4.5.2 Java’s Standard Packages

Like all subroutines in Java, the routines in the standard API are grouped into classes. To
provide larger-scale organization, classes in Java can be grouped into packages, which
were introduced briefly in Subsection 2.6.4. You can have even higher levels of grouping,
since packages can also contain other packages. In fact, the entire standard Java API is
implemented in several packages. One of these, which is named “java”, contains several
non-GUI packages as well as the original AWT graphics user interface classes. Another
package, “javax”, was added in Java version 1.2 and contains the classes used by the
Swing graphical user interface and other additions to the API.
A package can contain both classes and other packages. A package that is contained in
another package is sometimes called a “sub-package.” Both the java package and the javax
package contain sub-packages. One of the sub-packages of java, for example, is called “awt”.
Since awt is contained within java, its full name is actually [Link]. This package con-
tains classes that represent GUI components such as buttons and menus in the AWT, the older
of the two Java GUI toolboxes, which is no longer widely used. However, [Link] also
contains a number of classes that form the foundation for all GUI programming, such as the
Graphics class which provides routines for drawing on the screen, the Color class which
repre-sents colors, and the Font class which represents the fonts that are used to display
characters on the screen. Since these classes are contained in the package [Link], their
full names are actually [Link], [Link], and [Link]. (I
hope that by now you’ve gotten the hang of how this naming thing works in Java.) Similarly,
javax contains a sub-package named [Link], which includes such classes as
[Link], [Link], and [Link]. The GUI
classes in [Link], together with the foundational classes in [Link], are all part of
the API that makes it possible to program graphical user interfaces in Java.
The java package includes several other sub-packages, such as [Link], which provides fa-
cilities for input/output, [Link], which deals with network communication, and [Link],
which provides a variety of “utility” classes. The most basic package is called [Link]. This
package contains fundamental classes such as String, Math, Integer, and Double.
It might be helpful to look at a graphical representation of the levels of nesting in the
142 CHAPTER 4. SUBROUTINES

java package, its sub-packages, the classes in those sub-packages, and the subroutines in
those classes. This is not a complete picture, since it shows only a very few of the many
items in each element:

The official documentation for the standard Java 5.0 API lists 165 different packages, in-
cluding sub-packages, and it lists 3278 classes in these packages. Many of these are rather
obscure or very specialized, but you might want to browse through the documentation to see
what is available. As I write this, the documentation for the complete API can be found at
[Link]

Even an expert programmer won’t be familiar with the entire API, or even a majority of it. In
this book, you’ll only encounter several dozen classes, and those will be sufficient for writing
a wide variety of programs.

4.5.3 Using Classes from Packages

Let’s say that you want to use the class [Link] in a program that you are writing.
Like any class, [Link] is a type, which means that you can use it to declare
variables and parameters and to specify the return type of a function. One way to do this is to
use the full name of the class as the name of the type. For example, suppose that you want to
declare a variable named rectColor of type [Link]. You could say:
[Link] rectColor;

This is just an ordinary variable declaration of the form “ type-name variable-name ;”. Of
course, using the full name of every class can get tiresome, so Java makes it possible to
avoid using the full name of a class by importing the class. If you put
import [Link];

at the beginning of a Java source code file, then, in the rest of the
file, you can abbreviate the full name [Link] to just the
simple name of the class, Color. Note that the import
4.5. APIS, PACKAGES, AND JAVADOC 143

line comes at the start of a file and is not inside any class. Although it is sometimes referred
to as a statement, it is more properly called an import directive since it is not a statement in
the usual sense. Using this import directive would allow you to say
Color rectColor;

to declare the variable. Note that the only effect of the import directive is to allow you to
use simple class names instead of full “[Link]” names; you aren’t really importing
anything substantial. If you leave out the import directive, you can still access the class—
you just have to use its full name. There is a shortcut for importing all the classes from a
given package. You can import all the classes from [Link] by saying
import [Link].*;

The “*” is a wildcard that matches every class in the package. (However, it does not match
sub-packages; you cannot import the entire contents of all the sub-packages of the java
package by saying import java.*.)
Some programmers think that using a wildcard in an import statement is bad style,
since it can make a large number of class names available that you are not going to use and
might not even know about. They think it is better to explicitly import each individual class
that you want to use. In my own programming, I often use wildcards to import all the classes
from the most relevant packages, and use individual imports when I am using just one or
two classes from a given package.
In fact, any Java program that uses a graphical user interface is likely to use many
classes from the [Link] and [Link] packages as well as from another package
named [Link], and I usually begin such programs with
import [Link].*;
import [Link].*;
import [Link].*;

A program that works with networking might include the line “import [Link].*;”,
while one that reads or writes files might use “import [Link].*;”. (But when you start
importing lots of packages in this way, you have to be careful about one thing: It’s possible
for two classes that are in different packages to have the same name. For example, both
the [Link] package and the [Link] package contain classes named List. If
you import both [Link].* and [Link].*, the simple name List will be
ambiguous. If you try to declare a variable of type List, you will get a compiler error
message about an ambiguous class name. The solution is simple: Use the full name of the
class, either [Link] or [Link]. Another solution, of course, is to use
import to import the individual classes you need, instead of importing entire packages.)
Because the package [Link] is so fundamental, all the classes in [Link] are
auto-matically imported into every program. It’s as if every program began with the statement
“import [Link].*;”. This is why we have been able to use the class name String instead
of [Link], and [Link]() instead of [Link](). It would
still, however, be perfectly legal to use the longer forms of the names.
Programmers can create new packages. Suppose that you want some classes that you
are writing to be in a package named utilities. Then the source code file that defines
those classes must begin with the line
package utilities;
144 CHAPTER 4. SUBROUTINES

This would come even before any import directive in that file. Furthermore, as mentioned
in Subsection 2.6.4, the source code file would be placed in a folder with the same name as
the package. A class that is in a package automatically has access to other classes in the
same package; that is, a class doesn’t have to import the package in which it is defined.
In projects that define large numbers of classes, it makes sense to organize those
classes into packages. It also makes sense for programmers to create new packages as
toolboxes that provide functionality and API’s for dealing with areas not covered in the
standard Java API. (And in fact such “toolmaking” programmers often have more prestige
than the applications programmers who use their tools.)
However, I will not be creating any packages in this textbook. For the purposes of this
book, you need to know about packages mainly so that you will be able to import the
standard packages. These packages are always available to the programs that you write.
You might wonder where the standard classes are actually located. Again, that can depend
to some extent on the version of Java that you are using, but in the standard Java 5.0, they
are stored in jar files in a subdirectory of the main Java installation directory. A jar (or “Java
archive”) file is a single file that can contain many classes. Most of the standard classes can
be found in a jar file named [Link]. In fact, Java programs are generally distributed
in the form of jar files, instead of as individual class files.
Although we won’t be creating packages explicitly, every class is actually part of a
package. If a class is not specifically placed in a package, then it is put in something called
the default package, which has no name. All the examples that you see in this book are in
the default package.

4.5.4 Javadoc
To use an API effectively, you need good documentation for it. The documentation for most
Java APIs is prepared using a system called Javadoc. For example, this system is used to
prepare the documentation for Java’s standard packages. And almost everyone who creates
a toolbox in Java publishes Javadoc documentation for it.
Javadoc documentation is prepared from special comments that are placed in the Java
source code file. Recall that one type of Java comment begins with /* and ends with */. A
Javadoc comment takes the same form, but it begins with /** rather than simply /*. You
have already seen comments of this form in some of the examples in this book, such as this
subroutine from Section 4.3:
/**
This subroutine prints a 3N+1 sequence to standard output, using
startingValue as the initial value of N. It also prints the number
of terms in the sequence. The value of the parameter, startingValue,
must be a positive integer.
*/
static void print3NSequence(int startingValue) { ...

Note that the Javadoc comment is placed just before the subroutine that it is commenting
on. This rule is always followed. You can have Javadoc comments for subroutines, for
member variables, and for classes. The Javadoc comment always immediately precedes the
thing it is commenting on.
Like any comment, a Javadoc comment is ignored by the computer when the file is compiled.
But there is a tool called javadoc that reads Java source code files, extracts any Javadoc
4.5. APIS, PACKAGES, AND JAVADOC 145

comments that it finds, and creates a set of Web pages containing the comments in a nicely
formatted, interlinked form. By default, javadoc will only collect information about public
classes, subroutines, and member variables, but it allows the option of creating
documentation for non-public things as well. If javadoc doesn’t find any Javadoc comment
for something, it will construct one, but the comment will contain only basic information such
as the name and type of a member variable or the name, return type, and parameter list of a
subroutine. This is syntactic information. To add information about semantics and
pragmatics, you have to write a Javadoc comment.
As an example, you can look at the documentation Web page for TextIO. The documentation
page was created by applying the javadoc tool to the source code file, [Link]. If you
have downloaded the on-line version of this book, the documentation can be found in the
TextIO Javadoc directory, or you can find a link to it in the on-line version of this section.
In a Javadoc comment, the *’s at the start of each line are optional. The javadoc tool
will remove them. In addition to normal text, the comment can contain certain special codes.
For one thing, the comment can contain HTML mark-up commands. HTML is the language
that is used to create web pages, and Javadoc comments are meant to be shown on web
pages. The javadoc tool will copy any HTML commands in the comments to the web
pages that it creates. You’ll learn some basic HTML in Section 6.2, but as an example, you
can add <p> to indicate the start of a new paragraph. (Generally, in the absence of HTML
commands, blank lines and extra spaces in the comment are ignored.)
In addition to HTML commands, Javadoc comments can include doc tags, which are
processed as commands by the javadoc tool. A doc tag has a name that begins with the
character @. I will only discuss three tags: @param, @return, and @throws. These tags are
used in Javadoc comments for subroutines to provide information about its parameters, its return
value, and the exceptions that it might throw. These tags are always placed at the end of the
comment, after any description of the subroutine itself. The syntax for using them is:
@param parameter-name description-of-parameter

@return description-of-return-value
@throws exception-class-name description-of-exception

The descriptions can extend over several lines. The description ends at the next tag or at the end of
the comment. You can include a @param tag for every parameter of the subroutine and a @throws
for as many types of exception as you want to document. You should have a @return tag only for a
non-void subroutine. These tags do not have to be given in any particular order.
Here is an example that doesn’t do anything exciting but that does use all three types of
doc tag:
/**
This subroutine computes the area of a rectangle, given its width
and its height. The length and the width should be positive numbers.
@param width the length of one side of the rectangle
@param height the length the second side of the rectangle
@return the area of the rectangle
@throws IllegalArgumentException if either the width or the height
is a negative number.
*/
public static double areaOfRectangle( double length, double
width ) { if ( width < 0 || height < 0 )
throw new IllegalArgumentException("Sides must have positive length.");
146 CHAPTER 4. SUBROUTINES

double area;
area = width * height;
return area;
}

I will use Javadoc comments for some of my examples. I encourage you to use them in
your own code, even if you don’t plan to generate Web page documentation of your work,
since it’s a standard format that other Java programmers will be familiar with.
If you do want to create Web-page documentation, you need to run the javadoc tool. This
tool is available as a command in the Java Development Kit that was discussed in Section 2.6.
You can use javadoc in a command line interface similarly to the way that the javac and
java commands are used. Javadoc can also be applied in the Eclipse integrated development
environment that was also discussed in Section 2.6: Just right-click the class or package that
you want to document in the Package Explorer, select “Export,” and select “Javadoc” in the
window that pops up. I won’t go into any of the details here; see the documentation.

4.6 More on Program Design

Understanding how programs work is one thing. Designing a program to perform some
particular task is another thing altogether. In Section 3.2, I discussed how pseudocode and
stepwise refinement can be used to methodically develop an algorithm. We can now see how
subroutines can fit into the process.
Stepwise refinement is inherently a top-down process, but the process does have a
“bottom,” that is, a point at which you stop refining the pseudocode algorithm and translate
what you have directly into proper programming language. In the absence of subroutines,
the process would not bottom out until you get down to the level of assignment statements
and very primitive input/output operations. But if you have subroutines lying around to
perform certain useful tasks, you can stop refining as soon as you’ve managed to express
your algorithm in terms of those tasks.
This allows you to add a bottom-up element to the top-down approach of stepwise re-
finement. Given a problem, you might start by writing some subroutines that perform tasks
relevant to the problem domain. The subroutines become a toolbox of ready-made tools that
you can integrate into your algorithm as you develop it. (Alternatively, you might be able to
buy or find a software toolbox written by someone else, containing subroutines that you can
use in your project as black boxes.)
Subroutines can also be helpful even in a strict top-down approach. As you refine your
algorithm, you are free at any point to take any sub-task in the algorithm and make it into a
subroutine. Developing that subroutine then becomes a separate problem, which you can
work on separately. Your main algorithm will merely call the subroutine. This, of course, is
just a way of breaking your problem down into separate, smaller problems. It is still a top-
down approach because the top-down analysis of the problem tells you what subroutines to
write. In the bottom-up approach, you start by writing or obtaining subroutines that are
relevant to the problem domain, and you build your solution to the problem on top of that
foundation of subroutines.

4.6.1 Preconditions and Postconditions

When working with subroutines as building blocks, it is important to be clear about how a
subroutine interacts with the rest of the program. This interaction is specified by the
contract
4.6. MORE ON PROGRAM DESIGN 147

of the subroutine, as discussed in Section 4.1. A convenient way to express the contract of a
subroutine is in terms of preconditions and postconditions.
The precondition of a subroutine is something that must be true when the subroutine is
called, if the subroutine is to work correctly. For example, for the built-in function
[Link](x), a precondition is that the parameter, x, is greater than or equal to zero, since it
is not possible to take the square root of a negative number. In terms of a contract, a precon-
dition represents an obligation of the caller of the subroutine. If you call a subroutine without
meeting its precondition, then there is no reason to expect it to work properly. The program
might crash or give incorrect results, but you can only blame yourself, not the subroutine.
A postcondition of a subroutine represents the other side of the contract. It is something
that will be true after the subroutine has run (assuming that its preconditions were met—and
that there are no bugs in the subroutine). The postcondition of the function [Link]()
is that the square of the value that is returned by this function is equal to the parameter that
is provided when the subroutine is called. Of course, this will only be true if the preconditiion
— that the parameter is greater than or equal to zero—is met. A postcondition of the built-in
subroutine [Link]() is that the value of the parameter has been displayed
on the screen.
Preconditions most often give restrictions on the acceptable values of parameters, as in
the example of [Link](x). However, they can also refer to global variables that are
used in the subroutine. The postcondition of a subroutine specifies the task that it performs.
For a function, the postcondition should specify the value that the function returns.
Subroutines are often described by comments that explicitly specify their preconditions and
postconditions. When you are given a pre-written subroutine, a statement of its preconditions
and postconditions tells you how to use it and what it does. When you are assigned to write a
subroutine, the preconditions and postconditions give you an exact specification of what the
subroutine is expected to do. I will use this approach in the example that constitutes the rest of
this section. The comments are given in the form of Javadoc comments, but I will explicitly label
the preconditions and postconditions. (Many computer scientists think that new doc tags
@precondition and @postcondition should be added to the Javadoc system for explicit
labeling of preconditions and postconditions, but that has not yet been done.)

4.6.2 A Design Example

Let’s work through an example of program design using subroutines. In this example, we will
use prewritten subroutines as building blocks and we will also design new subroutines that
we need to complete the project.
Suppose that I have found an already-written class called Mosaic. This class allows a
program to work with a window that displays little colored rectangles arranged in rows and
columns. The window can be opened, closed, and otherwise manipulated with static
member subroutines defined in the Mosaic class. In fact, the class defines a toolbox or API
that can be used for working with such windows. Here are some of the available routines in
the API, with Javadoc-style comments:
/**
Opens a "mosaic" window on the screen.

Precondition: The parameters rows, cols, w, and h are positive integers.

Postcondition: A window is open on the screen that can display rows and
* columns of colored rectangles. Each rectangle is w
pixels
148 CHAPTER 4. SUBROUTINES

* wide and h pixels high. The number of rows is given by

* the first parameter and the number of columns by the
* second. Initially, all rectangles are black.
Note: The rows are numbered from 0 to rows - 1, and the columns are
numbered from 0 to cols - 1.
*/
public static void open(int rows, int cols, int w, int h)

/**
Sets the color of one of the rectangles in the window.

Precondition: row and col are in the valid range of row and column numbers,
* and r, g, and b are in the range 0 to 255, inclusive.
* Postcondition: The color of the rectangle in row number row and column
* number col has been set to the color specified by r, g,
* and b. r gives the amount of red in the color with 0
* representing no red and 255 representing the maximum
* possible amount of red. The larger the value of r, the
* more red in the color. g and b work similarly for the
* green and blue color components.
*/
public static void setColor(int row, int col, int r, int g, int b)

/**
Gets the red component of the color of one of the rectangles.

Precondition: row and col are in the valid range of row and column numbers.
Postcondition: The red component of the color of the specified rectangle is
* returned as an integer in the range 0 to 255 inclusive.
*/
public static int getRed(int row, int col)

/**
Like getRed, but returns the green component of the
color. */
public static int getGreen(int row, int col)

/**
Like getRed, but returns the blue component of the
color. */
public static int getBlue(int row, int col)

/**
Tests whether the mosaic window is currently open.

Precondition: None.
Postcondition: The return value is true if the window is open when this
* function is called, and it is false if the window is
* closed.
*/
public static boolean isOpen()

/**
4.6. MORE ON PROGRAM DESIGN 149

Inserts a delay in the program (to regulate the speed at which the colors
are changed, for example).
*
Precondition: milliseconds is a positive integer.
Postcondition: The program has paused for at least the specified number
* of milliseconds, where one second is equal to 1000
* milliseconds.
*/
public static void delay(int milliseconds)

Remember that these subroutines are members of the Mosaic class, so when they are called
from outside Mosaic, the name of the class must be included as part of the name of the routine. For
example, we’ll have to use the name [Link]() rather than simply isOpen().
∗∗∗
My idea is to use the Mosaic class as the basis for a neat animation. I want to fill the
window with randomly colored squares, and then randomly change the colors in a loop that
continues as long as the window is open. “Randomly change the colors” could mean a lot of
different things, but after thinking for a while, I decide it would be interesting to have a
“disturbance” that wanders randomly around the window, changing the color of each square
that it encounters. Here’s a picture showing what the contents of the window might look like
at one point in time:

With basic routines for manipulating the window as a foundation, I can turn to the specific
problem at hand. A basic outline for my program is
Open a Mosaic window
Fill window with random colors;
Move around, changing squares at random.

Filling the window with random colors seems like a nice coherent task that I can work on
separately, so let’s decide to write a separate subroutine to do it. The third step can be
expanded a bit more, into the steps: Start in the middle of the window, then keep moving to
a new square and changing the color of that square. This should continue as long as the
mosaic window is still open. Thus we can refine the algorithm to:
Open a Mosaic window
Fill window with random colors;
Set the current position to the middle square in the window;
As long as the mosaic window is open:
Randomly change color of the square at the current position;
Move current position up, down, left, or right, at random;
150 CHAPTER 4. SUBROUTINES

I need to represent the current position in some way. That can be done with two int variables
named currentRow and currentColumn that hold the row number and the column number
of the square where the disturbance is currently located. I’ll use 10 rows and 20 columns of
squares in my mosaic, so setting the current position to be in the center means setting
currentRow to 5 and currentColumn to 10. I already have a subroutine, [Link](),
to open the window, and I have a function, [Link](), to test whether the window is
open. To keep the main routine simple, I decide that I will write two more subroutines of my own
to carry out the two tasks in the while loop. The algorithm can then be written in Java as:
[Link](10,20,10,10)
fillWithRandomColors();
currentRow = 5; // Middle row, halfway down the window.
currentColumn = 10; // Middle column.
while ( [Link]() )
{ changeToRandomColor(currentRow,
currentColumn); randomMove();
}

With the proper wrapper, this is essentially the main() routine of my program. It turns out I
have to make one small modification: To prevent the animation from running too fast, the
line “[Link](20);” is added to the while loop.
The main() routine is taken care of, but to complete the program, I still have to write
the subroutines fillWithRandomColors(), changeToRandomColor(int,int), and
randomMove(). Writing each of these subroutines is a separate, small task. The
fillWithRandomColors() routine is defined by the postcondition that “each of the
rectangles in the mosaic has been changed to a random color.” Pseudocode for an
algorithm to accomplish this task can be given as:
For each row:
For each column:
set the square in that row and column to a random color

“For each row” and “for each column” can be implemented as for loops. We’ve already
planned to write a subroutine changeToRandomColor that can be used to set the color.
(The possi-bility of reusing subroutines in several places is one of the big payo ffs of using
them!) So, fillWithRandomColors() can be written in proper Java as:
static void fillWithRandomColors() {
for (int row = 0; row < 10; row++)
for (int column = 0; column < 20; column++)
changeToRandomColor(row,column);
}

Turning to the changeToRandomColor subroutine, we already have a method in the

Mosaic class, [Link](), that can be used to change the color of a square. If
we want a ran-dom color, we just have to choose random values for r, g, and b.
According to the precondition of the [Link]() subroutine, these random
values must be integers in the range from 0 to 255. A formula for randomly selecting such an
integer is “(int)(256*[Link]())”. So the random color subroutine becomes:
static void changeToRandomColor(int rowNum, int
colNum) { int red = (int)(256*[Link]());
int green = (int)(256*[Link]());
int blue = (int)(256*[Link]());
4.6. MORE ON PROGRAM DESIGN 151

[Link](rowNum,colNum,red,green,blue);
}

Finally, consider the randomMove subroutine, which is supposed to randomly move the
disturbance up, down, left, or right. To make a random choice among four directions, we can
choose a random integer in the range 0 to 3. If the integer is 0, move in one direction; if it is
1, move in another direction; and so on. The position of the disturbance is given by the
variables currentRow and currentColumn. To “move up” means to subtract 1 from
currentRow. This leaves open the question of what to do if currentRow becomes -1,
which would put the disturbance above the window. Rather than let this happen, I decide to
move the disturbance to the opposite edge of the applet by setting currentRow to 9.
(Remember that the 10 rows are numbered from 0 to 9.) Moving the disturbance down, left,
or right is handled similarly. If we use a switch statement to decide which direction to
move, the code for randomMove becomes:
int directionNum;
directionNum = (int)(4*[Link]());
switch (directionNum) {
case 0: // move up
currentRow--;
if (currentRow < 0) // CurrentRow is outside the mosaic;
currentRow = 9; // move it to the opposite edge.
break;
case 1: // move right
currentColumn++;
if (currentColumn >= 20)
currentColumn = 0;
break;
case 2: // move down
currentRow++;
if (currentRow >= 10)
currentRow = 0;
break;
case 3: // move left
currentColumn--;
if (currentColumn < 0)
currentColumn = 19;
break;
}

4.6.3 The Program

Putting this all together, we get the following complete program. Note that I’ve added
Javadoc-style comments for the class itself and for each of the subroutines. The variables
currentRow and currentColumn are defined as static members of the class, rather than
local variables, because each of them is used in several different subroutines. This program
actually depends on two other classes, Mosaic and another class called MosaicCanvas
that is used by Mosaic. If you want to compile and run this program, both of these classes
must be available to the program.
152 CHAPTER 4. SUBROUTINES

/**
This program opens a window full of randomly colored squares. A "disturbance"
moves randomly around in the window, randomly changing the color of each
square that it visits. The program runs until the user closes the window.
*/
public class RandomMosaicWalk {
static int currentRow; // Row currently containing the disturbance.
static int currentColumn; // Column currently containing disturbance.
/**
The main program creates the window, fills it with random colors,
and then moves the disturbances in a random walk around the window
as long as the window is open.
*/
public static void main(String[] args) {
[Link](10,20,10,10);
fillWithRandomColors();
currentRow = 5; // start at center of window
currentColumn = 10;
while ([Link]()) {
changeToRandomColor(currentRow, currentColumn);
randomMove();
[Link](20);
}
} // end main
/**
Fills the window with randomly colored squares.
Precondition: The mosaic window is open.
Postcondition: Each square has been set to a random
color. */
static void fillWithRandomColors() {
for (int row=0; row < 10; row++) {
for (int column=0; column < 20; column++) {
changeToRandomColor(row, column);
}
}
} // end fillWithRandomColors
/**
Changes one square to a new randomly selected color.
Precondition: The specified rowNum and colNum are in the valid range
* of row and column numbers.

* Postcondition: The square in the specified row and

column has * been set to a random color.
@param rowNum the row number of the square, counting rows down
from 0 at the top
@param colNum the column number of the square, counting columns over
from 0 at the left
*/
static void changeToRandomColor(int rowNum, int colNum) {
int red = (int)(256*[Link]()); // Choose random levels in range
int green = (int)(256*[Link]()); // 0 to 255 for red, green,
int blue = (int)(256*[Link]()); // and blue color components.
4.7. THE TRUTH ABOUT DECLARATIONS 153

[Link](rowNum,colNum,red,green,blue);
} // end of changeToRandomColor()

/**
Move the disturbance.
Precondition: The global variables currentRow and currentColumn
* are within the legal range of row and column numbers.
* Postcondition: currentRow or currentColumn is changed to one of
the
* neighboring positions in the grid -- up, down, left, or
* right from the current position. If this moves the
* position outside of the grid, then it is moved to the
* opposite edge of the grid.
*/
static void randomMove() {
int directionNum; // Randomly set to 0, 1, 2, or 3 to choose direction.
directionNum = (int)(4*[Link]());
switch (directionNum) {
case 0: // move up
currentRow--;
if (currentRow < 0)
currentRow = 9;
break;
case 1: // move right
currentColumn++;
if (currentColumn >= 20)
currentColumn = 0;
break;
case 2: // move down
currentRow++;
if (currentRow >= 10)
currentRow = 0;
break;
case 3: // move left
currentColumn--;
if (currentColumn < 0)
currentColumn = 19;
break;
}
} // end randomMove

} // end class RandomMosaicWalk

4.7 The Truth About Declarations

Names are fundamental to programming, as I said a few chapters ago. There are a lot of details
involved in declaring and using names. I have been avoiding some of those details. In this
section, I’ll reveal most of the truth (although still not the full truth) about declaring and using
variables in Java. The material in the subsections “Initialization in Declarations” and “Named
Constants” is particularly important, since I will be using it regularly in future chapters.
154 CHAPTER 4. SUBROUTINES

4.7.1 Initialization in Declarations

When a variable declaration is executed, memory is allocated for the variable. This memory
must be initialized to contain some definite value before the variable can be used in an
expres-sion. In the case of a local variable, the declaration is often followed closely by an
assignment statement that does the initialization. For example,
int count; // Declare a variable named count.
count = 0; // Give count its initial value.

However, the truth about declaration statements is that it is legal to include the initializa-
tion of the variable in the declaration statement. The two statements above can therefore be
abbreviated as
int count = 0; // Declare count and give it an initial value.

The computer still executes this statement in two steps: Declare the variable count, then
assign the value 0 to the newly created variable. The initial value does not have to be a
constant. It can be any expression. It is legal to initialize several variables in one declaration
statement. For example,
char firstInitial = ’D’, secondInitial = ’E’;
int x, y = 1; // OK, but only y has been initialized!
int N = 3, M = N+2; // OK, N is initialized
before its value is used.

This feature is especially common in for loops, since it makes it possible to declare a loop
control variable at the same point in the loop where it is initialized. Since the loop control variable
generally has nothing to do with the rest of the program outside the loop, it’s reasonable to have
its declaration in the part of the program where it’s actually used. For example:
for ( int i = 0; i < 10; i++ ) {
[Link](i);
}

Again, you should remember that this is simply an abbreviation for the following, where I’ve
added an extra pair of braces to show that i is considered to be local to the for statement
and no longer exists after the for loop ends:
{
int i;
for ( i = 0; i < 10; i++ ) {
[Link](i);
}
}

(You might recall, by the way, that for “for-each” loops, the special type of for statement
that is used with enumerated types, declaring the variable in the for is required. See
Subsec-tion 3.4.4.)
A member variable can also be initialized at the point where it is declared, just as for a
local variable. For example:
public class Bank {
static double interestRate = 0.05;
static int maxWithdrawal = 200;
4.7. THE TRUTH ABOUT DECLARATIONS 155

.
// More variables and subroutines.

A static member variable is created as soon as the class is loaded by the Java interpreter,
and the initialization is also done at that time. In the case of member variables, this is not
simply an abbreviation for a declaration followed by an assignment statement. Declaration
statements are the only type of statement that can occur outside of a subroutine.
Assignment statements cannot, so the following is illegal:
public class Bank {
static double interestRate;
interestRate = 0.05; // ILLEGAL:
. // Can’t be outside a subroutine!:
.
.

Because of this, declarations of member variables often include initial values. In fact, as
mentioned in Subsection 4.2.4, if no initial value is provided for a member variable, then a
default initial value is used. For example, when declaring an integer member variable,
count, “static int count;” is equivalent to “static int count = 0;”.

4.7.2 Named Constants

Sometimes, the value of a variable is not supposed to change after it is initialized. For example, in the
above example where interestRate is initialized to the value 0.05, it’s quite possible that that is
meant to be the value throughout the entire program. In this case, the programmer is probably
defining the variable, interestRate, to give a meaningful name to the otherwise meaningless
number, 0.05. It’s easier to understand what’s going on when a program says “principal +=
principal*interestRate;” rather than “principal += principal*0.05;”.
In Java, the modifier “final” can be applied to a variable declaration to ensure that the
value stored in the variable cannot be changed after the variable has been initialized. For
example, if the member variable interestRate is declared with
final static double interestRate = 0.05;

then it would be impossible for the value of interestRate to change anywhere else in the
program. Any assignment statement that tries to assign a value to interestRate will be
rejected by the computer as a syntax error when the program is compiled.
It is legal to apply the final modifier to local variables and even to formal parameters,
but it is most useful for member variables. I will often refer to a static member variable that is
declared to be final as a named constant , since its value remains constant for the
whole time that the program is running. The readability of a program can be greatly
enhanced by using named constants to give meaningful names to important quantities in the
program. A recommended style rule for named constants is to give them names that consist
entirely of upper case letters, with underscore characters to separate words if necessary.
For example, the preferred style for the interest rate constant would be
final static double INTEREST RATE = 0.05;

This is the style that is generally used in Java’s standard classes, which define many named
constants. For example, we have already seen that the Math class contains a variable [Link].
This variable is declared in the Math class as a “public final static” variable of type double.
156 CHAPTER 4. SUBROUTINES

Similarly, the Color class contains named constants such as [Link] and
[Link] which are public final static variables of type Color. Many named
constants are created just to give meaningful names to be used as parameters in subroutine
calls. For example, the standard class named Font contains named constants
[Link], [Link], and [Link]. These constants are used for specifying
different styles of text when calling various subroutines in the Font class.
Enumerated type constants (See Subsection 2.3.3.) are also examples of named
constants. The enumerated type definition
enum Alignment { LEFT, RIGHT, CENTER }

defines the constants [Link], [Link], and [Link].

Technically, Alignment is a class, and the three constants are public final static members of that
class. Defining the enumerated type is similar to defining three constants of type, say, int:
public static final int ALIGNMENT LEFT = 0;
public static final int ALIGNMNENT RIGHT = 1;
public static final int ALIGNMENT CENTER = 2;

In fact, this is how things were generally done before the introduction of enumerated types in
Java 5.0, and it is what is done with the constants [Link], [Link], and
[Link] mentioned above. Using the integer constants, you could define a variable of
type int and assign it the values ALIGNMENT LEFT, ALIGNMENT RIGHT, or ALIGNMENT
CENTER to represent different types of alignment. The only problem with this is that the
computer has no way of knowing that you intend the value of the variable to represent an
alignment, and it will not raise any objection if the value that is assigned to the variable is not
one of the three valid alignment values.
With the enumerated type, on the other hand, the only values that can be assigned to a
variable of type Alignment are the constant values that are listed in the definition of the
enumerated type. Any attempt to assign an invalid value to the variable is a syntax error
which the computer will detect when the program is compiled. This extra safety is one of the
major advantages of enumerated types.
∗∗∗
Curiously enough, one of the major reasons to use named constants is that it’s easy to
change the value of a named constant. Of course, the value can’t change while the program
is running. But between runs of the program, it’s easy to change the value in the source
code and recompile the program. Consider the interest rate example. It’s quite possible that
the value of the interest rate is used many times throughout the program. Suppose that the
bank changes the interest rate and the program has to be modified. If the literal number 0.05
were used throughout the program, the programmer would have to track down each place
where the interest rate is used in the program and change the rate to the new value. (This is
made even harder by the fact that the number 0.05 might occur in the program with other
meanings besides the interest rate, as well as by the fact that someone might have used
0.025 to represent half the interest rate.) On the other hand, if the named constant
INTEREST RATE is declared and used consistently throughout the program, then only the
single line where the constant is initialized needs to be changed.
As an extended example, I will give a new version of the RandomMosaicWalk program
from the previous section. This version uses named constants to represent the number of
rows in the mosaic, the number of columns, and the size of each little square. The three
constants are declared as final static member variables with the lines:
4.7. THE TRUTH ABOUT DECLARATIONS 157
final static int ROWS = 30; // Number of rows in mosaic.

final static int COLUMNS = 30; // Number of columns in mosaic.

final static int SQUARE SIZE = 15; // Size of each square in mosaic.

The rest of the program is carefully modified to use the named constants. For example,
in the new version of the program, the Mosaic window is opened with the statement
[Link](ROWS, COLUMNS, SQUARE SIZE, SQUARE SIZE);

Sometimes, it’s not easy to find all the places where a named constant needs to be used. If
you don’t use the named constant consistently, you’ve more or less defeated the purpose.
It’s always a good idea to run a program using several different values for any named
constants, to test that it works properly in all cases.
Here is the complete new program, RandomMosaicWalk2, with all modifications from
the previous version shown in italic. I’ve left out some of the comments to save space.
public class RandomMosaicWalk2 {
final static int ROWS = 30; // Number of rows in mosaic.
final static int COLUMNS = 30; // Number of columns in mosaic.
final static int SQUARE SIZE = 15; // Size of each square in mosaic.
static int currentRow; // Row currently containing the disturbance.
static int currentColumn; // Column currently containing disturbance.
public static void main(String[] args) {
[Link]( ROWS, COLUMNS, SQUARE SIZE, SQUARE
SIZE ); fillWithRandomColors();
currentRow = ROWS / 2; // start at center of
window currentColumn = COLUMNS / 2; while
([Link]()) {
changeToRandomColor(currentRow, currentColumn);
randomMove();
[Link](20);
}
} // end main
static void fillWithRandomColors() {
for (int row=0; row < ROWS; row++) {
for (int column=0; column < COLUMNS; column++)
{ changeToRandomColor(row, column);
}
}
} // end fillWithRandomColors
static void changeToRandomColor(int rowNum, int colNum) {
int red = (int)(256*[Link]()); // Choose random levels in range
int green = (int)(256*[Link]()); // 0 to 255 for red, green,
int blue = (int)(256*[Link]()); // and blue color components.

} // end changeToRandomColor
static void randomMove() {
int directionNum; // Randomly set to 0, 1, 2, or 3 to choose direction.
directionNum = (int)(4*[Link]());
switch (directionNum) {
case 0: // move up
158 CHAPTER 4. SUBROUTINES

currentRow--;
if (currentRow < 0)
currentRow = ROWS - 1;
break;
case 1: // move right
currentColumn++;
if (currentColumn >= COLUMNS)
currentColumn = 0;
break;
case 2: // move down
currentRow ++;
if (currentRow >= ROWS)
currentRow = 0;
break;
case 3: // move left
currentColumn--;
if (currentColumn < 0)
currentColumn = COLUMNS - 1;
break;
}
} // end randomMove
} // end class RandomMosaicWalk2

4.7.3 Naming and Scope Rules

When a variable declaration is executed, memory is allocated for that variable. The variable
name can be used in at least some part of the program source code to refer to that memory
or to the data that is stored in the memory. The portion of the program source code where
the variable name is valid is called the scope of the variable. Similarly, we can refer to the
scope of subroutine names and formal parameter names.
For static member subroutines, scope is straightforward. The scope of a static subroutine
is the entire source code of the class in which it is defined. That is, it is possible to call the
subroutine from any point in the class, including at a point in the source code before the
point where the definition of the subroutine appears. It is even possible to call a subroutine
from within itself. This is an example of something called “recursion,” a fairly advanced topic
that we will return to later.
For a variable that is declared as a static member variable in a class, the situation is
similar, but with one complication. It is legal to have a local variable or a formal parameter
that has the same name as a member variable. In that case, within the scope of the local
variable or parameter, the member variable is hidden . Consider, for example, a class
named Game that has the form:
public class Game {
static int count; // member variable

static void playGame() {

int count; // local variable
.
// Some statements to define playGame()

}
4.7. THE TRUTH ABOUT DECLARATIONS 159

.
// More variables and subroutines.

} // end Game

In the statements that make up the body of the playGame() subroutine, the name
“count” refers to the local variable. In the rest of the Game class, “count” refers to the
member vari-able, unless hidden by other local variables or parameters named count.
However, there is one further complication. The member variable named count can also
be referred to by the full name [Link]. Usually, the full name is only used outside the
class where count is defined. However, there is no rule against using it inside the class.
The full name, [Link], can be used inside the playGame() subroutine to refer to
the member variable. So, the full scope rule is that the scope of a static member variable
includes the entire class in which it is defined, but where the simple name of the member
variable is hidden by a local variable or formal parameter name, the member variable must
be referred to by its full name of the form className . variableName . (Scope rules for
non-static members are similar to those for static members, except that, as we shall see,
non-static members cannot be used in static subroutines.)
The scope of a formal parameter of a subroutine is the block that makes up the body of
the subroutine. The scope of a local variable extends from the declaration statement that
defines the variable to the end of the block in which the declaration occurs. As noted above,
it is possible to declare a loop control variable of a for loop in the for statement, as in
“for (int i=0; i < 10; i++)”. The scope of such a declaration is considered as a
special case: It is valid only within the for statement and does not extend to the remainder
of the block that contains the for statement.
It is not legal to redefine the name of a formal parameter or local variable within its
scope, even in a nested block. For example, this is not allowed:
void badSub(int y) {
int x;
while (y > 0) {
int x; // ERROR: x is already defined.
.
.
.
}
}

In many languages, this would be legal; the declaration of x in the while loop would hide
the original declaration. It is not legal in Java; however, once the block in which a variable is
declared ends, its name does become available for reuse in Java. For example:
void goodSub(int y) {
while (y > 10) {
int x;
.
.
.
// The scope of x ends here.
}
while (y > 0) {
160 CHAPTER 4. SUBROUTINES

int x; // OK: Previous declaration of x has expired.

.
.
.
}
}

You might wonder whether local variable names can hide subroutine names. This can’t
happen, for a reason that might be surprising. There is no rule that variables and subroutines
have to have different names. The computer can always tell whether a name refers to a variable
or to a subroutine, because a subroutine name is always followed by a left parenthesis. It’s
perfectly legal to have a variable called count and a subroutine called count in the same
class. (This is one reason why I often write subroutine names with parentheses, as when I talk
about the main() routine. It’s a good idea to think of the parentheses as part of the name.)
Even more is true: It’s legal to reuse class names to name variables and subroutines. The syntax
rules of Java guarantee that the computer can always tell when a name is being used as a class
name. A class name is a type, and so it can be used to declare variables and formal parameters
and to specify the return type of a function. This means that you could legally have a class called
Insanity in which you declare a function
static Insanity Insanity( Insanity Insanity ) { ... }

The first Insanity is the return type of the function. The second is the function name, the third is the
type of the formal parameter, and the fourth is a formal parameter name. However, please remember that
not everything that is possible is a good idea!
Exercises 161

Exercises for Chapter 4

To “capitalize” a string means to change the first letter of each word in the string to upper case
(if it is not already upper case). For example, a capitalized version of “Now is the time to
act!” is “Now Is The Time To Act!”. Write a subroutine named printCapitalized that
will print a capitalized version of a string to standard output. The string to be printed should
be a parameter to the subroutine. Test your subroutine with a main() routine that gets a
line of input from the user and applies the subroutine to it.
Note that a letter is the first letter of a word if it is not immediately preceded in the string
by another letter. Recall that there is a standard boolean-valued function
[Link](char) that can be used to test whether its parameter is a letter.
There is another standard char-valued function, [Link](char), that
returns a capitalized version of the single character passed to it as a parameter. That is, if
the parameter is a letter, it returns the upper-case version. If the parameter is not a letter, it
just returns a copy of the parameter.

The hexadecimal digits are the ordinary, base-10 digits ’0’ through ’9’ plus the letters ’A’
through ’F’. In the hexadecimal system, these digits represent the values 0 through 15,
respectively. Write a function named hexValue that uses a switch statement to find
the hexadecimal value of a given character. The character is a parameter to the
function, and its hexadecimal value is the return value of the function. You should count
lower case letters ’a’ through ’f ’ as having the same value as the corresponding upper
case letters. If the parameter is not one of the legal hexadecimal digits, return -1 as
the value of the function.
A hexadecimal integer is a sequence of hexadecimal digits, such as 34A7, FF8,
174204, or FADE. If str is a string containing a hexadecimal integer, then the
corresponding base-10 integer can be computed as follows:
value = 0;
for ( i = 0; i < [Link](); i++ )
value = value*16 + hexValue( [Link](i) );

Of course, this is not valid if str contains any characters that are not hexadecimal
digits. Write a program that reads a string from the user. If all the characters in the
string are hexadecimal digits, print out the corresponding base-10 value. If not, print out
an error message.

Write a function that simulates rolling a pair of dice until the total on the dice comes up to
be a given number. The number that you are rolling for is a parameter to the function.
The number of times you have to roll the dice is the return value of the function. The
parameter should be one of the possible totals: 2, 3, . . . , 12. The function should
throw an IllegalArgumentException if this is not the case. Use your function in a
program that computes and prints the number of rolls it takes to get snake eyes.
(Snake eyes means that the total showing on the dice is 2.)

This exercise builds on Exercise 4.3. Every time you roll the dice repeatedly, trying to get
a given total, the number of rolls it takes can be different. The question naturally arises,
what’s the average number of rolls to get a given total? Write a function that performs
the experiment of rolling to get a given total 10000 times. The desired total is
162 CHAPTER 4. SUBROUTINES

a parameter to the subroutine. The average number of rolls is the return value. Each
individual experiment should be done by calling the function you wrote for Exercise 4.3.
Now, write a main program that will call your function once for each of the possible
totals (2, 3, ..., 12). It should make a table of the results, something like:
Total On Dice Average Number of Rolls
------------- -----------------------
2 35.8382
3 18.0607
. .
. .

The sample program [Link] from Section 4.6 shows a “disturbance” that
wanders around a grid of colored squares. When the disturbance visits a square, the color
of that square is changed. The applet at the bottom of Section 4.7 in the on-line version of
this book shows a variation on this idea. In this applet, all the squares start out with the
default color, black. Every time the disturbance visits a square, a small amount is added to
the red component of the color of that square. Write a subroutine that will add 25 to the red
component of one of the squares in the mosaic. The row and column numbers of the
square should be passed as parameters to the subroutine. Recall that you can discover the
current red component of the square in row r and column c with the function call
[Link](r,c). Use your subroutine as a substitute for the
changeToRandomColor() subroutine in the program [Link]. (This
is the improved version of the program from Section 4.7 that uses named constants for the
number of rows, number of columns, and square size.) Set the number of rows and the
number of columns to 80. Set the square size to 5.

For this exercise, you will write another program based on the non-standard Mosaic
class that was presented in Section 4.6. While the program does not do anything
particularly interesting, it’s interesting as a programming problem. An applet that does
the same thing as the program can be seen in the on-line version of this book. Here is
a picture showing what it looks like at several different times:

The program will show a rectangle that grows from the center of the applet to the edges,
getting brighter as it grows. The rectangle is made up of the little squares of the mosaic. You
should first write a subroutine that draws a rectangle on a Mosaic window. More specifically,
write a subroutine named rectangle such that the subroutine call statement

rectangle(top,left,height,width,r,g,b);
Exercises 163

will call [Link](row,col,r,g,b) for each little square that lies on the
outline of a rectangle. The topmost row of the rectangle is specified by top. The number
of rows in the rectangle is specified by height (so the bottommost row is top+height-
1). The leftmost column of the rectangle is specified by left. The number of columns in
the rectangle is specified by width (so the rightmost column is left+width-1.)
The animation loops through the same sequence of steps over and over. In each step,
a rectangle is drawn in gray (that is, with all three color components having the same
value). There is a pause of 200 milliseconds so the user can see the rectangle. Then the
very same rectangle is drawn in black, effectively erasing the gray rectangle. Finally, the
variables giving the top row, left column, size, and color level of the rectangle are adjusted
to get ready for the next step. In the applet, the color level starts at 50 and increases by 10
after each step. When the rectangle gets to the outer edge of the applet, the loop ends.
The animation then starts again at the beginning of the loop. You might want to make a
subroutine that does one loop through all the steps of the animation.
The main() routine simply opens a Mosaic window and then does the animation
loop over and over until the user closes the window. There is a 1000 millisecond delay
between one animation loop and the next. Use a Mosaic window that has 41 rows and
41 columns. (I advise you not to used named constants for the numbers of rows and
columns, since the problem is complicated enough already.)
164 CHAPTER 4. SUBROUTINES

Quiz on Chapter 4

A “black box” has an interface and an implementation. Explain what is meant by the terms
interface and implementation.

A subroutine is said to have a contract. What is meant by the contract of a subroutine?

When you want to use a subroutine, why is it important to understand its contract? The
contract has both “syntactic” and “semantic” aspects. What is the syntactic aspect?
What is the semantic aspect?

Briefly explain how subroutines can be a useful tool in the top-down design of programs.

Discuss the concept of parameters. What are parameters for? What is the difference
between formal parameters and actual parameters?

Give two different reasons for using named constants (declared with the final modifier).

What is an API? Give an example.

Write a subroutine named “stars” that will output a line of stars to standard output. (A star
is the character “*”.) The number of stars should be given as a parameter to the
subroutine. Use a for loop. For example, the command “stars(20)” would output
********************

Write a main() routine that uses the subroutine that you wrote for Question 7 to output
10 lines of stars with 1 star in the first line, 2 stars in the second line, and so on, as
shown below.
*
**
***
****
*****
******
*******
********
*********
**********

Write a function named countChars that has a String and a char as parameters. The
function should count the number of times the character occurs in the string, and it
should return the result as the value of the function.

Write a subroutine with three parameters of type int. The subroutine should determine
which of its parameters is smallest. The value of the smallest parameter should be
returned as the value of the subroutine.
Chapter 5

Programming in the Large II:

Objects and Classes

Whereas a subroutine represents a single task, an object can encapsulate both data (in the
form of instance variables) and a number of different tasks or “behaviors” related to that data (in
the form of instance methods). Therefore objects provide another, more sophisticated type of
structure that can be used to help manage the complexity of large programs.
This chapter covers the creation and use of objects in Java. Section 5.5 covers the central
ideas of object-oriented programming: inheritance and polymorphism. However, in this text-book,
we will generally use these ideas in a limited form, by creating independent classes and building
on existing classes rather than by designing entire hierarchies of classes from scratch. Section
5.6 and Section 5.7 cover some of the many details of object oriented programming in Java.
Although these details are used occasionally later in the book, you might want to skim through
them now and return to them later when they are actually needed.

5.1 Objects, Instance Methods, and Instance Variables

Object-oriented programming (OOP) represents an attempt to make programs more closely

model the way people think about and deal with the world. In the older styles of programming, a
programmer who is faced with some problem must identify a computing task that needs to be
performed in order to solve the problem. Programming then consists of finding a sequence of
instructions that will accomplish that task. But at the heart of object-oriented programming,
instead of tasks we find objects—entities that have behaviors, that hold information, and that can
interact with one another. Programming consists of designing a set of objects that somehow
model the problem at hand. Software objects in the program can represent real or abstract
entities in the problem domain. This is supposed to make the design of the program more natural
and hence easier to get right and easier to understand.
To some extent, OOP is just a change in point of view. We can think of an object in standard
programming terms as nothing more than a set of variables together with some subroutines for
manipulating those variables. In fact, it is possible to use object-oriented techniques in any
programming language. However, there is a big difference between a language that makes OOP
possible and one that actively supports it. An object-oriented programming language such as
Java includes a number of features that make it very di fferent from a standard language. In
order to make effective use of those features, you have to “orient” your thinking correctly.

165
166 CHAPTER 5. OBJECTS AND CLASSES

5.1.1 Objects, Classes, and Instances

Objects are closely related to classes. We have already been working with classes for several
chapters, and we have seen that a class can contain variables and subroutines. If an object is
also a collection of variables and subroutines, how do they differ from classes? And why does it
require a different type of thinking to understand and use them e ffectively? In the one section
where we worked with objects rather than classes, Section 3.8, it didn’t seem to make much
difference: We just left the word “static” out of the subroutine definitions!
I have said that classes “describe” objects, or more exactly that the non-static portions of
classes describe objects. But it’s probably not very clear what this means. The more usual
terminology is to say that objects belong to classes, but this might not be much clearer.
(There is a real shortage of English words to properly distinguish all the concepts involved.
An object certainly doesn’t “belong” to a class in the same way that a member variable
“belongs” to a class.) From the point of view of programming, it is more exact to say that
classes are used to create objects. A class is a kind of factory for constructing objects. The
non-static parts of the class specify, or describe, what variables and subroutines the objects
will contain. This is part of the explanation of how objects differ from classes: Objects are
created and destroyed as the program runs, and there can be many objects with the same
structure, if they are created using the same class.
Consider a simple class whose job is to group together a few static member variables.
For example, the following class could be used to store information about the person who is
using the program:
class UserData {
static String name;
static int age;
}

In a program that uses this class, there is only one copy of each of the variables [Link]
and [Link]. There can only be one “user,” since we only have memory space to store data
about one user. The class, UserData, and the variables it contains exist as long as the program
runs. Now, consider a similar class that includes non-static variables:
class PlayerData {
String name;
int age;
}

In this case, there is no such variable as [Link] or [Link], since

name and age are not static members of PlayerData. So, there is nothing much in the class
at all— except the potential to create objects. But, it’s a lot of potential, since it can be used to
create any number of objects! Each object will have its own variables called name and age.
There can be many “players” because we can make new objects to represent new players on
demand. A program might use this class to store information about multiple players in a game.
Each player has a name and an age. When a player joins the game, a new PlayerData object
can be created to represent that player. If a player leaves the game, the PlayerData object
that represents that player can be destroyed. A system of objects in the program is being used to
dynamically model what is happening in the game. You can’t do this with “static” variables!
In Section 3.8, we worked with applets, which are objects. The reason they didn ’t seem to be
any different from classes is because we were only working with one applet in each class that we looked at.
But one class can be used to make many applets. Think of an applet that scrolls
5.1. OBJECTS AND INSTANCE METHODS 167

a message across a Web page. There could be several such applets on the same page, all
created from the same class. If the scrolling message in the applet is stored in a non-static
variable, then each applet will have its own variable, and each applet can show a di fferent
message. The situation is even clearer if you think about windows, which, like applets, are
objects. As a program runs, many windows might be opened and closed, but all those
windows can belong to the same class. Here again, we have a dynamic situation where
multiple objects are created and destroyed as a program runs.
∗∗∗
An object that belongs to a class is said to be an instance of that class. The variables
that the object contains are called instance variables. The subroutines that the object
contains are called instance methods. (Recall that in the context of object-oriented
programming, method is a synonym for “subroutine”. From now on, since we are doing
object-oriented programming, I will prefer the term “method.”) For example, if the
PlayerData class, as defined above, is used to create an object, then that object is an
instance of the PlayerData class, and name and age are instance variables in the
object. It is important to remember that the class of an object determines the types of the
instance variables; however, the actual data is contained inside the individual objects, not
the class. Thus, each object has its own set of data.
An applet that scrolls a message across a Web page might include a subroutine named
scroll(). Since the applet is an object, this subroutine is an instance method of the
applet. The source code for the method is in the class that is used to create the applet. Still,
it’s better to think of the instance method as belonging to the object, not to the class. The
non-static subroutines in the class merely specify the instance methods that every object
created from the class will contain. The scroll() methods in two different applets do the
same thing in the sense that they both scroll messages across the screen. But there is a
real difference between the two scroll() methods. The messages that they scroll can be
different. You might say that the method definition in the class specifies what type of
behavior the objects will have, but the specific behavior can vary from object to object,
depending on the values of their instance variables.
As you can see, the static and the non-static portions of a class are very di fferent things
and serve very different purposes. Many classes contain only static members, or only non-
static. However, it is possible to mix static and non-static members in a single class, and
we’ll see a few examples later in this chapter where it is reasonable to do so. You should
distiguish between the source code for the class, and the class itself. The source code
determines both the class and the objects that are created from that class. The “static”
definitions in the source code specify the things that are part of the class itself, whereas the
non-static definitions in the source code specify things that will become part of every
instance object that is created from the class. By the way, static member variables and static
member subroutines in a class are sometimes called class variables and class methods,
since they belong to the class itself, rather than to instances of that class.

5.1.2 Fundamentals of Objects

So far, I’ve been talking mostly in generalities, and I haven’t given you much idea what you
have to put in a program if you want to work with objects. Let’s look at a specific example to
see how it works. Consider this extremely simplified version of a Student class, which
could be used to store information about students taking a course:
168 CHAPTER 5. OBJECTS AND CLASSES

public class Student {

public String name; // Student’s name.
public double test1, test2, test3; // Grades on three tests.

public double getAverage() { // compute average test

grade return (test1 + test2 + test3) / 3;
}
} // end of class Student

None of the members of this class are declared to be static, so the class exists only
for creating objects. This class definition says that any object that is an instance of the
Student class will include instance variables named name, test1, test2, and test3,
and it will include an instance method named getAverage(). The names and tests in
different objects will generally have different values. When called for a particular student,
the method getAverage() will compute an average using that student’s test grades.
Different students can have different averages. (Again, this is what it means to say that an
instance method belongs to an individual object, not to the class.)
In Java, a class is a type, similar to the built-in types such as int and boolean. So, a
class name can be used to specify the type of a variable in a declaration statement, the type
of a formal parameter, or the return type of a function. For example, a program could define
a variable named std of type Student with the statement
Student std;

However, declaring a variable does not create an object! This is an important point, which is
related to this Very Important Fact:

In Java, no variable can ever hold an object.

A variable can only hold a reference to an object.

You should think of objects as floating around independently in the computer’s memory. In
fact, there is a special portion of memory called the heap where objects live. Instead of holding
an object itself, a variable holds the information necessary to find the object in memory. This
information is called a reference or pointer to the object. In effect, a reference to an object is
the address of the memory location where the object is stored. When you use a variable of class
type, the computer uses the reference in the variable to find the actual object.
In a program, objects are created using an operator called new, which creates an object
and returns a reference to that object. For example, assuming that std is a variable of type
Student, declared as above, the assignment statement
std = new Student();

would create a new object which is an instance of the class Student, and it would store a
reference to that object in the variable std. The value of the variable is a reference to the
object, not the object itself. It is not quite true, then, to say that the object is the “value of the
variable std” (though sometimes it is hard to avoid using this terminology). It is certainly
not at all true to say that the object is “stored in the variable std.” The proper terminology
is that “the variable std refers to the object,” and I will try to stick to that terminology as
much as possible.
So, suppose that the variable std refers to an object belonging to the class Student. That object
has instance variables name, test1, test2, and test3. These instance variables can
5.1. OBJECTS AND INSTANCE METHODS 169

be referred to as [Link], std.test1, std.test2, and std.test3. This follows

the usual naming convention that when B is part of A, then the full name of B is A.B. For
example, a program might include the lines
[Link]("Hello, " + [Link] + ". Your
test grades are:");
[Link](std.test1);
[Link](std.test2);
[Link](std.test3);

This would output the name and test grades from the object to which std refers. Simi-larly,
std can be used to call the getAverage() instance method in the object by saying
[Link](). To print out the student’s average, you could say:
[Link]( "Your average is " + [Link]() );

More generally, you could use [Link] any place where a variable of type String is
legal. You can use it in expressions. You can assign a value to it. You can even use it to call
subroutines from the String class. For example, [Link]() is the number of
characters in the student’s name.
It is possible for a variable like std, whose type is given by a class, to refer to no object
at all. We say in this case that std holds a null reference. The null reference is written in
Java as “null”. You can store a null reference in the variable std by saying
std = null;

and you could test whether the value of std is null by testing
if (std == null) . . .

If the value of a variable is null, then it is, of course, illegal to refer to instance
variables or instance methods through that variable—since there is no object, and hence no
instance variables to refer to. For example, if the value of the variable std is null, then it
would be illegal to refer to std.test1. If your program attempts to use a null reference
illegally like this, the result is an error called a null pointer exception.
Let’s look at a sequence of statements that work with objects:
Student std, std1, // Declare four variables of
std2, std3; // type Student.
std = new Student(); // Create a new object belonging
// to the class Student, and
// store a reference to that
// object in the variable std.
std1 = new Student(); // Create a second Student object
// and store a reference to
// it in the variable std1.
std2 = std1; // Copy the reference value in std1
// into the variable std2.
std3 = null; // Store a null reference in the
// variable std3.

[Link] = "John Smith"; // Set values of some instance variables.

[Link] = "Mary Jones";
(Other instance variables have default
initial values of zero.)
170 CHAPTER 5. OBJECTS AND CLASSES

After the computer executes these statements, the situation in the computer’s memory looks
like this:

This picture shows variables as little boxes, labeled with the names of the variables. Objects
are shown as boxes with round corners. When a variable contains a reference to an object,
the value of that variable is shown as an arrow pointing to the object. The variable std3,
with a value of null, doesn’t point anywhere. The arrows from std1 and std2 both point
to the same object. This illustrates a Very Important Point:

When one object variable is assigned

to another, only a reference is copied.
The object referred to is not copied.

When the assignment “std2 = std1;” was executed, no new object was created. Instead,
std2 was set to refer to the very same object that std1 refers to. This has some consequences
that might be surprising. For example, [Link] and [Link] are two different names
for the same variable, namely the instance variable in the object that both std1 and std2 refer
to. After the string "Mary Jones" is assigned to the variable [Link], it is also true that
the value of [Link] is "Mary Jones". There is a potential for a lot of confusion here, but
you can help protect yourself from it if you keep telling yourself, “The object is not in the variable.
The variable just holds a pointer to the object.”
You can test objects for equality and inequality using the operators == and !=, but here
again, the semantics are different from what you are used to. When you make a test “if (std1
== std2)”, you are testing whether the values stored in std1 and std2 are the same. But the
values are references to objects, not objects. So, you are testing whether std1 and std2 refer
to the same object, that is, whether they point to the same location
5.1. OBJECTS AND INSTANCE METHODS 171

in memory. This is fine, if its what you want to do. But sometimes, what you want to check is
whether the instance variables in the objects have the same values. To do that, you would
need to ask whether “std1.test1 == std2.test1 && std1.test2 == std2.test2
&& std1.test3 == std2.test3 && [Link]([Link])”.
I’ve remarked previously that Strings are objects, and I’ve shown the strings "Mary
Jones" and "John Smith" as objects in the above illustration. A variable of type String can
only hold a reference to a string, not the string itself. It could also hold the value null, meaning
that it does not refer to any string at all. This explains why using the == operator to test strings
for equality is not a good idea. Suppose that greeting is a variable of type String, and that the
string it refers to is "Hello". Then would the test greeting == "Hello" be true? Well,
maybe, maybe not. The variable greeting and the String literal "Hello" each refer to a
string that contains the characters H-e-l-l-o. But the strings could still be di fferent objects, that
just happen to contain the same characters. The function [Link]("Hello") tests
whether greeting and "Hello" contain the same characters, which is almost certainly the
question you want to ask. The expression greeting == "Hello" tests whether greeting
and "Hello" contain the same characters stored in the same memory location.
∗∗∗
The fact that variables hold references to objects, not objects themselves, has a couple
of other consequences that you should be aware of. They follow logically, if you just keep in
mind the basic fact that the object is not stored in the variable. The object is somewhere
else; the variable points to it.
Suppose that a variable that refers to an object is declared to be final. This means that
the value stored in the variable can never be changed, once the variable has been initialized.
The value stored in the variable is a reference to the object. So the variable will continue to refer
to the same object as long as the variable exists. However, this does not prevent the data in the
object from changing. The variable is final, not the object. It’s perfectly legal to say
final Student stu = new Student();
[Link] = "John Doe"; // Change data in the object;
The value stored in stu is not changed!
It still refers to the same object.

Next, suppose that obj is a variable that refers to an object. Let’s consider what happens
when obj is passed as an actual parameter to a subroutine. The value of obj is assigned to a
formal parameter in the subroutine, and the subroutine is executed. The subroutine has no
power to change the value stored in the variable, obj. It only has a copy of that value. However,
that value is a reference to an object. Since the subroutine has a reference to the object, it can
change the data stored in the object. After the subroutine ends, obj still points to the same
object, but the data stored in the object might have changed. Suppose x is a variable of type
int and stu is a variable of type Student. Compare:
void dontChange(int z) { void change(Student s) {
z = 42; [Link] = "Fred";
} }

The lines: The lines:

x = 17; [Link] = "Jane";

dontChange(x); change(stu);
[Link](x); [Link]([Link]);
172 CHAPTER 5. OBJECTS AND CLASSES

output the value 17. output the value "Fred".

The value of x is not The value of stu is not

changed by the subroutine, changed, but [Link] is.
which is equivalent to This is equivalent to
z = x; s = stu;
z = 42; [Link] = "Fred";

5.1.3 Getters and Setters

When writing new classes, it’s a good idea to pay attention to the issue of access control.
Recall that making a member of a class public makes it accessible from anywhere,
including from other classes. On the other hand, a private member can only be used in
the class where it is defined.
In the opinion of many programmers, almost all member variables should be declared
private. This gives you complete control over what can be done with the variable. Even if the
variable itself is private, you can allow other classes to find out what its value is by pro-viding a
public accessor method that returns the value of the variable. For example, if your class
contains a private member variable, title, of type String, you can provide a method
public String getTitle() {
return title;
}

that returns the value of title. By convention, the name of an accessor method for a
variable is obtained by capitalizing the name of variable and adding “get” in front of the
name. So, for the variable title, we get an accessor method named “get” + “Title”, or
getTitle(). Because of this naming convention, accessor methods are more often
referred to as getter methods. A getter method provides “read access” to a variable.
You might also want to allow “write access” to a private variable. That is, you might
want to make it possible for other classes to specify a new value for the variable. This is
done with a setter method . (If you don’t like simple, Anglo-Saxon words, you can use the
fancier term mutator method .) The name of a setter method should consist of “set”
followed by a capitalized copy of the variable’s name, and it should have a parameter with
the same type as the variable. A setter method for the variable title could be written
public void setTitle( String newTitle ) {
title = newTitle;
}

It is actually very common to provide both a getter and a setter method for a private
member variable. Since this allows other classes both to see and to change the value of the
variable, you might wonder why not just make the variable public? The reason is that
getters and setters are not restricted to simply reading and writing the variable’s value. In
fact, they can take any action at all. For example, a getter method might keep track of the
number of times that the variable has been accessed:
public String getTitle() {
titleAccessCount++; // Increment member variable titleAccessCount.
return title;
}

and a setter method might check that the value that is being assigned to the variable is legal:
5.2. CONSTRUCTORS AND OBJECT INITIALIZATION 173
public void setTitle( String newTitle ) {

if ( newTitle == null ) // Don’t allow null strings as titles!

title = "(Untitled)"; // Use an appropriate default value instead.
else
title = newTitle;
}

Even if you can’t think of any extra chores to do in a getter or setter method, you might
change your mind in the future when you redesign and improve your class. If you’ve used a
getter and setter from the beginning, you can make the modification to your class without
affecting any of the classes that use your class. The private member variable is not part
of the public interface of your class; only the public getter and setter methods are. If you
haven’t used get and set from the beginning, you’ll have to contact everyone who uses your
class and tell them, “Sorry guys, you’ll have to track down every use that you’ve made of
this variable and change your code to use my new get and set methods instead.”
A couple of final notes: Some advanced aspects of Java rely on the naming convention
for getter and setter methods, so it’s a good idea to follow the convention rigorously. And
though I’ve been talking about using getter and setter methods for a variable, you can define
get and set methods even if there is no variable. A getter and/or setter method defines a
property of the class, that might or might not correspond to a variable. For example, if a
class includes a public void instance method with signature setValue(double),
then the class has a “property” named value of type double, and it has this property
whether or not the class has a member variable named value.

5.2 Constructors and Object Initialization

Object types in Java are very different from the primitive types. Simply declaring a variable
whose type is given as a class does not automatically create an object of that class. Objects
must be explicitly constructed . For the computer, the process of constructing an object means,
first, finding some unused memory in the heap that can be used to hold the object and, second,
filling in the object’s instance variables. As a programmer, you don’t care where in memory the
object is stored, but you will usually want to exercise some control over what initial values are
stored in a new object’s instance variables. In many cases, you will also want to do more
complicated initialization or bookkeeping every time an object is created.

5.2.1 Initializing Instance Variables

An instance variable can be assigned an initial value in its declaration, just like any other
variable. For example, consider a class named PairOfDice. An object of this class will
represent a pair of dice. It will contain two instance variables to represent the numbers
showing on the dice and an instance method for rolling the dice:
public class PairOfDice {
public int die1 = 3; // Number showing on the first die.
public int die2 = 4; // Number showing on the second die.

public void roll() {

Roll the dice by setting each of the dice to be
a random number between 1 and 6.
die1 = (int)([Link]()*6) + 1;
174 CHAPTER 5. OBJECTS AND CLASSES

die2 = (int)([Link]()*6) + 1;
}
} // end class PairOfDice

The instance variables die1 and die2 are initialized to the values 3 and 4 respectively.
These initializations are executed whenever a PairOfDice object is constructed. It’s
important to understand when and how this happens. There can be many PairOfDice
objects. Each time one is created, it gets its own instance variables, and the assignments
“die1 = 3” and “die2 = 4” are executed to fill in the values of those variables. To make
this clearer, consider a variation of the PairOfDice class:
public class PairOfDice {
public int die1 = (int)([Link]()*6) + 1;
public int die2 = (int)([Link]()*6) + 1;

public void roll() {

die1 = (int)([Link]()*6) + 1;
die2 = (int)([Link]()*6) + 1;
}
} // end class PairOfDice

Here, the dice are initialized to random values, as if a new pair of dice were being thrown
onto the gaming table. Since the initialization is executed for each new object, a set of
random initial values will be computed for each new pair of dice. Di fferent pairs of dice can
have different initial values. For initialization of static member variables, of course, the
situation is quite different. There is only one copy of a static variable, and initialization of
that variable is executed just once, when the class is first loaded.
If you don’t provide any initial value for an instance variable, a default initial value is pro-
vided automatically. Instance variables of numerical type (int, double, etc.) are automatically
initialized to zero if you provide no other values; boolean variables are initialized to false;
and char variables, to the Unicode character with code number zero. An instance variable
can also be a variable of object type. For such variables, the default initial value is null. (In
particular, since Strings are objects, the default initial value for String variables is null.)

5.2.2 Constructors
Objects are created with the operator, new. For example, a program that wants to use a
PairOfDice object could say:
PairOfDice dice; // Declare a variable of type PairOfDice.
dice = new PairOfDice(); // Construct a new object and store a
reference to it in the variable.

In this example, “new PairOfDice()” is an expression that allocates memory for the object,
initializes the object’s instance variables, and then returns a reference to the object. This
reference is the value of the expression, and that value is stored by the assignment statement in
the variable, dice, so that after the assignment statement is executed, dice refers to the newly
created object. Part of this expression, “PairOfDice()”, looks like a subroutine call, and that is no
accident. It is, in fact, a call to a special type of subroutine called a constructor . This might
puzzle you, since there is no such subroutine in the class definition. However, every class has at
least one constructor. If the programmer doesn’t write a constructor definition in a class,
5.2. CONSTRUCTORS AND OBJECT INITIALIZATION 175

then the system will provide a default constructor for that class. This default constructor
does nothing beyond the basics: allocate memory and initialize instance variables. If you
want more than that to happen when an object is created, you can include one or more
constructors in the class definition.
The definition of a constructor looks much like the definition of any other subroutine, with
three exceptions. A constructor does not have any return type (not even void). The name
of the constructor must be the same as the name of the class in which it is defined. The only
modifiers that can be used on a constructor definition are the access modifiers public,
private, and protected. (In particular, a constructor can’t be declared static.)
However, a constructor does have a subroutine body of the usual form, a block of
statements. There are no restrictions on what statements can be used. And it can have a list
of formal parameters. In fact, the ability to include parameters is one of the main reasons for
using constructors. The parameters can provide data to be used in the construction of the
object. For example, a constructor for the PairOfDice class could provide the values that
are initially showing on the dice. Here is what the class would look like in that case:
public class PairOfDice {
public int die1; // Number showing on the first die.
public int die2; // Number showing on the second die.

public PairOfDice(int val1, int val2) {

Constructor. Creates a pair of dice that
are initially showing the values val1 and
val2. die1 = val1; // Assign specified values
die2 = val2; // to the instance variables.
}
public void roll() {
Roll the dice by setting each of the dice to be
a random number between 1 and 6.
die1 = (int)([Link]()*6) + 1;
die2 = (int)([Link]()*6) + 1;
}
} // end class PairOfDice

The constructor is declared as “public PairOfDice(int val1, int val2) ...”,

with no return type and with the same name as the name of the class. This is how the Java
com-piler recognizes a constructor. The constructor has two parameters, and values for
these parameters must be provided when the constructor is called. For example, the
expression “new PairOfDice(3,4)” would create a PairOfDice object in which the
values of the instance variables die1 and die2 are initially 3 and 4. Of course, in a
program, the value returned by the constructor should be used in some way, as in
PairOfDice dice; // Declare a variable of type PairOfDice.

dice = new PairOfDice(1,1); // Let dice refer to a new PairOfDice

object that initially shows 1, 1.

Now that we’ve added a constructor to the PairOfDice class, we can no longer create
an object by saying “new PairOfDice()”! The system provides a default constructor for a
class only if the class definition does not already include a constructor, so there is only one
constructor in the class, and it requires two actual parameters. However, this is not a big
176 CHAPTER 5. OBJECTS AND CLASSES

problem, since we can add a second constructor to the class, one that has no parameters.
In fact, you can have as many different constructors as you want, as long as their signatures
are different, that is, as long as they have different numbers or types of formal parameters.
In the PairOfDice class, we might have a constructor with no parameters which produces
a pair of dice showing random numbers:
public class PairOfDice {
public int die1; // Number showing on the first die.
public int die2; // Number showing on the second die.
public PairOfDice() {
Constructor. Rolls the dice, so that they initially
show some random values.
roll(); // Call the roll() method to roll the dice.
}
public PairOfDice(int val1, int val2) {
Constructor. Creates a pair of dice that
are initially showing the values val1 and
val2. die1 = val1; // Assign specified values
die2 = val2; // to the instance variables.
}
public void roll() {
Roll the dice by setting each of the dice to be
a random number between 1 and 6.
die1 = (int)([Link]()*6) + 1;
die2 = (int)([Link]()*6) + 1;
}
} // end class PairOfDice

Now we have the option of constructing a PairOfDice object either with “new PairOfDice()” or
with “new PairOfDice(x,y)”, where x and y are int-valued expressions.
This class, once it is written, can be used in any program that needs to work with one or
more pairs of dice. None of those programs will ever have to use the obscure incantation “(int)
([Link]()*6)+1”, because it’s done inside the PairOfDice class. And the pro-
grammer, having once gotten the dice-rolling thing straight will never have to worry about it
again. Here, for example, is a main program that uses the PairOfDice class to count how
many times two pairs of dice are rolled before the two pairs come up showing the same value.
This illustrates once again that you can create several instances of the same class:
public class RollTwoPairs {
public static void main(String[] args) {
PairOfDice firstDice; // Refers to the first pair of dice.
firstDice = new PairOfDice();
PairOfDice secondDice; // Refers to the second pair of dice.
secondDice = new PairOfDice();
int countRolls; // Counts how many times the two
pairs of // dice have been rolled.
int total1; // Total showing on first pair of dice.
int total2; // Total showing on second pair of dice.
5.2. CONSTRUCTORS AND OBJECT INITIALIZATION 177
 countRolls = 0;
do { // Roll the two pairs of dice until totals are the same.

[Link](); // Roll the first pair of dice.

total1 = firstDice.die1 + firstDice.die2; // Get total.
[Link]("First pair comes up " + total1);

[Link](); // Roll the second pair of dice.

total2 = secondDice.die1 + secondDice.die2; // Get total.
[Link]("Second pair comes up " + total2);

countRolls++; // Count this roll.

[Link](); // Blank line.

} while (total1 != total2);

[Link]("It took " + countRolls
+ " rolls until the totals were the same.");
} // end main()
} // end class RollTwoPairs

∗∗∗
Constructors are subroutines, but they are subroutines of a special type. They are
certainly not instance methods, since they don’t belong to objects. Since they are
responsible for creating objects, they exist before any objects have been created. They are
more like static member subroutines, but they are not and cannot be declared to be
static. In fact, according to the Java language specification, they are technically not
members of the class at all! In particular, constructors are not referred to as “methods.”
Unlike other subroutines, a constructor can only be called using the new operator, in an
expression that has the form
new class-name ( parameter-list )

where the parameter-list is possibly empty. I call this an expression because it computes
and returns a value, namely a reference to the object that is constructed. Most often, you will
store the returned reference in a variable, but it is also legal to use a constructor call in other
ways, for example as a parameter in a subroutine call or as part of a more complex
expression. Of course, if you don’t save the reference in a variable, you won’t have any way
of referring to the object that was just created.
A constructor call is more complicated than an ordinary subroutine or function call. It is
helpful to understand the exact steps that the computer goes through to execute a
constructor call:
First, the computer gets a block of unused memory in the heap, large enough to hold an
object of the specified type.
It initializes the instance variables of the object. If the declaration of an instance variable
specifies an initial value, then that value is computed and stored in the instance
variable. Otherwise, the default initial value is used.
The actual parameters in the constructor, if any, are evaluated, and the values are
assigned to the formal parameters of the constructor.
178 CHAPTER 5. OBJECTS AND CLASSES

The statements in the body of the constructor, if any, are executed.

A reference to the object is returned as the value of the constructor call.

The end result of this is that you have a reference to a newly constructed object. You can
use this reference to get at the instance variables in that object or to call its instance methods.
∗∗∗
For another example, let’s rewrite the Student class that was used in Section 1. I’ll add
a constructor, and I’ll also take the opportunity to make the instance variable, name, private.
public class Student {
private String name; // Student’s name.

public double test1, test2, test3; // Grades on three tests.

Student(String theName) {
Constructor for Student objects;
provides a name for the
Student. name = theName;
}

public String getName() {

Getter method for reading the value of the private
instance variable, name.
return name;
}

public double getAverage() {

Compute average test grade.
return (test1 + test2 + test3) / 3;
}
} // end of class Student

An object of type Student contains information about some particular student. The
con-structor in this class has a parameter of type String, which specifies the name of that
student. Objects of type Student can be created with statements such as:
std = new Student("John Smith");
std1 = new Student("Mary Jones");

In the original version of this class, the value of name had to be assigned by a program
after it created the object of type Student. There was no guarantee that the programmer
would always remember to set the name properly. In the new version of the class, there is
no way to create a Student object except by calling the constructor, and that constructor
automatically sets the name. The programmer’s life is made easier, and whole hordes of
frustrating bugs are squashed before they even have a chance to be born.
Another type of guarantee is provided by the private modifier. Since the instance variable,
name, is private, there is no way for any part of the program outside the Student class to get at
the name directly. The program sets the value of name, indirectly, when it calls the constructor.
I’ve provided a function, getName(), that can be used from outside the class to find out the name
of the student. But I haven’t provided any setter method or other way to change the name. Once a student
object is created, it keeps the same name as long as it exists.
5.3. PROGRAMMING WITH OBJECTS 179

5.2.3 Garbage Collection

So far, this section has been about creating objects. What about destroying them? In Java,
the destruction of objects takes place automatically.
An object exists in the heap, and it can be accessed only through variables that hold
references to the object. What should be done with an object if there are no variables that
refer to it? Such things can happen. Consider the following two statements (though in reality,
you’d never do anything like this):
Student std = new Student("John Smith");
std = null;

In the first line, a reference to a newly created Student object is stored in the variable std.
But in the next line, the value of std is changed, and the reference to the Student object is
gone. In fact, there are now no references whatsoever to that object stored in any variable. So
there is no way for the program ever to use the object again. It might as well not exist. In fact, the
memory occupied by the object should be reclaimed to be used for another purpose.
Java uses a procedure called garbage collection to reclaim memory occupied by objects that
are no longer accessible to a program. It is the responsibility of the system, not the programmer, to
keep track of which objects are “garbage.” In the above example, it was very easy to see that the
Student object had become garbage. Usually, it’s much harder. If an object has been used for a
while, there might be several references to the object stored in several variables. The object doesn’t
become garbage until all those references have been dropped.
In many other programming languages, it’s the programmer’s responsibility to delete the
garbage. Unfortunately, keeping track of memory usage is very error-prone, and many
serious program bugs are caused by such errors. A programmer might accidently delete an
object even though there are still references to that object. This is called a dangling pointer
error , and it leads to problems when the program tries to access an object that is no longer
there. Another type of error is a memory leak , where a programmer neglects to delete
objects that are no longer in use. This can lead to filling memory with objects that are
completely inaccessible, and the program might run out of memory even though, in fact,
large amounts of memory are being wasted.
Because Java uses garbage collection, such errors are simply impossible. Garbage
collection is an old idea and has been used in some programming languages since the
1960s. You might wonder why all languages don’t use garbage collection. In the past, it was
considered too slow and wasteful. However, research into garbage collection techniques
combined with the incredible speed of modern computers have combined to make garbage
collection feasible. Programmers should rejoice.

5.3 Programming with Objects

There are several ways in which object-oriented concepts can be applied to the process of
designing and writing programs. The broadest of these is object-oriented analysis and design
which applies an object-oriented methodology to the earliest stages of program devel-opment,
during which the overall design of a program is created. Here, the idea is to identify things in the
problem domain that can be modeled as objects. On another level, object-oriented programming
encourages programmers to produce generalized software components that can be used in a
wide variety of programming projects.
180 CHAPTER 5. OBJECTS AND CLASSES

Of course, for the most part, you will experience “generalized software components” by
using the standard classes that come along with Java. We begin this section by looking at
some built-in classes that are used for creating objects. At the end of the section, we will get
back to generalities.

5.3.1 Some Built-in Classes

Although the focus of object-oriented programming is generally on the design and implementa-
tion of new classes, it’s important not to forget that the designers of Java have already provided
a large number of reusable classes. Some of these classes are meant to be extended to
produce new classes, while others can be used directly to create useful objects. A true mastery
of Java requires familiarity with a large number of built-in classes—something that takes a lot of
time and experience to develop. In the next chapter, we will begin the study of Java’s GUI
classes, and you will encounter other built-in classes throughout the remainder of this book. But
let’s take a moment to look at a few built-in classes that you might find useful.
A string can be built up from smaller pieces using the + operator, but this is not very
efficient. If str is a String and ch is a character, then executing the command “str = str +
ch;” involves creating a whole new string that is a copy of str, with the value of ch appended
onto the end. Copying the string takes some time. Building up a long string letter by letter would
require a surprising amount of processing. The class StringBuffer makes it possible to be
efficient about building up a long string from a number of smaller pieces. To do this, you must
make an object belonging to the StringBuffer class. For example:
StringBuffer buffer = new StringBuffer();

(This statement both declares the variable buffer and initializes it to refer to a newly
created StringBuffer object. Combining declaration with initialization was covered in
Subsection 4.7.1 and works for objects just as it does for primitive types.)
Like a String, a StringBuffer contains a sequence of characters. However, it is possible
to add new characters onto the end of a StringBuffer without making a copy of the data
that it already contains. If x is a value of any type and buffer is the variable defined
above, then the command [Link](x) will add x, converted into a string
representation, onto the end of the data that was already in the bu ffer. This command
actually modifies the buffer, rather than making a copy, and that can be done e fficiently. A
long string can be built up in a StringBuffer using a sequence of append() commands.
When the string is complete, the function [Link]() will return a copy of the
string in the buffer as an ordinary value of type String. The StringBu ffer class is in the
standard package [Link], so you can use its simple name without importing it.
A number of useful classes are collected in the package [Link]. For example, this
package contains classes for working with collections of objects. We will study these
collection classes in Chapter 10. Another class in this package, [Link], is used
to represent times. When a Date object is constructed without parameters, the result
represents the current date and time, so an easy way to display this information is:
[Link]( new Date() );

Of course, to use the Date class in this way, you must make it available by importing it with one
of the statements “import [Link];” or “import [Link].*;” at the beginning
of your program. (See Subsection 4.5.3 for a discussion of packages and import.)
I will also mention the class [Link]. An object belonging to this class is a source of
random numbers (or, more precisely pseudorandom numbers). The standard function
5.3. PROGRAMMING WITH OBJECTS 181

[Link]() uses one of these objects behind the scenes to generate its random
numbers. An object of type Random can generate random integers, as well as random real
numbers. If randGen is created with the command:
Random randGen = new Random();

and if N is a positive integer, then [Link](N) generates a random integer in the

range from 0 to N-1. For example, this makes it a little easier to roll a pair of dice. Instead of
say-ing “die1 = (int)(6*[Link]())+1;”, one can say “die1 =
[Link](6)+1;”. (Since you also have to import the class [Link]
and create the Random object, you might not agree that it is actually easier.) An object of type
Random can also be used to generate so-called Gaussian distributed random real numbers.
The main point here, again, is that many problems have already been solved, and the
solutions are available in Java’s standard classes. If you are faced with a task that looks like
it should be fairly common, it might be worth looking through a Java reference to see
whether someone has already written a class that you can use.

5.3.2 Wrapper Classes and Autoboxing

We have already encountered the classes Double and Integer in Subsection 2.5.7. These
classes contain the static methods [Link] and [Link]
that are used to convert strings to numerical values. We have also encountered the Character
class in some examples, and static methods such as [Link], which can be
used to test whether a given value of type char is a letter. There is a similar class for each of
the other primitive types, Long, Short, Byte, Float, and Boolean. These classes are called
wrapper classes. Although they contain useful static members, they have another use as
well: They are used for creating objects that represent primitive type values.
Remember that the primitive types are not classes, and values of primitive type are not
objects. However, sometimes it’s useful to treat a primitive value as if it were an object. You
can’t do that literally, but you can “wrap” the primitive type value in an object belonging to
one of the wrapper classes.
For example, an object of type Double contains a single instance variable, of type
double. The object is a wrapper for the double value. For example, you can create an object
that wraps the double value 6.0221415e23 with
Double d = new Double(6.0221415e23);

The value of d contains the same information as the value of type double, but it is an object. If
you want to retrieve the double value that is wrapped in the object, you can call the function
[Link](). Similarly, you can wrap an int in an object of type Integer, a boolean value
in an object of type Boolean, and so on. (As an example of where this would be useful, the
collection classes that will be studied in Chapter 10 can only hold objects. If you want to add a
primitive type value to a collection, it has to be put into a wrapper object first.)
In Java 5.0, wrapper classes have become easier to use. Java 5.0 introduced automatic
conversion between a primitive type and the corresponding wrapper class. For example, if
you use a value of type int in a context that requires an object of type Integer, the int will
automatically be wrapped in an Integer object. For example, you can say
Integer answer = 42;

and the computer will silently read this as if it were

182 CHAPTER 5. OBJECTS AND CLASSES

Integer answer = new Integer(42);

This is called autoboxing . It works in the other direction, too. For example, if d refers to an
object of type Double, you can use d in a numerical expression such as 2*d. The double
value inside d is automatically unboxed and multiplied by 2. Autoboxing and unboxing also
apply to subroutine calls. For example, you can pass an actual parameter of type int to a
subroutine that has a formal parameter of type Integer. In fact, autoboxing and unboxing make it
possible in many circumstances to ignore the difference between primitive types and objects.
∗∗∗
The wrapper classes contain a few other things that deserve to be mentioned. Integer,
for example, contains constants [Link] VALUE and [Link] VALUE, which
are equal to the largest and smallest possible values of type int, that is, to -2147483648 and
2147483647 respectively. It’s certainly easier to remember the names than the numerical
values. There are similar named constants in Long, Short, and Byte. Double and Float also
have constants named MIN VALUE and MAX VALUE. MAX VALUE still gives the largest
number that can be represented in the given type, but MIN VALUE represents the smallest
324
possible positive value. For type double, [Link] VALUE is 4.9 times 10− . Since
double values have only a finite accuracy, they can’t get arbitrarily close to zero. This is the
closest they can get without actually being equal to zero.
The class Double deserves special mention, since doubles are so much more complicated
than integers. The encoding of real numbers into values of type double has room for a few
special val-ues that are not real numbers at all in the mathematical sense. These values are
given by named constants in class Double: [Link] INFINITY,
[Link] INFINITY, and [Link]. The infinite values can occur as the values
of certain mathematical expressions. For example, dividing a positive number by zero will give
the result [Link] INFINITY. (It’s even more complicated than this, actually,
because the double type includes a value called “negative zero”, written -0.0. Dividing a
positive number by negative zero gives [Link] INFINITY.) You also get
[Link] INFINITY whenever the mathe-matical value of an expression is greater
than [Link] VALUE. For example, 1e200*1e200 is considered to be infinite. The value
[Link] is even more interesting. “NaN” stands for Not a Number , and it represents an
undefined value such as the square root of a negative number or the result of dividing zero by
zero. Because of the existence of [Link], no math-ematical operation on real numbers
will ever throw an exception; it simply gives [Link] as the result.
You can test whether a value, x, of type double is infinite or undefined by calling the boolean-
valued static functions [Link](x) and [Link](x). (It’s especially
important to use [Link]() to test for undefined values, because [Link] has re-ally
weird behavior when used with relational operators such as ==. In fact, the values of
== [Link] and x != [Link] are both false, no matter what the value of x,
so you really can’t use these expressions to test whether x is [Link].)

5.3.3 The class “Object”

We have already seen that one of the major features of object-oriented programming is the
ability to create subclasses of a class. The subclass inherits all the properties or behaviors of the
class, but can modify and add to what it inherits. In Section 5.5, you’ll learn how to create
subclasses. What you don’t know yet is that every class in Java (with just one exception) is a
subclass of some other class. If you create a class and don’t explicitly make it a subclass of
5.3. PROGRAMMING WITH OBJECTS 183

some other class, then it automatically becomes a subclass of the special class named
Object. (Object is the one class that is not a subclass of any other class.)
Class Object defines several instance methods that are inherited by every other class.
These methods can be used with any object whatsoever. I will mention just one of them
here. You will encounter more of them later in the book.
The instance method toString() in class Object returns a value of type String that is
supposed to be a string representation of the object. You’ve already used this method
implicitly, any time you’ve printed out an object or concatenated an object onto a string.
When you use an object in a context that requires a string, the object is automatically
converted to type String by calling its toString() method.
The version of toString that is defined in Object just returns the name of the class
that the object belongs to, concatenated with a code number called the hash code of the
object; this is not very useful. When you create a class, you can write a new toString()
method for it, which will replace the inherited version. For example, we might add the
following method to any of the PairOfDice classes from the previous section:
public String toString() {
Return a String representation of a pair of dice, where die1
and die2 are instance variables containing the numbers that are
showing on the two dice.
if (die1 == die2)
return "double " + die1;
else
return die1 + " and " + die2;
}

If dice refers to a PairOfDice object, then [Link]() will return strings such as
“3 and 6”, “5 and 1”, and “double 2”, depending on the numbers showing on the dice. This
method would be used automatically to convert dice to type String in a statement such as
[Link]( "The dice came up " + dice );

so this statement might output, “The dice came up 5 and 1” or “The dice came up double 2”.
You’ll see another example of a toString() method in the next section.

5.3.4 Object-oriented Analysis and Design

Every programmer builds up a stock of techniques and expertise expressed as snippets of
code that can be reused in new programs using the tried-and-true method of cut-and-paste:
The old code is physically copied into the new program and then edited to customize it as
necessary. The problem is that the editing is error-prone and time-consuming, and the
whole enterprise is dependent on the programmer’s ability to pull out that particular piece of
code from last year’s project that looks like it might be made to fit. (On the level of a
corporation that wants to save money by not reinventing the wheel for each new project, just
keeping track of all the old wheels becomes a major task.)
Well-designed classes are software components that can be reused without editing. A
well-designed class is not carefully crafted to do a particular job in a particular program.
Instead, it is crafted to model some particular type of object or a single coherent concept.
Since objects and concepts can recur in many problems, a well-designed class is likely to be
reusable without modification in a variety of projects.
184 CHAPTER 5. OBJECTS AND CLASSES

Furthermore, in an object-oriented programming language, it is possible to make

subclasses of an existing class. This makes classes even more reusable. If a class needs
to be customized, a subclass can be created, and additions or modifications can be made in
the subclass without making any changes to the original class. This can be done even if the
programmer doesn’t have access to the source code of the class and doesn’t know any
details of its internal, hidden implementation.
∗∗∗
The PairOfDice class in the previous section is already an example of a generalized
software component, although one that could certainly be improved. The class represents a
single, coherent concept, “a pair of dice.” The instance variables hold the data relevant to
the state of the dice, that is, the number showing on each of the dice. The instance method
represents the behavior of a pair of dice, that is, the ability to be rolled. This class would be
reusable in many different programming projects.
On the other hand, the Student class from the previous section is not very reusable. It
seems to be crafted to represent students in a particular course where the grade will be
based on three tests. If there are more tests or quizzes or papers, it’s useless. If there are
two people in the class who have the same name, we are in trouble (one reason why
numerical student ID’s are often used). Admittedly, it’s much more di fficult to develop a
general-purpose student class than a general-purpose pair-of-dice class. But this particular
Student class is good mostly as an example in a programming textbook.
∗∗∗
A large programming project goes through a number of stages, starting with specification of
the problem to be solved, followed by analysis of the problem and design of a program to solve
it. Then comes coding , in which the program’s design is expressed in some actual
programming language. This is followed by testing and debugging of the program. After that
comes a long period of maintenance, which means fixing any new problems that are found in
the program and modifying it to adapt it to changing requirements. Together, these stages form
what is called the software life cycle. (In the real world, the ideal of consecutive stages is
seldom if ever achieved. During the analysis stage, it might turn out that the specifications are
incomplete or inconsistent. A problem found during testing requires at least a brief return to the
coding stage. If the problem is serious enough, it might even require a new design. Maintenance
usually involves redoing some of the work from previous stages. . . .)
Large, complex programming projects are only likely to succeed if a careful, systematic
approach is adopted during all stages of the software life cycle. The systematic approach to
programming, using accepted principles of good design, is called software engineering .
The software engineer tries to efficiently construct programs that verifiably meet their
specifications and that are easy to modify if necessary. There is a wide range of
“methodologies” that can be applied to help in the systematic design of programs. (Most of
these methodologies seem to involve drawing little boxes to represent program components,
with labeled arrows to represent relationships among the boxes.)
We have been discussing object orientation in programming languages, which is relevant to the coding
stage of program development. But there are also object-oriented methodologies for analysis and design. The
question in this stage of the software life cycle is, How can one discover or invent the overall structure of a
program? As an example of a rather simple object-oriented approach to analysis and design, consider this
advice: Write down a description of the problem. Underline all the nouns in that description. The nouns should
be considered as candidates for becoming classes or objects in the program design. Similarly, underline all the
verbs. These
5.4. PROGRAMMING EXAMPLE: CARD, HAND, DECK 185

are candidates for methods. This is your starting point. Further analysis might uncover the
need for more classes and methods, and it might reveal that subclassing can be used to
take advantage of similarities among classes.
This is perhaps a bit simple-minded, but the idea is clear and the general approach can be
effective: Analyze the problem to discover the concepts that are involved, and create classes to
represent those concepts. The design should arise from the problem itself, and you should end
up with a program whose structure reflects the structure of the problem in a natural way.

5.4 Programming Example: Card, Hand, Deck

In this section, we look at some specific examples of object-oriented design in a domain that
is simple enough that we have a chance of coming up with something reasonably reusable.
Consider card games that are played with a standard deck of playing cards (a so-called
“poker” deck, since it is used in the game of poker).

5.4.1 Designing the classes

In a typical card game, each player gets a hand of cards. The deck is shu ffled and cards are
dealt one at a time from the deck and added to the players’ hands. In some games, cards can be
removed from a hand, and new cards can be added. The game is won or lost depending on the
value (ace, 2, . . . , king) and suit (spades, diamonds, clubs, hearts) of the cards that a player
receives. If we look for nouns in this description, there are several candidates for objects: game,
player, hand, card, deck, value, and suit. Of these, the value and the suit of a card are simple
values, and they will just be represented as instance variables in a Card object. In a complete
program, the other five nouns might be represented by classes. But let’s work on the ones that
are most obviously reusable: card, hand, and deck.
If we look for verbs in the description of a card game, we see that we can shu ffle a deck
and deal a card from a deck. This gives use us two candidates for instance methods in a
Deck class: shuffle() and dealCard(). Cards can be added to and removed from
hands. This gives two candidates for instance methods in a Hand class: addCard() and
removeCard(). Cards are relatively passive things, but we need to be able to determine
their suits and values. We will discover more instance methods as we go along.
First, we’ll design the deck class in detail. When a deck of cards is first created, it contains 52
cards in some standard order. The Deck class will need a constructor to create a new deck. The
constructor needs no parameters because any new deck is the same as any other. There will be
an instance method called shuffle() that will rearrange the 52 cards into a random order.
The dealCard() instance method will get the next card from the deck. This will be a function
with a return type of Card, since the caller needs to know what card is being dealt. It has no
parameters—when you deal the next card from the deck, you don’t provide any information to
the deck; you just get the next card, whatever it is. What will happen if there are no more cards
in the deck when its dealCard() method is called? It should probably be considered an error
to try to deal a card from an empty deck, so the deck can throw an exception in that case. But
this raises another question: How will the rest of the program know whether the deck is empty?
Of course, the program could keep track of how many cards it has used. But the deck itself
should know how many cards it has left, so the program should just be able to ask the deck
object. We can make this possible by specifying another instance method, cardsLeft(), that
returns the number of cards remaining in the deck. This leads to a full specification of all
186 CHAPTER 5. OBJECTS AND CLASSES

the subroutines in the Deck class:

Constructor and instance methods in class Deck:
public Deck()
// Constructor. Create an unshuffled deck of cards.

public void shuffle()

Put all the used cards back into the deck,
and shuffle it into a random order.
public int cardsLeft()
As cards are dealt from the deck, the number of
cards left decreases. This function returns the
number of cards that are still left in the deck.
public Card dealCard()
Deals one card from the deck and returns it.
Throws an exception if no more cards are left.

This is everything you need to know in order to use the Deck class. Of course, it doesn’t tell
us how to write the class. This has been an exercise in design, not in programming. In fact,
writing the class involves a programming technique, arrays, which will not be covered until
Chapter 7. Nevertheless, you can look at the source code, [Link], if you want. Even
though you won’t understand the implementation, the Javadoc comments give you all the
information that you need to understand the interface. With this information, you can use the
class in your programs without understanding the implementation.
We can do a similar analysis for the Hand class. When a hand object is first created, it has
no cards in it. An addCard() instance method will add a card to the hand. This method needs
a parameter of type Card to specify which card is being added. For the removeCard()
method, a parameter is needed to specify which card to remove. But should we specify the card
itself (“Remove the ace of spades”), or should we specify the card by its position in the hand
(“Remove the third card in the hand”)? Actually, we don’t have to decide, since we can allow for
both options. We’ll have two removeCard() instance methods, one with a parameter of type
Card specifying the card to be removed and one with a parameter of type int specifying the
position of the card in the hand. (Remember that you can have two methods in a class with the
same name, provided they have different types of parameters.) Since a hand can contain a
variable number of cards, it’s convenient to be able to ask a hand object how many cards it
contains. So, we need an instance method getCardCount() that returns the number of cards
in the hand. When I play cards, I like to arrange the cards in my hand so that cards of the same
value are next to each other. Since this is a generally useful thing to be able to do, we can
provide instance methods for sorting the cards in the hand. Here is a full specification for a
reusable Hand class:
Constructor and instance methods in class Hand:
public Hand() {
// Create a Hand object that is initially empty.
public void clear() {
// Discard all cards from the hand, making the hand empty.
public void addCard(Card c) {
Add the card c to the hand. c should be non-null.
If c is null, a NullPointerException is thrown.
5.4. PROGRAMMING EXAMPLE: CARD, HAND, DECK 187

public void removeCard(Card c) {

// If the specified card is in the hand, it is removed.
public void removeCard(int position) {
Remove the card in the specified position from the
hand. Cards are numbered counting from zero. If
the specified position does not exist, then an
exception is thrown.
public int getCardCount() {
// Return the number of cards in the hand.
public Card getCard(int position) {
Get the card from the hand in given position, where
positions are numbered starting from 0. If the
specified position is not the position number of
a card in the hand, an exception is thrown.
public void sortBySuit() {
Sorts the cards in the hand so that cards of the same
suit are grouped together, and within a suit the cards
are sorted by value. Note that aces are considered
to have the lowest value, 1.
public void sortByValue() {
Sorts the cards in the hand so that cards are sorted into
order of increasing value. Cards with the same value
are sorted by suit. Note that aces are considered
to have the lowest value.

Again, you don’t yet know enough to implement this class. But given the source code,
[Link], you can use the class in your own programming projects.

5.4.2 The Card Class

We have covered enough material to write a Card class. The class will have a constructor
that specifies the value and suit of the card that is being created. There are four suits, which
can be represented by the integers 0, 1, 2, and 3. It would be tough to remember which
number represents which suit, so I’ve defined named constants in the Card class to
represent the four possibilities. For example, [Link] is a constant that represents
the suit, spades. (These constants are declared to be public final static ints. It
might be better to use an enumerated type, but for now we will stick to integer-valued
constants. I’ll return to the question of using enumerated types in this example at the end of
the chapter.) The possible values of a card are the numbers 1, 2, . . . , 13, with 1 standing
for an ace, 11 for a jack, 12 for a queen, and 13 for a king. Again, I’ve defined some named
constants to represent the values of aces and face cards. (When you read the Card class,
you’ll see that I’ve also added support for Jokers.)
A Card object can be constructed knowing the value and the suit of the card. For
example, we can call the constructor with statements such as:
card1 = new Card( [Link], [Link] ); // Construct ace of spades.
card2 = new Card( 10, [Link] ); // Construct 10 of diamonds.
card3 = new Card( v, s ); // This is OK, as long as v and s
// are integer expressions.
188 CHAPTER 5. OBJECTS AND CLASSES

A Card object needs instance variables to represent its value and suit. I’ve made these
private so that they cannot be changed from outside the class, and I’ve provided getter
methods getSuit() and getValue() so that it will be possible to discover the suit and
value from outside the class. The instance variables are initialized in the constructor, and
are never changed after that. In fact, I’ve declared the instance variables suit and value
to be final, since they are never changed after they are initialized. (An instance variable
can be declared final provided it is either given an initial value in its declaration or is
initialized in every constructor in the class.)
Finally, I’ve added a few convenience methods to the class to make it easier to print out
cards in a human-readable form. For example, I want to be able to print out the suit of a card as
the word “Diamonds”, rather than as the meaningless code number 2, which is used in the class
to represent diamonds. Since this is something that I’ll probably have to do in many programs, it
makes sense to include support for it in the class. So, I’ve provided instance methods
getSuitAsString() and getValueAsString() to return string representations of the suit
and value of a card. Finally, I’ve defined the instance method toString() to return a string
with both the value and suit, such as “Queen of Hearts”. Recall that this method will be used
whenever a Card needs to be converted into a String, such as when the card is concatenated
onto a string with the + operator. Thus, the statement
[Link]( "Your card is the " + card );

is equivalent to
[Link]( "Your card is the " + [Link]() );

If the card is the queen of hearts, either of these will print out “Your card is the Queen of
Hearts”.
Here is the complete Card class. It is general enough to be highly reusable, so the work
that went into designing, writing, and testing it pays off handsomely in the long run.
/**
An object of type Card represents a playing card from a
standard Poker deck, including Jokers. The card has a suit, which
can be spades, hearts, diamonds, clubs, or joker. A spade, heart,
diamond, or club has one of the 13 values: ace, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7,
8, 9, 10, jack, queen, or king. Note that "ace" is considered to be
the smallest value. A joker can also have an associated value;
this value can be anything and can be used to keep track of several
different jokers.
*/
public class Card {
public final static int SPADES = 0; Codes for the 4 suits, plus Joker.
public final static int HEARTS = 1;
public final static int DIAMONDS = 2;
public final static int CLUBS = 3;
public final static int JOKER = 4;

public final static int ACE = 1; Codes for the non-numeric cards.
public final static int JACK = 11; Cards 2 through 10 have their
public final static int QUEEN = 12; numerical values for their codes.
public final static int KING = 13;

/**
5.4. PROGRAMMING EXAMPLE: CARD, HAND, DECK 189

This card’s suit, one of the constants SPADES, HEARTS, DIAMONDS,

CLUBS, or JOKER. The suit cannot be changed after the card is
constructed.
*/
private final int suit;
/**
The card’s value. For a normal cards, this is one of the values
1 through 13, with 1 representing ACE. For a JOKER, the value
can be anything. The value cannot be changed after the card
is constructed.
*/
private final int value;
/**
Creates a Joker, with 1 as the associated value. (Note that
"new Card()" is equivalent to "new Card(1,[Link])".)
*/
public Card() {
suit = JOKER;
value = 1;
}
/**
Creates a card with a specified suit and value.
@param theValue the value of the new card. For a regular card (non-joker),
the value must be in the range 1 through 13, with 1 representing an Ace.
You can use the constants [Link], [Link], [Link], and [Link].
For a Joker, the value can be anything.
@param theSuit the suit of the new card. This must be one of the values
[Link], [Link], [Link], [Link], or [Link].
@throws IllegalArgumentException if the parameter values are not in the
permissible ranges
*/
public Card(int theValue, int theSuit) {
if (theSuit != SPADES && theSuit != HEARTS && theSuit !=
DIAMONDS && theSuit != CLUBS && theSuit != JOKER)
throw new IllegalArgumentException("Illegal playing card
suit"); if (theSuit != JOKER && (theValue < 1 || theValue > 13))
throw new IllegalArgumentException("Illegal playing card value");
value = theValue;
suit = theSuit;
}
/**
Returns the suit of this card.
@returns the suit, which is one of the constants [Link],
[Link], [Link], [Link], or [Link]
*/
public int getSuit() {
return suit;
}
/**
Returns the value of this card.
@return the value, which is one the numbers 1 through 13, inclusive for
190 CHAPTER 5. OBJECTS AND CLASSES

a regular card, and which can be any value for a

Joker. */
public int getValue() {
return value;
}
/**
Returns a String representation of the card’s suit.
@return one of the strings "Spades", "Hearts", "Diamonds", "Clubs"
or "Joker".
*/
public String getSuitAsString() {
switch ( suit ) {
case SPADES: return "Spades";
case HEARTS: return "Hearts";
case DIAMONDS: return "Diamonds";
case CLUBS: return "Clubs";
default: return "Joker";
}
}
/**
Returns a String representation of the card’s value.
@return for a regular card, one of the strings "Ace", "2",
"3", ..., "10", "Jack", "Queen", or "King". For a Joker, the
string is always a numerical.
*/
public String getValueAsString() {
if (suit == JOKER)
return "" + value;
else {
switch ( value ) {
case 1: return "Ace";
case 2: return "2";
case 3: return "3";
case 4: return "4";
case 5: return "5";
case 6: return "6";
case 7: return "7";
case 8: return "8";
case 9: return "9";
case 10: return "10";
case 11: return "Jack";
case 12: return "Queen";
default: return "King";
}
}
}
/**
Returns a string representation of this card, including both
its suit and its value (except that for a Joker with value 1,
the return value is just "Joker"). Sample return values
are: "Queen of Hearts", "10 of Diamonds", "Ace of Spades",
"Joker", "Joker #2"
5.4. PROGRAMMING EXAMPLE: CARD, HAND, DECK 191

*/
public String toString() {
if (suit == JOKER) {
if (value == 1)
return "Joker";
else
return "Joker #" + value;
}
else
return getValueAsString() + " of " + getSuitAsString();
}

} // end class Card

5.4.3 Example: A Simple Card Game

I will finish this section by presenting a complete program that uses the Card and Deck
classes. The program lets the user play a very simple card game called HighLow. A deck of
cards is shuffled, and one card is dealt from the deck and shown to the user. The user
predicts whether the next card from the deck will be higher or lower than the current card. If
the user predicts correctly, then the next card from the deck becomes the current card, and
the user makes another prediction. This continues until the user makes an incorrect
prediction. The number of correct predictions is the user’s score.
My program has a subroutine that plays one game of HighLow. This subroutine has a
return value that represents the user’s score in the game. The main() routine lets the user
play several games of HighLow. At the end, it reports the user’s average score.
I won’t go through the development of the algorithms used in this program, but I
encourage you to read it carefully and make sure that you understand how it works. Note in
particular that the subroutine that plays one game of HighLow returns the user’s score in the
game as its return value. This gets the score back to the main program, where it is needed.
Here is the program:
/**
This program lets the user play HighLow, a simple card game
that is described in the output statements at the beginning of
the main() routine. After the user plays several games,
the user’s average score is reported.
*/
public class HighLow {

public static void main(String[] args) {

[Link]("This program lets you play the simple card game,");
[Link]("HighLow. A card is dealt from a deck of
cards.");
[Link]("You have to predict whether the next card will be");
[Link]("higher or lower. Your score in the game is
the");
[Link]("number of correct predictions you make before");
[Link]("you guess wrong.");
[Link]();
int gamesPlayed = 0; // Number of games user has played.
int sumOfScores = 0; // The sum of all the scores from
192 CHAPTER 5. OBJECTS AND CLASSES

all the games played.

double averageScore; // Average score, computed by dividing
sumOfScores by gamesPlayed.
boolean playAgain; // Record user’s response when user is
asked whether he wants to play
another game.
do {
int scoreThisGame; // Score for one game.
scoreThisGame = play(); // Play the game and get the score.
sumOfScores += scoreThisGame;
gamesPlayed++;
[Link]("Play again? ");
playAgain = [Link]();
} while (playAgain);
averageScore = ((double)sumOfScores) / gamesPlayed;
[Link]();
[Link]("You played " + gamesPlayed + " games.");
[Link]("Your average score was %1.3f.\n", averageScore);

} // end main()

/**
Lets the user play one game of HighLow, and returns the
user’s score on that game. The score is the number of
correct guesses that the user makes.
*/
private static int play() {
Deck deck = new Deck(); // Get a new deck of cards, and
store a reference to it in
the variable, deck.
Card currentCard; // The current card, which the user sees.

Card nextCard; // The next card in the deck. The user tries
to predict whether this is higher or lower
than the current card.
int correctGuesses ; // The number of correct predictions the
user has made. At the end of the game,
this will be the user’s score.
char guess; // The user’s guess. ’H’ if the user predicts that
the next card will be higher, ’L’ if the user
predicts that it will be lower.
[Link](); // Shuffle the deck into a random order before
starting the game.
correctGuesses = 0;
currentCard = [Link]();
[Link]("The first card is the " + currentCard);
while (true) { // Loop ends when user’s prediction is wrong.

/* Get the user’s prediction, ’H’ or ’L’ (or ’h’ or ’l’). */

5.4. PROGRAMMING EXAMPLE: CARD, HAND, DECK 193

[Link]("Will the next card be higher (H) or lower

(L)? "); do {
guess = [Link]();
guess = [Link](guess);
if (guess != ’H’ && guess != ’L’)
[Link]("Please respond with H or L:
"); } while (guess != ’H’ && guess != ’L’);

/* Get the next card and show it to the user. */

nextCard = [Link](); [Link]("The

next card is " + nextCard);

/* Check the user’s prediction. */

if ([Link]() == [Link]())
{ [Link]("The value is the same as the
previous card."); [Link]("You lose on ties.
Sorry!");
break; // End the game.
}
else if ([Link]() >
[Link]()) { if (guess == ’H’) {
[Link]("Your prediction was
correct."); correctGuesses++;
}
else {
[Link]("Your prediction was
incorrect."); break; // End the game.
}
}
else { // nextCard is lower
if (guess == ’L’) {
[Link]("Your prediction was
correct."); correctGuesses++;
}
else {
[Link]("Your prediction was
incorrect."); break; // End the game.
}
}

/* To set up for the next iteration of the loop, the nextCard

becomes the currentCard, since the currentCard has to be
the card that the user sees, and the nextCard will be
set to the next card in the deck after the
user makes his prediction. */
currentCard = nextCard;
[Link]();
[Link]("The card is " + currentCard);
} // end of while loop
[Link]();
[Link]("The game is over.");
[Link]("You made " + correctGuesses
194 CHAPTER 5. OBJECTS AND CLASSES

+ " correct predictions.");

[Link]();
return correctGuesses;

} // end play()

} // end class

5.5 Inheritance, Polymorphism, and Abstract Classes

A class represents a set of objects which share the same structure and behaviors. The class
determines the structure of objects by specifying variables that are contained in each instance of
the class, and it determines behavior by providing the instance methods that express the
behavior of the objects. This is a powerful idea. However, something like this can be done in
most programming languages. The central new idea in object-oriented programming—the idea
that really distinguishes it from traditional programming—is to allow classes to express the
similarities among objects that share some, but not all, of their structure and behavior. Such
similarities can be expressed using inheritance and polymorphism .

5.5.1 Extending Existing Classes

The topics covered later in this section are relatively advanced aspects of object-oriented
pro-gramming. Any programmer should know what is meant by subclass, inheritance, and
polymor-phism. However, it will probably be a while before you actually do anything with
inheritance except for extending classes that already exist. In the first part of this section, we
look at how that is done.
In day-to-day programming, especially for programmers who are just beginning to work
with objects, subclassing is used mainly in one situation: There is an existing class that can
be adapted with a few changes or additions. This is much more common than designing
groups of classes and subclasses from scratch. The existing class can be extended to
make a subclass. The syntax for this is
public class subclass-name extends existing-
class-name {
.
// Changes and additions.

As an example, suppose you want to write a program that plays the card game, Blackjack.
You can use the Card, Hand, and Deck classes developed in Section 5.4. However, a hand in
the game of Blackjack is a little different from a hand of cards in general, since it must be
possible to compute the “value” of a Blackjack hand according to the rules of the game. The
rules are as follows: The value of a hand is obtained by adding up the values of the cards in the
hand. The value of a numeric card such as a three or a ten is its numerical value. The value of a
Jack, Queen, or King is 10. The value of an Ace can be either 1 or 11. An Ace should be
counted as 11 unless doing so would put the total value of the hand over 21. Note that this
means that the second, third, or fourth Ace in the hand will always be counted as 1.
One way to handle this is to extend the existing Hand class by adding a method that
computes the Blackjack value of the hand. Here’s the definition of such a class:
5.5. INHERITANCE AND POLYMORPHISM 195

public class BlackjackHand extends Hand {

/**
Computes and returns the value of this hand in the game
of Blackjack.
*/
public int getBlackjackValue() {
int val; // The value computed for the hand.
boolean ace; // This will be set to true if the
// hand contains an ace.
int cards; // Number of cards in the hand.

val = 0;
ace = false;
cards = getCardCount();
for ( int i = 0; i < cards; i++ ) {
// Add the value of the i-th card in the hand.
Card card; // The i-th card;
int cardVal; // The blackjack value of the i-th card.
card = getCard(i);
cardVal = [Link](); // The normal value, 1 to 13.
if (cardVal > 10) {
cardVal = 10; // For a Jack, Queen, or King.
}
if (cardVal == 1) {
ace = true; // There is at least one ace.
}
val = val + cardVal;
}
Now, val is the value of the hand, counting any ace as 1.
If there is an ace, and if changing its value from 1 to
11 would leave the score less than or equal to 21,
then do so by adding the extra 10 points to val.
if ( ace == true && val + 10 <= 21 )
val = val + 10;
return val;

} // end getBlackjackValue()

} // end class BlackjackHand

Since BlackjackHand is a subclass of Hand, an object of type BlackjackHand contains all the
instance variables and instance methods defined in Hand, plus the new in-
stance method named getBlackjackValue(). For example, if bjh is a variable of type
BlackjackHand, then the following are all legal: [Link](),
[Link](0), and [Link](). The first two methods are
defined in Hand, but are inherited by BlackjackHand.
Inherited variables and methods from the Hand class can also be used in the definition of
BlackjackHand (except for any that are declared to be private, which prevents access even by
subclasses). The statement “cards = getCardCount();” in the above definition of
getBlackjackValue() calls the instance method getCardCount(), which was defined in Hand.
196 CHAPTER 5. OBJECTS AND CLASSES

Extending existing classes is an easy way to build on previous work. We’ll see that many
standard classes have been written specifically to be used as the basis for making subclasses.
∗∗∗
Access modifiers such as public and private are used to control access to members of
a class. There is one more access modifier, protected , that comes into the picture when
subclasses are taken into consideration. When protected is applied as an access modifier to
a method or member variable in a class, that member can be used in subclasses—direcct or
indirect—of the class in which it is defined, but it cannot be used in non-subclasses. (There is
one exception: A protected member can also be accessed by any class in the same package
as the class that contains the protected member. Recall that using no access modifier makes a
member accessible to classes in the same package, and nowhere else. Using the protected
modifier is strictly more liberal than using no modifier at all: It allows access from classes in the
same package and from subclasses that are not in the same package.)
When you declare a method or member variable to be protected, you are saying that it is
part of the implementation of the class, rather than part of the public interface of the class.
However, you are allowing subclasses to use and modify that part of the implementation.
For example, consider a PairOfDice class that has instance variables die1 and die2 to
represent the numbers appearing on the two dice. We could make those variables private to
make it impossible to change their values from outside the class, while still allowing read access
through getter methods. However, if we think it possible that PairOfDice will be used to create
subclasses, we might want to make it possible for subclasses to change the numbers on the
dice. For example, a GraphicalDice subclass that draws the dice might want to change the
numbers at other times besides when the dice are rolled. In that case, we could make die1 and
die2 protected, which would allow the subclass to change their values without making them
public to the rest of the world. (An even better idea would be to define protected setter
methods for the variables. A setter method could, for example, ensure that the value that is
being assigned to the variable is in the legal range 1 through 6.)

5.5.2 Inheritance and Class Hierarchy

The term inheritance refers to the fact that one class can inherit part or all of its structure
and behavior from another class. The class that does the inheriting is said to be a subclass
of the class from which it inherits. If class B is a subclass of class A, we also say that class A
is a superclass of class B. (Sometimes the terms derived class and base class are used
instead of subclass and superclass; this is the common terminology in C++.) A subclass can add to the
structure and behavior that it inherits. It can also replace or modify inherited behavior (though not inherited
structure). The relationship between subclass and superclass is sometimes shown by a diagram in which the
subclass is shown below, and connected to, its superclass, as shown here on the left.
5.5. INHERITANCE AND POLYMORPHISM 197

In Java, to create a class named “B” as a subclass of a class named “A”, you would write
class B extends A {
.
// additions to, and modifications of,
// stuff inherited from class A

Several classes can be declared as subclasses of the same superclass. The subclasses,
which might be referred to as “sibling classes,” share some structures and behaviors—
namely, the ones they inherit from their common superclass. The superclass expresses
these shared structures and behaviors. In the diagram shown on the right, above, classes B,
C, and D are sibling classes. Inheritance can also extend over several “generations” of
classes. This is shown in the diagram, where class E is a subclass of class D which is itself
a subclass of class A. In this case, class E is considered to be a subclass of class A, even
though it is not a direct subclass. This whole set of classes forms a small class hierarchy .

5.5.3 Example: Vehicles

Let’s look at an example. Suppose that a program has to deal with motor vehicles, including
cars, trucks, and motorcycles. (This might be a program used by a Department of Motor Vehicles
to keep track of registrations.) The program could use a class named Vehicle to represent all
types of vehicles. Since cars, trucks, and motorcycles are types of vehicles, they would be
represented by subclasses of the Vehicle class, as shown in this class hierarchy diagram:

The Vehicle class would include instance variables such as registrationNumber and owner
and instance methods such as transferOwnership(). These are variables and methods
common to all vehicles. The three subclasses of Vehicle—Car, Truck, and Motorcycle—could then be
used to hold variables and methods specific to particular types of vehicles. The Car class might add
an instance variable numberOfDoors, the Truck class might have numberOfAxles,
198 CHAPTER 5. OBJECTS AND CLASSES

and the Motorcycle class could have a boolean variable hasSidecar. (Well, it could in theory
at least, even if it might give a chuckle to the people at the Department of Motor Vehicles.) The
declarations of these classes in a Java program would look, in outline, like this (although in
practice, they would probably be public classes, defined in separate files):
class Vehicle {
int registrationNumber;
Person owner; // (Assuming that a Person class has been defined!)
void transferOwnership(Person newOwner) {
. . .
}
. . .
}
class Car extends Vehicle {
int numberOfDoors;
. . .
}
class Truck extends Vehicle {
int numberOfAxles;
. . .
}
class Motorcycle extends Vehicle {
boolean hasSidecar;
. . .
}

Suppose that myCar is a variable of type Car that has been declared and initialized with
the statement
Car myCar = new Car();

Given this declaration, a program could refer to [Link], since numberOfDoors

is an instance variable in the class Car. But since class Car extends class Vehicle, a car also has all
the structure and behavior of a vehicle. This means that [Link],
[Link], and [Link]() also exist.
Now, in the real world, cars, trucks, and motorcycles are in fact vehicles. The same is
true in a program. That is, an object of type Car or Truck or Motorcycle is automatically an
object of type Vehicle too. This brings us to the following Important Fact:

A variable that can hold a reference to an object of class A can also hold a reference
to an object belonging to any subclass of A.

The practical effect of this in our example is that an object of type Car can be assigned to a
variable of type Vehicle. That is, it would be legal to say
Vehicle myVehicle = myCar;

or even
Vehicle myVehicle = new Car();
5.5. INHERITANCE AND POLYMORPHISM 199

After either of these statements, the variable myVehicle holds a reference to a Vehicle
object that happens to be an instance of the subclass, Car. The object “remembers” that it is
in fact a Car, and not just a Vehicle. Information about the actual class of an object is stored
as part of that object. It is even possible to test whether a given object belongs to a given
class, using the instanceof operator. The test:
if (myVehicle instanceof Car) ...

determines whether the object referred to by myVehicle is in fact a car.

On the other hand, the assignment statement
myCar = myVehicle;

would be illegal because myVehicle could potentially refer to other types of vehicles that
are not cars. This is similar to a problem we saw previously in Subsection 2.5.6: The
computer will not allow you to assign an int value to a variable of type short, because not
every int is a short. Similarly, it will not allow you to assign a value of type Vehicle to a
variable of type Car because not every vehicle is a car. As in the case of ints and shorts, the
solution here is to use type-casting. If, for some reason, you happen to know that
myVehicle does in fact refer to a Car, you can use the type cast (Car)myVehicle to tell
the computer to treat myVehicle as if it were actually of type Car. So, you could say
myCar = (Car)myVehicle;

and you could even refer to ((Car)myVehicle).numberOfDoors. As an example of

how this could be used in a program, suppose that you want to print out relevant data about
a vehicle. You could say:
[Link]("Vehicle Data:");
[Link]("Registration number: "
[Link]);
if (myVehicle instanceof Car)
{ [Link]("Type of vehicle:
Car"); Car c;
c = (Car)myVehicle;
[Link]("Number of doors: " + [Link]);
}
else if (myVehicle instanceof Truck)
{ [Link]("Type of vehicle:
Truck"); Truck t;
t = (Truck)myVehicle;
[Link]("Number of axles: " + [Link]);
}
else if (myVehicle instanceof Motorcycle)
{ [Link]("Type of vehicle:
Motorcycle"); Motorcycle m;
m = (Motorcycle)myVehicle;
[Link]("Has a sidecar:" + [Link]);
}

Note that for object types, when the computer executes a program, it checks whether
type-casts are valid. So, for example, if myVehicle refers to an object of type Truck, then
the type cast (Car)myVehicle would be an error. When this happes, an exception of type
ClassCastException is thrown.
200 CHAPTER 5. OBJECTS AND CLASSES

5.5.4 Polymorphism
As another example, consider a program that deals with shapes drawn on the screen. Let’s
say that the shapes include rectangles, ovals, and roundrects of various colors. (A
“roundrect” is just a rectangle with rounded corners.)

Three classes, Rectangle, Oval, and RoundRect, could be used to represent the three types
of shapes. These three classes would have a common superclass, Shape, to represent features
that all three shapes have in common. The Shape class could include instance variables to
represent the color, position, and size of a shape, and it could include instance methods for
changing the color, position, and size. Changing the color, for example, might involve changing
the value of an instance variable, and then redrawing the shape in its new color:
class Shape {
Color color; // Color of the shape. (Recall that class Color
is defined in package [Link]. Assume
that this class has been imported.)
void setColor(Color newColor) {
// Method to change the color of the shape.
color = newColor; // change value of instance variable
redraw(); // redraw shape, which will appear in new color
}
void redraw() {
method for drawing the shape
? ? // what commands should go here?
}

. . // more instance variables and

methods } // end of class Shape

Now, you might see a problem here with the method redraw(). The problem is that each
different type of shape is drawn differently. The method setColor() can be called for any
type of shape. How does the computer know which shape to draw when it executes the
redraw()? Informally, we can answer the question like this: The computer executes
redraw() by asking the shape to redraw itself. Every shape object knows what it has to do to
redraw itself.
In practice, this means that each of the specific shape classes has its own redraw() method:
class Rectangle extends Shape {
void redraw() {
. . . // commands for drawing a rectangle
5.5. INHERITANCE AND POLYMORPHISM 201

}
. . . // possibly, more methods and variables
}
class Oval extends Shape {
void redraw() {
. . . // commands for drawing an oval
}
. . . // possibly, more methods and variables
}
class RoundRect extends Shape {
void redraw() {
. . . // commands for drawing a rounded rectangle
}
. . . // possibly, more methods and variables
}

If oneShape is a variable of type Shape, it could refer to an object of any of the types,
Rectangle, Oval, or RoundRect. As a program executes, and the value of oneShape changes,
it could even refer to objects of different types at different times! Whenever the statement
[Link]();

is executed, the redraw method that is actually called is the one appropriate for the type of object
to which oneShape actually refers. There may be no way of telling, from looking at the text of
the program, what shape this statement will draw, since it depends on the value that oneShape
happens to have when the program is executed. Even more is true. Suppose the statement is in
a loop and gets executed many times. If the value of oneShape changes as the loop is
executed, it is possible that the very same statement “[Link]();” will call different
methods and draw different shapes as it is executed over and over. We say that the redraw()
method is polymorphic. A method is polymorphic if the action performed by the method
depends on the actual type of the object to which the method is applied. Polymorphism is one of
the major distinguishing features of object-oriented programming.
Perhaps this becomes more understandable if we change our terminology a bit: In
object-oriented programming, calling a method is often referred to as sending a message to
an object. The object responds to the message by executing the appropriate method. The
statement “[Link]();” is a message to the object referred to by oneShape.
Since that object knows what type of object it is, it knows how it should respond to the
message. From this point of view, the computer always executes “[Link]();”
in the same way: by sending a message. The response to the message depends, naturally,
on who receives it. From this point of view, objects are active entities that send and receive
messages, and polymorphism is a natural, even necessary, part of this view. Polymorphism
just means that different objects can respond to the same message in different ways.
One of the most beautiful things about polymorphism is that it lets code that you write do
things that you didn’t even conceive of, at the time you wrote it. Suppose that I decide to add
beveled rectangles to the types of shapes my program can deal with. A beveled rectangle
has a triangle cut off each corner:
202 CHAPTER 5. OBJECTS AND CLASSES

To implement beveled rectangles, I can write a new subclass, BeveledRect, of class

Shape and give it its own redraw() method. Automatically, code that I wrote previously—
such as the statement [Link]()—can now suddenly start drawing beveled
rectangles, even though the beveled rectangle class didn’t exist when I wrote the statement!
In the statement “[Link]();”, the redraw message is sent to the object
oneShape. Look back at the method from the Shape class for changing the color of a shape:
void setColor(Color newColor) {
color = newColor; // change value of instance variable
redraw(); // redraw shape, which will appear in new color
}

A redraw message is sent here, but which object is it sent to? Well, the setColor
method is itself a message that was sent to some object. The answer is that the redraw
message is sent to that same object, the one that received the setColor message. If that
object is a rectangle, then it is the redraw() method from the Rectangle class that is
executed. If the object is an oval, then it is the redraw() method from the Oval class. This
is what you should expect, but it means that the “redraw();” statement in the
setColor() method does not necessarily call the redraw() method in the Shape class!
The redraw() method that is executed could be in any subclass of Shape.
Again, this is not a real surprise if you think about it in the right way. Remember that an
instance method is always contained in an object. The class only contains the source code
for the method. When a Rectangle object is created, it contains a redraw() method. The
source code for that method is in the Rectangle class. The object also contains a
setColor() method. Since the Rectangle class does not define a setColor() method,
the source code for the rectangle’s setColor() method comes from the superclass,
Shape, but the method itself is in the object of type Rectangle. Even though the source
codes for the two methods are in different classes, the methods themselves are part of the
same object. When the rectangle’s setColor() method is executed and calls redraw(),
the redraw() method that is executed is the one in the same object.

5.5.5 Abstract Classes

Whenever a Rectangle, Oval, or RoundRect object has to draw itself, it is the redraw()
method in the appropriate class that is executed. This leaves open the question, What does
the redraw() method in the Shape class do? How should it be defined?
The answer may be surprising: We should leave it blank! The fact is that the class Shape
represents the abstract idea of a shape, and there is no way to draw such a thing. Only particular, concrete
shapes like rectangles and ovals can be drawn. So, why should there
5.5. INHERITANCE AND POLYMORPHISM 203

even be a redraw() method in the Shape class? Well, it has to be there, or it would be
illegal to call it in the setColor() method of the Shape class, and it would be illegal to
write “[Link]();”, where oneShape is a variable of type Shape. The compiler
would complain that oneShape is a variable of type Shape and there’s no redraw()
method in the Shape class.
Nevertheless the version of redraw() in the Shape class itself will never actually be called.
In fact, if you think about it, there can never be any reason to construct an actual object of type
Shape! You can have variables of type Shape, but the objects they refer to will always belong to
one of the subclasses of Shape. We say that Shape is an abstract class. An abstract class is
one that is not used to construct objects, but only as a basis for making subclasses. An abstract
class exists only to express the common properties of all its subclasses. A class that is not
abstract is said to be concrete. You can create objects belonging to a concrete class, but not to
an abstract class. A variable whose type is given by an abstract class can only refer to objects
that belong to concrete subclasses of the abstract class.
Similarly, we say that the redraw() method in class Shape is an abstract method , since
it is never meant to be called. In fact, there is nothing for it to do—any actual redrawing is done
by redraw() methods in the subclasses of Shape. The redraw() method in Shape has to be
there. But it is there only to tell the computer that all Shapes understand the redraw message.
As an abstract method, it exists merely to specify the common interface of all the actual,
concrete versions of redraw() in the subclasses of Shape. There is no reason for the abstract
redraw() in class Shape to contain any code at all.
Shape and its redraw() method are semantically abstract. You can also tell the
computer, syntactically, that they are abstract by adding the modifier “abstract” to their
definitions. For an abstract method, the block of code that gives the implementation of an
ordinary method is replaced by a semicolon. An implementation must be provided for the
abstract method in any concrete subclass of the abstract class. Here’s what the Shape class
would look like as an abstract class:
public abstract class Shape {
Color color; // color of shape.
void setColor(Color newColor) {
// method to change the color of the shape
color = newColor; // change value of instance variable
redraw(); // redraw shape, which will appear in new color
}
abstract void redraw();
abstract method---must be defined in
concrete subclasses

. . // more instance variables and

methods } // end of class Shape

Once you have declared the class to be abstract, it becomes illegal to try to create
actual objects of type Shape, and the computer will report a syntax error if you try to do so.
∗∗∗
Recall from Subsection 5.3.3 that a class that is not explicitly declared to be a subclass
of some other class is automatically made a subclass of the standard class Object. That is,
a class declaration with no “extends” part such as
204 CHAPTER 5. OBJECTS AND CLASSES

public class myClass { . . .

is exactly equivalent to
public class myClass extends Object { . . .

This means that class Object is at the top of a huge class hierarchy that includes every
other class. (Semantially, Object is an abstract class, in fact the most abstract class of all.
Curiously, however, it is not declared to be abstract syntactially, which means that you
can create objects of type Object. What you would do with them, however, I have no idea.)
Since every class is a subclass of Object, a variable of type Object can refer to any object
whatsoever, of any type. Java has several standard data structures that are designed to hold
Object s, but since every object is an instance of class Object, these data structures can actually
hold any object whatsoever. One example is the “ArrayList” data structure, which is defined by
the class ArrayList in the package [Link]. (ArrayList is discussed more fully in Section
7.3.) An ArrayList is simply a list of Object s. This class is very convenient, because an ArrayList
can hold any number of objects, and it will grow, when necessary, as objects are added to it.
Since the items in the list are of type Object, the list can actually hold objects of any type.
A program that wants to keep track of various Shapes that have been drawn on the screen
can store those shapes in an ArrayList. Suppose that the ArrayList is named listOfShapes. A
shape, oneShape, can be added to the end of the list by calling the instance method
“[Link](oneShape);”. The shape can be removed from the list with the instance
method “[Link](oneShape);”. The number of shapes in the list is given by
the function “[Link]()”. And it is possible to retrieve the i-th object from the list
with the function call “[Link](i)”. (Items in the list are numbered from 0 to
[Link]() - 1.) However, note that this method returns an Object, not a Shape.
(Of course, the people who wrote the ArrayList class didn’t even know about Shapes, so the
method they wrote could hardly have a return type of Shape!) Since you know that the items in
the list are, in fact, Shapes and not just Object s, you can type-cast the Object returned by
[Link](i) to be a value of type Shape:
oneShape = (Shape)[Link](i);

Let’s say, for example, that you want to redraw all the shapes in the list. You could do this
with a simple for loop, which is lovely example of object-oriented programming and of
polymorphism:
for (int i = 0; i < [Link](); i++) {
Shape s; // i-th element of the list, considered as
a Shape s = (Shape)[Link](i);
[Link](); // What is drawn here depends on what type of shape s is!
}

∗∗∗
The sample source code file [Link] uses an abstract Shape class and an
ArrayList to hold a list of shapes. The file defines an applet in which the user can add
various shapes to a drawing area. Once a shape is in the drawing area, the user can use
the mouse to drag it around.
You might want to look at this file, even though you won’t be able to understand all of it at
this time. Even the definitions of the shape classes are somewhat di fferent from those that I
have described in this section. (For example, the draw() method has a parameter of type
Graphics. This parameter is required because of the way Java handles all drawing.) I ’ll return
5.6. THIS AND SUPER 205

to this example in later chapters when you know more about GUI programming. However, it
would still be worthwhile to look at the definition of the Shape class and its subclasses in the
source code. You might also check how an ArrayList is used to hold the list of shapes.
In the applet the only time when the actual class of a shape is used is when that shape is
added to the screen. Once the shape has been created, it is manipulated entirely as an abstract
shape. The routine that implements dragging, for example, works only with variables of type
Shape. As the Shape is being dragged, the dragging routine just calls the Shape’s draw
method each time the shape has to be drawn, so it doesn’t have to know how to draw the shape
or even what type of shape it is. The object is responsible for drawing itself. If I wanted to add a
new type of shape to the program, I would define a new subclass of Shape, add another button
to the applet, and program the button to add the correct type of shape to the screen. No other
changes in the programming would be necessary.
If you want to try out the applet, you can find it at the end of the on-line version of this
section.

5.6 this and super

Although the basic ideas of object-oriented programming are reasonably simple and clear, they
are subtle, and they take time to get used to. And unfortunately, beyond the basic ideas there
are a lot of details. This section and the next cover more of those annoying details. You should
not necessarily master everything in these two sections the first time through, but you should
read it to be aware of what is possible. For the most part, when I need to use this material later
in the text, I will explain it again briefly, or I will refer you back to it. In this section, we’ll look at
two variables, this and super, that are automatically defined in any instance method.

5.6.1 The Special Variable this

A static member of a class has a simple name, which can only be used inside the class defi-
nition. For use outside the class, it has a full name of the form class-name . simple-name .
For example, “[Link]” is a static member variable with simple name “out” in the
class “System”. It’s always legal to use the full name of a static member, even within the
class where it’s defined. Sometimes it’s even necessary, as when the simple name of a
static member variable is hidden by a local variable of the same name.
Instance variables and instance methods also have simple names. The simple name of such
an instance member can be used in instance methods in the class where the instance member
is defined. Instance members also have full names, but remember that instance variables and
methods are actually contained in objects, not classes. The full name of an instance member
has to contain a reference to the object that contains the instance member. To get at an instance
variable or method from outside the class definition, you need a variable that refers to the object.
Then the full name is of the form variable-name . simple-name . But suppose you are writing
the definition of an instance method in some class. How can you get a reference to the object
that contains that instance method? You might need such a reference, for example, if you want
to use the full name of an instance variable, because the simple name of the instance variable is
hidden by a local variable or parameter.
Java provides a special, predefined variable named “this” that you can use for such pur-
poses. The variable, this, is used in the source code of an instance method to refer to the
206 CHAPTER 5. OBJECTS AND CLASSES

object that contains the method. This intent of the name, this, is to refer to “this object,”
the one right here that this very method is in. If x is an instance variable in the same object,
then this.x can be used as a full name for that variable. If otherMethod() is an
instance method in the same object, then [Link]() could be used to call
that method. Whenever the computer executes an instance method, it automatically sets the
variable, this, to refer to the object that contains the method.
One common use of this is in constructors. For example:
public class Student {
private String name; // Name of the student.
public Student(String name) {
Constructor. Create a student with specified
name. [Link] = name;
}
.
// More variables and methods.

In the constructor, the instance variable called name is hidden by a formal parameter. How-
ever, the instance variable can still be referred to by its full name, [Link]. In the
assign-ment statement, the value of the formal parameter, name, is assigned to the
instance variable, [Link]. This is considered to be acceptable style: There is no need
to dream up cute new names for formal parameters that are just used to initialize instance
variables. You can use the same name for the parameter as for the instance variable.
There are other uses for this. Sometimes, when you are writing an instance method, you
need to pass the object that contains the method to a subroutine, as an actual parameter. In that
case, you can use this as the actual parameter. For example, if you wanted to print out a
string representation of the object, you could say “[Link](this);”. Or you
could assign the value of this to another variable in an assignment statement. In fact, you can
do anything with this that you could do with any other variable, except change its value.

5.6.2 The Special Variable super

Java also defines another special variable, named “super”, for use in the definitions of
instance methods. The variable super is for use in a subclass. Like this, super refers
to the object that contains the method. But it’s forgetful. It forgets that the object belongs to
the class you are writing, and it remembers only that it belongs to the superclass of that
class. The point is that the class can contain additions and modifications to the superclass.
super doesn’t know about any of those additions and modifications; it can only be used to
refer to methods and variables in the superclass.
Let’s say that the class that you are writing contains an instance method named
doSomething(). Consider the subroutine call statement [Link](). Now,
super doesn’t know anything about the doSomething() method in the subclass. It only
knows about things in the superclass, so it tries to execute a method named
doSomething() from the superclass. If there is none—if the doSomething() method
was an addition rather than a modification—you’ll get a syntax error.
The reason super exists is so you can get access to things in the superclass that are hidden by
things in the subclass. For example, super.x always refers to an instance variable named
5.6. THIS AND SUPER 207

x in the superclass. This can be useful for the following reason: If a class contains an
instance variable with the same name as an instance variable in its superclass, then an
object of that class will actually contain two variables with the same name: one defined as
part of the class itself and one defined as part of the superclass. The variable in the
subclass does not replace the variable of the same name in the superclass; it merely hides
it. The variable from the superclass can still be accessed, using super.
When you write a method in a subclass that has the same signature as a method in its
superclass, the method from the superclass is hidden in the same way. We say that the
method in the subclass overrides the method from the superclass. Again, however, super
can be used to access the method from the superclass.
The major use of super is to override a method with a new method that extends the
behavior of the inherited method, instead of replacing that behavior entirely. The new method
can use super to call the method from the superclass, and then it can add additional code to
provide additional behavior. As an example, suppose you have a PairOfDice class that includes
a roll() method. Suppose that you want a subclass, GraphicalDice, to represent a pair of dice
drawn on the computer screen. The roll() method in the GraphicalDice class should do
everything that the roll() method in the PairOfDice class does. We can express this with a
call to [Link](), which calls the method in the superclass. But in addition to that, the
roll() method for a GraphicalDice object has to redraw the dice to show the new values. The
GraphicalDice class might look something like this:
public class GraphicalDice extends PairOfDice {
public void roll() {
// Roll the dice, and redraw them.
[Link](); // Call the roll method from PairOfDice.
redraw(); // Call a method to draw the dice.
}
.
. // More stuff, including definition of redraw().
.
}

Note that this allows you to extend the behavior of the roll() method even if you don’t
know how the method is implemented in the superclass!
Here is a more complete example. The applet at the end of Section 4.7 in the on-line
version of this book shows a disturbance that moves around in a mosaic of little squares. As
it moves, each square it visits become a brighter shade of red. The result looks interesting,
but I think it would be prettier if the pattern were symmetric. A symmetric version of the
applet is shown at the bottom of the Section 5.7 (in the on-line version). The symmetric
applet can be programmed as an easy extension of the original applet.
In the symmetric version, each time a square is brightened, the squares that can be
obtained from that one by horizontal and vertical reflection through the center of the mosaic
are also brightened. This picture might make the symmetry idea clearer:
208 CHAPTER 5. OBJECTS AND CLASSES

The four red squares in the picture, for example, form a set of such symmetrically placed
squares, as do the purple squares and the green squares. (The blue square is at the center
of the mosaic, so reflecting it doesn’t produce any other squares; it’s its own reflection.)
The original applet is defined by the class RandomBrighten. In that class, the actual task
of brightening a square is done by a method called brighten(). If row and col are the
row and column numbers of a square, then “brighten(row,col);” increases the
brightness of that square. All we need is a subclass of RandomBrighten with a modified
brighten() routine. Instead of just brightening one square, the modified routine will also
brighten the horizontal and vertical reflections of that square. But how will it brighten each of
the four individual squares? By calling the brighten() method from the original class. It
can do this by calling [Link]().
There is still the problem of computing the row and column numbers of the horizontal
and vertical reflections. To do this, you need to know the number of rows and the number of
columns. The RandomBrighten class has instance variables named ROWS and COLUMNS to
represent these quantities. Using these variables, it’s possible to come up with formulas for
the reflections, as shown in the definition of the brighten() method below.
Here’s the complete definition of the new class:
public class SymmetricBrighten extends RandomBrighten {
void brighten(int row, int col) {
Brighten the specified square and its horizontal
and vertical reflections. This overrides the brighten
method from the RandomBrighten class, which just
brightens one square.
[Link](row, col); [Link](ROWS
- 1 - row, col); [Link](row, COLUMNS
- 1 - col); [Link](ROWS - 1 - row,
COLUMNS - 1 - col);
}
} // end class SymmetricBrighten

This is the entire source code for the applet!

5.6.3 Constructors in Subclasses

Constructors are not inherited. That is, if you extend an existing class to make a subclass,
the constructors in the superclass do not become part of the subclass. If you want
constructors in the subclass, you have to define new ones from scratch. If you don ’t define
any constructors in the subclass, then the computer will make up a default constructor, with no parameters,
for you.
5.7. INTERFACES, NESTED CLASSES, AND OTHER DETAILS 209

This could be a problem, if there is a constructor in the superclass that does a lot of
necessary work. It looks like you might have to repeat all that work in the subclass! This
could be a real problem if you don’t have the source code to the superclass, and don’t know
how it works, or if the constructor in the superclass initializes private member variables
that you don’t even have access to in the subclass!
Obviously, there has to be some fix for this, and there is. It involves the special variable,
super. As the very first statement in a constructor, you can use super to call a constructor
from the superclass. The notation for this is a bit ugly and misleading, and it can only be
used in this one particular circumstance: It looks like you are calling super as a subroutine
(even though super is not a subroutine and you can’t call constructors the same way you
call other subroutines anyway). As an example, assume that the PairOfDice class has a
constructor that takes two integers as parameters. Consider a subclass:
public class GraphicalDice extends PairOfDice {

public GraphicalDice() { // Constructor for this class.

super(3,4); // Call the constructor from the

PairOfDice class, with parameters 3, 4.

initializeGraphics(); // Do some initialization

specific // to the GraphicalDice
class.
}
.
// More constructors, methods, variables...

The statement “super(3,4);” calls the constructor from the superclass. This call must
be the first line of the constructor in the subclass. Note that if you don’t explicitly call a
constructor from the superclass in this way, then the default constructor from the superclass,
the one with no parameters, will be called automatically.
This might seem rather technical, but unfortunately it is sometimes necessary. By the
way, you can use the special variable this in exactly the same way to call another
constructor in the same class. This can be useful since it can save you from repeating the
same code in several constructors.

5.7 Interfaces, Nested Classes, and Other Details

THIS SECTION simply pulls together a few more miscellaneous features of object oriented
programming in Java. Read it now, or just look through it and refer back to it later when you
need this material. (You will need to know about the first topic, interfaces, almost as soon as we
begin GUI programming.)

5.7.1 Interfaces
Some object-oriented programming languages, such as C++, allow a class to extend two or
more superclasses. This is called multiple inheritance. In the illustration below, for
example, class E is shown as having both class A and class B as direct superclasses, while
class F has three direct superclasses.
210 CHAPTER 5. OBJECTS AND CLASSES

Such multiple inheritance is not allowed in Java. The designers of Java wanted to keep
the language reasonably simple, and felt that the benefits of multiple inheritance were not
worth the cost in increased complexity. However, Java does have a feature that can be used
to accomplish many of the same goals as multiple inheritance: interfaces.
We’ve encountered the term “interface” before, in connection with black boxes in general and
subroutines in particular. The interface of a subroutine consists of the name of the subroutine, its
return type, and the number and types of its parameters. This is the information you need to
know if you want to call the subroutine. A subroutine also has an implementation: the block of
code which defines it and which is executed when the subroutine is called.
In Java, interface is a reserved word with an additional, technical meaning. An
“interface” in this sense consists of a set of instance method interfaces, without any as-
sociated implementations. (Actually, a Java interface can contain other things as well, but
we won’t discuss them here.) A class can implement an interface by providing an
implemen-tation for each of the methods specified by the interface. Here is an example of a
very simple Java interface:
public interface Drawable {
public void draw(Graphics g);
}

This looks much like a class definition, except that the implementation of the draw() method is
omitted. A class that implements the interface Drawable must provide an implementation for
this method. Of course, the class can also include other methods and variables. For example,
public class Line implements Drawable {
public void draw(Graphics g) {
. . . // do something---presumably, draw a line
}
. . . // other methods and variables
}

Note that to implement an interface, a class must do more than simply provide an implementa-
tion for each method in the interface; it must also state that it implements the interface, using the
reserved word implements as in this example: “public class Line implements Drawable”. Any
class that implements the Drawable interface defines a draw() instance method. Any ob-ject
created from such a class includes a draw() method. We say that an object implements
5.7. INTERFACES, NESTED CLASSES, AND OTHER DETAILS 211

an interface if it belongs to a class that implements the interface. For example, any
object of type Line implements the Drawable interface.
While a class can extend only one other class, it can implement any number of
interfaces. In fact, a class can both extend one other class and implement one or more
interfaces. So, we can have things like
class FilledCircle extends Circle
implements Drawable, Fillable {
. . .
}

The point of all this is that, although interfaces are not classes, they are something very
similar. An interface is very much like an abstract class, that is, a class that can never be
used for constructing objects, but can be used as a basis for making subclasses. The
subroutines in an interface are abstract methods, which must be implemented in any
concrete class that implements the interface. And as with abstract classes, even though you
can’t construct an object from an interface, you can declare a variable whose type is given
by the interface. For example, if Drawable is an interface, and if Line and FilledCircle are
classes that implement Drawable, then you could say:
Drawable figure; // Declare a
variable of type Drawable. It can
refer to any object that implements the
Drawable interface.

figure = new Line(); // figure now refers to an object of class

Line [Link](g); // calls draw() method from class Line

figure = new FilledCircle(); // Now, figure refers to an object

of class FilledCircle.
[Link](g); // calls draw() method from class FilledCircle

A variable of type Drawable can refer to any object of any class that implements the
Drawable interface. A statement like [Link](g), above, is legal because figure
is of type Drawable, and any Drawable object has a draw() method. So, whatever object
figure refers to, that object must have a draw() method.
Note that a type is something that can be used to declare variables. A type can also be
used to specify the type of a parameter in a subroutine, or the return type of a function. In
Java, a type can be either a class, an interface, or one of the eight built-in primitive types.
These are the only possibilities. Of these, however, only classes can be used to construct
new objects.
You are not likely to need to write your own interfaces until you get to the point of writing
fairly complex programs. However, there are a few interfaces that are used in important
ways in Java’s standard packages. You’ll learn about some of these standard interfaces in
the next few chapters.

5.7.2 Nested Classes

A class seems like it should be a pretty important thing. A class is a high-level building block of a
program, representing a potentially complex idea and its associated data and behaviors. I’ve
always felt a bit silly writing tiny little classes that exist only to group a few scraps of data
together. However, such trivial classes are often useful and even essential. Fortunately, in Java,
I can ease the embarrassment, because one class can be nested inside another class. My trivial
212 CHAPTER 5. OBJECTS AND CLASSES

little class doesn’t have to stand on its own. It becomes part of a larger more respectable
class. This is particularly useful when you want to create a little class specifically to support
the work of a larger class. And, more seriously, there are other good reasons for nesting the
definition of one class inside another class.
In Java, a nested class is any class whose definition is inside the definition of another
class. Nested classes can be either named or anonymous. I will come back to the topic of
anonymous classes later in this section. A named nested class, like most other things that
occur in classes, can be either static or non-static.
The definition of a static nested class looks just like the definition of any other class,
except that it is nested inside another class and it has the modifier static as part of its
declaration. A static nested class is part of the static structure of the containing class. It can
be used inside that class to create objects in the usual way. If it has not been declared
private, then it can also be used outside the containing class, but when it is used outside the
class, its name must indicate its membership in the containing class. This is similar to other
static components of a class: A static nested class is part of the class itself in the same way
that static member variables are parts of the class itself.
For example, suppose a class named WireFrameModel represents a set of lines in
three-dimensional space. (Such models are used to represent three-dimensional objects in
graphics programs.) Suppose that the WireFrameModel class contains a static nested class,
Line, that represents a single line. Then, outside of the class WireFrameModel, the Line
class would be referred to as [Link]. Of course, this just follows the
normal naming convention for static members of a class. The definition of the
WireFrameModel class with its nested Line class would look, in outline, like this:
public class WireFrameModel {

. . . // other members of the WireFrameModel class

static public class Line {

Represents a line from the point (x1,y1,z1)
to the point (x2,y2,z2) in 3-dimensional
space. double x1, y1, z1;
double x2, y2, z2;
} // end class Line

. . // other members of the WireFrameModel

class } // end WireFrameModel

Inside the WireFrameModel class, a Line object would be created with the constructor “new
Line()”. Outside the class, “new [Link]()” would be used.
A static nested class has full access to the static members of the containing class, even
to the private members. Similarly, the containing class has full access to the members of the
nested class. This can be another motivation for declaring a nested class, since it lets you
give one class access to the private members of another class without making those
members generally available to other classes.
When you compile the above class definition, two class files will be created. Even though
the definition of Line is nested inside WireFrameModel, the compiled Line class is stored in
a separate file. The name of the class file for Line will be WireFrameModel$[Link].
∗∗∗
5.7. INTERFACES, NESTED CLASSES, AND OTHER DETAILS 213

Non-static nested classes are referred to as inner classes. Inner classes are not, in practice,
very different from static nested classes, but a non-static nested class is actually associated with
an object rather than to the class in which it is nested. This can take some getting used to.
Any non-static member of a class is not really part of the class itself (although its source
code is contained in the class definition). This is true for inner classes, just as it is for any other
non-static part of a class. The non-static members of a class specify what will be contained in
objects that are created from that class. The same is true—at least logically—for inner classes.
It’s as if each object that belongs to the containing class has its own copy of the nested class.
This copy has access to all the instance methods and instance variables of the object, even to
those that are declared private. The two copies of the inner class in two different objects
differ because the instance variables and methods they refer to are in di fferent objects. In fact,
the rule for deciding whether a nested class should be static or non-static is simple: If the nested
class needs to use any instance variable or instance method from the containing class, make the
nested class non-static. Otherwise, it might as well be static.
From outside the containing class, a non-static nested class has to be referred to using a
name of the form variableName . NestedClassName , where variableName is a variable
that refers to the object that contains the class. This is actually rather rare, however. A non-
static nested class is generally used only inside the class in which it is nested, and there it
can be referred to by its simple name.
In order to create an object that belongs to an inner class, you must first have an object
that belongs to the containing class. (When working inside the class, the object “this” is
used implicitly.) The inner class object is permanently associated with the containing class
object, and it has complete access to the members of the containing class object. Looking at
an example will help, and will hopefully convince you that inner classes are really very
natural. Consider a class that represents poker games. This class might include a nested
class to represent the players of the game. This structure of the PokerGame class could be:
public class PokerGame { // Represents a game of poker.

private class Player { // Represents one of the players in this game.

.
.
.
} // end class Player
private Deck deck; // A deck of cards for playing the game.
private int pot; // The amount of money that has been bet.

.
.
.
} // end class PokerGame

If game is a variable of type PokerGame, then, conceptually, game contains its own copy of the
Player class. In an an instance method of a PokerGame object, a new Player object would be created
by saying “new Player()”, just as for any other class. (A Player object could be created outside the
PokerGame class with an expression such as “[Link] Player()”. Again, however, this is very
rare.) The Player object will have access to the deck and pot instance variables in the PokerGame
object. Each PokerGame object has its own deck and pot and Players. Players of that poker
game use the deck and pot for that game; players of another poker game use the other game’s deck
and pot. That’s the effect of making the Player class
214 CHAPTER 5. OBJECTS AND CLASSES

non-static. This is the most natural way for players to behave. A Player object represents a
player of one particular poker game. If Player were a static nested class, on the other hand, it
would represent the general idea of a poker player, independent of a particular poker game.

5.7.3 Anonymous Inner Classes

In some cases, you might find yourself writing an inner class and then using that class in just
a single line of your program. Is it worth creating such a class? Indeed, it can be, but for
cases like this you have the option of using an anonymous inner class. An anonymous
class is created with a variation of the new operator that has the form
new superclass-or-interface ( parameter-
list ) { methods-and-variables
}

This constructor defines a new class, without giving it a name, and it simultaneously
creates an object that belongs to that class. This form of the new operator can be used in
any statement where a regular “new” could be used. The intention of this expression is to
create: “a new object belonging to a class that is the same as superclass-or-interface but
with these methods-and-variables added.” The effect is to create a uniquely customized
object, just at the point in the program where you need it. Note that it is possible to base an
anonymous class on an interface, rather than a class. In this case, the anonymous class
must implement the interface by defining all the methods that are declared in the interface. If
an interface is used as a base, the parameter-list must be empty. Otherwise, it can contain
parameters for a constructor in the superclass .
Anonymous classes are often used for handling events in graphical user interfaces, and
we will encounter them several times in the chapters on GUI programming. For now, we will
look at one not-very-plausible example. Consider the Drawable interface, which is defined
earlier in this section. Suppose that we want a Drawable object that draws a filled, red, 100-
pixel square. Rather than defining a new, separate class and then using that class to create
the object, we can use an anonymous class to create the object in one statement:
Drawable redSquare = new Drawable() {
void draw(Graphics g) {
[Link]([Link]);
[Link](10,10,100,100);
}
};

The semicolon at the end of this statement is not part of the class definition. It’s the
semicolon that is required at the end of every declaration statement.
When a Java class is compiled, each anonymous nested class will produce a separate
class file. If the name of the main class is MainClass, for example, then the names of the
class files for the anonymous nested classes will be MainClass$[Link],
MainClass$[Link], MainClass$[Link], and so on.

5.7.4 Mixing Static and Non-static

Classes, as I’ve said, have two very distinct purposes. A class can be used to group together a set of static
member variables and static member subroutines. Or it can be used as a factory for making objects. The non-
static variables and subroutines in the class definition specify the
5.7. INTERFACES, NESTED CLASSES, AND OTHER DETAILS 215

instance variables and methods of the objects. In most cases, a class performs one or the
other of these roles, not both.
Sometimes, however, static and non-static members are mixed in a single class. In this
case, the class plays a dual role. Sometimes, these roles are completely separate. It is also
possible for the static and non-static parts of a class to interact. This happens when instance
methods use static member variables or call static member subroutines. An instance
method belongs to an object, not to the class itself, and there can be many objects with their
own versions of the instance method. But there is only one copy of a static member variable.
So, effectively, we have many objects sharing that one variable.
Suppose, for example, that we want to write a PairOfDice class that uses the Random class
mentioned in Section 5.3 for rolling the dice. To do this, a PairOfDice object needs access to an
object of type Random. But there is no need for each PairOfDice object to have a separate
Random object. (In fact, it would not even be a good idea: Because of the way random number
generators work, a program should, in general, use only one source of random numbers.) A nice
solution is to have a single Random variable as a static member of the PairOfDice class, so
that it can be shared by all PairOfDice objects. For example:
import [Link];
public class PairOfDice {
private static Random randGen = new Random();
public int die1; // Number showing on the first die.
public int die2; // Number showing on the second die.

public PairOfDice() {
Constructor. Creates a pair of dice that
initially shows random values.
roll();
}
public void roll() {
Roll the dice by setting each of the dice to be
a random number between 1 and 6.
die1 = [Link](6) + 1;
die2 = [Link](6) + 1;
}
} // end class PairOfDice

As another example, let’s rewrite the Student class that was used in Section 5.2. I’ve
added an ID for each student and a static member called nextUniqueID. Although
there is an ID variable in each student object, there is only one nextUniqueID variable.
public class Student {
private String name; // Student’s name.
private int ID; // Unique ID number for this student.
public double test1, test2, test3; // Grades on three tests.

private static int nextUniqueID = 0;

// keep track of next available unique ID number
Student(String theName) {
// Constructor for Student objects; provides a name for the Student,
216 CHAPTER 5. OBJECTS AND CLASSES

and assigns the student a unique ID

number. name = theName;
nextUniqueID++; ID
= nextUniqueID;
}
public String getName() {
Accessor method for reading value of private
instance variable, name.
return name;
}
public int getID() {
Accessor method for reading value of
ID. return ID;
}
public double getAverage() {
Compute average test grade.
return (test1 + test2 + test3) / 3;
}
} // end of class Student

The initialization “nextUniqueID = 0” is done only once, when the class is first loaded.
Whenever a Student object is constructed and the constructor says “nextUniqueID++;”, it’s
always the same static member variable that is being incremented. When the very first Student
object is created, nextUniqueID becomes 1. When the second object is created,
nextUniqueID becomes 2. After the third object, it becomes 3. And so on. The constructor
stores the new value of nextUniqueID in the ID variable of the object that is being created.
Of course, ID is an instance variable, so every object has its own individual ID variable. The
class is constructed so that each student will automatically get a di fferent value for its ID
variable. Furthermore, the ID variable is private, so there is no way for this variable to be
tampered with after the object has been created. You are guaranteed, just by the way the class
is designed, that every student object will have its own permanent, unique identification number.
Which is kind of cool if you think about it.

5.7.5 Static Import

The import directive makes it possible to refer to a class such as [Link]
using its simple name, Color. All you have to do is say import [Link] or
import [Link].*. But you still have to use compound names to refer to static member
variables such as [Link] and to static methods such as [Link].
Java 5.0 introduced a new form of the import directive that can be used to import static
members of a class in the same way that the ordinary import directive imports classes from a
package. The new form of the directive is called a static import , and it has syntax
import static package-name . class-name . static-member-name ;

to import one static member name from a class, or

import static package-name . class-name .*;

to import all the public static members from a class. For example, if you preface a class definition with
5.7. INTERFACES, NESTED CLASSES, AND OTHER DETAILS 217

import static [Link];

then you can use the simple name out instead of the compound name [Link]. This
means you can use [Link] instead of [Link]. If you are going to
work extensively with the Math class, you can preface your class definition with
import static [Link].*;

This would allow you to say sqrt instead of [Link], log instead of [Link], PI
instead of [Link], and so on.
Note that the static import directive requires a package-name , even for classes in the
standard package [Link]. One consequence of this is that you can’t do a static import
from a class in the default package. In particular, it is not possible to do a static import from
my TextIO class—if you wanted to do that, you would have to move TextIO into a package.

5.7.6 Enums as Classes

Enumerated types were introduced in Subsection 2.3.3. Now that we have covered more
material on classes and objects, we can revisit the topic (although still not covering
enumerated types in their full complexity).
Enumerated types are actually classes, and each enumerated type constant is a
public, final, static member variable in that class (even though they are not declared
with these modifiers). The value of the variable is an object belonging to the enumerated
type class. There is one such object for each enumerated type constant, and these are the
only objects of the class that can ever be created. It is really these objects that represent the
possible values of the enumerated type. The enumerated type constants are actually
variables that refer to these objects.
When an enumerated type is defined inside another class, it is a nested class inside the
enclosing class. In fact, it is a static nested class, whether you declare it to be static or
not. But it can also be declared as a non-nested class, in a file of its own. For example, we
could define the following enumerated type in a file named [Link]:
public enum Suit {
SPADES, HEARTS, DIAMONDS, CLUBS
}

This enumerated type represents the four possible suits for a playing card, and it could have
been used in the example [Link] from Subsection 5.4.2.
Furthermore, in addition to its list of values, an enumerated type can contain some of the
other things that a regular class can contain, including methods and additional member
variables. Just add a semicolon (;) at the end of the list of values, and then add definitions of
the methods and variables in the usual way. For example, we might make an enumerated
type to represent the possible values of a playing card. It might be useful to have a method
that returns the corresponding value in the game of Blackjack. As another example,
suppose that when we print out one of the values, we’d like to see something di fferent from
the default string representation (the identifier that names the constant). In that case, we can
override the toString() method in the class to print out a different string representation.
This would gives something like:
public enum CardValue {
218 CHAPTER 5. OBJECTS AND CLASSES

ACE, TWO, THREE, FOUR, FIVE, SIX, SEVEN, EIGHT,

NINE, TEN, JACK, QUEEN, KING;
/**
Return the value of this CardValue in the game of Blackjack.
Note that the value returned for an ace is 1.
*/
public int blackJackValue() {
if (this == JACK || this == QUEEN || this == KING)
return 10;
else
return 1 + ordinal();
}
/**
Return a String representation of this CardValue, using numbers
for the numerical cards and names for the ace and face
cards. */
public String toString() {
switch (this) { // "this" is one of the enumerated type values
case ACE: // ordinal number of ACE
return "Ace";
case JACK: // ordinal number of JACK
return "Jack";
case QUEEN: // ordinal number of QUEEN
return "Queen";
case KING: // ordinal number of KING
return "King";
default: // it’s a numeric card value
int numericValue = 1 + ordinal();
return "" + numericValue;
}
} // end CardValue

The methods blackjackValue() and toString() are instance

methods in Card-
Value. Since [Link] is an object belonging to that class, you can call
[Link](). Suppose that cardVal is declared to be a
variable of type CardValue, so that it can refer to any of the values in the enumerated type.
We can call [Link]() to find the Blackjack value of the CardValue
object to which cardVal refers, and [Link](cardVal) will implicitly call
the method [Link]() to obtain the print representation of that CardValue.
(One other thing to keep in mind is that since CardValue is a class, the value of cardVal
can be null, which means it does not refer to any object.)
Remember that ACE, TWO, . . . , KING are the only possible objects of type CardValue,
so in an instance method in that class, this will refer to one of those values. Recall that
the instance method ordinal() is defined in any enumerated type and gives the position
of the enumerated type value in the list of possible values, with counting starting from zero.
(If you find it annoying to use the class name as part of the name of every enumerated
type constant, you can use static import to make the simple names of the constants directly
available—but only if you put the enumerated type into a package. For example, if the enu-
merated type CardValue is defined in a package named cardgames, then you could place
import static [Link].*;
5.7. INTERFACES, NESTED CLASSES, AND OTHER DETAILS 219

at the beginning of a source code file. This would allow you, for example, to use the name
JACK in that file instead of [Link].)
220 CHAPTER 5. OBJECTS AND CLASSES

Exercises for Chapter 5

In all versions of the PairOfDice class in Section 5.2, the instance variables die1 and
die2 are declared to be public. They really should be private, so that they are
protected from being changed from outside the class. Write another version of the
PairOfDice class in which the instance variables die1 and die2 are private. Your
class will need “getter” methods that can be used to find out the values of die1 and
die2. (The idea is to protect their values from being changed from outside the class,
but still to allow the values to be read.) Include other improvements in the class, if you
can think of any. Test your class with a short program that counts how many times a
pair of dice is rolled, before the total of the two dice is equal to two.

A common programming task is computing statistics of a set of numbers. (A statistic is a

number that summarizes some property of a set of data.) Common statistics include
the mean (also known as the average) and the standard deviation (which tells how
spread out the data are from the mean). I have written a little class called StatCalc that
can be used to compute these statistics, as well as the sum of the items in the dataset
and the number of items in the dataset. You can read the source code for this class in
the file [Link]. If calc is a variable of type StatCalc, then the following
methods are defined:
[Link](item); where item is a number, adds the item to the dataset.
[Link]() is a function that returns the number of items that have been
added to the dataset.
[Link]() is a function that returns the sum of all the items that have been
added to the dataset.
[Link]() is a function that returns the average of all the items.
[Link]() is a function that returns the standard
deviation of the items.

Typically, all the data are added one after the other by calling the enter() method
over and over, as the data become available. After all the data have been entered, any
of the other methods can be called to get statistical information about the data. The
methods getMean() and getStandardDeviation() should only be called if the
number of items is greater than zero.
Modify the current source code, [Link], to add instance methods
getMax() and getMin(). The getMax() method should return the largest of all the
items that have been added to the dataset, and getMin() should return the
smallest. You will need to add two new instance variables to keep track of the largest
and smallest items that have been seen so far.
Test your new class by using it in a program to compute statistics for a set of non-
zero numbers entered by the user. Start by creating an object of type StatCalc :
StatCalc calc; // Object to be used to process the data.
calc = new StatCalc();

Read numbers from the user and add them to the dataset. Use 0 as a sentinel value
(that is, stop reading numbers when the user enters 0). After all the user ’s non-zero
Exercises 221

numbers have been entered, print out each of the six statistics that are available from
calc.

This problem uses the PairOfDice class from Exercise 5.1 and the StatCalc class from
Exercise 5.2.
The program in Exercise 4.4 performs the experiment of counting how many times
a pair of dice is rolled before a given total comes up. It repeats this experiment 10000
times and then reports the average number of rolls. It does this whole process for each
possible total (2, 3, . . . , 12).
Redo that exercise. But instead of just reporting the average number of rolls, you
should also report the standard deviation and the maximum number of rolls. Use a
PairOfDice object to represent the dice. Use a StatCalc object to compute the statistics.
(You’ll need a new StatCalc object for each possible total, 2, 3, . . . , 12. You can use a
new pair of dice if you want, but it’s not necessary.)

The BlackjackHand class from Subsection 5.5.1 is an extension of the Hand class from
Sec-tion 5.4. The instance methods in the Hand class are discussed in that section. In
addition to those methods, BlackjackHand includes an instance method,
getBlackjackValue(), that returns the value of the hand for the game of Blackjack.
For this exercise, you will also need the Deck and Card classes from Section 5.4.
A Blackjack hand typically contains from two to six cards. Write a program to test the
BlackjackHand class. You should create a BlackjackHand object and a Deck object. Pick a
random number between 2 and 6. Deal that many cards from the deck and add them to the
hand. Print out all the cards in the hand, and then print out the value computed for the hand
by getBlackjackValue(). Repeat this as long as the user wants to continue.
In addition to [Link], your program will depend on [Link], [Link],
[Link], and [Link].

Write a program that lets the user play Blackjack. The game will be a simplified version of
Blackjack as it is played in a casino. The computer will act as the dealer. As in the
previous exercise, your program will need the classes defined in [Link], [Link],
[Link], and [Link]. (This is the longest and most complex program
that has come up so far in the exercises.)
You should first write a subroutine in which the user plays one game. The
subroutine should return a boolean value to indicate whether the user wins the game or
not. Return true if the user wins, false if the dealer wins. The program needs an
object of class Deck and two objects of type BlackjackHand, one for the dealer and
one for the user. The general object in Blackjack is to get a hand of cards whose value
is as close to 21 as possible, without going over. The game goes like this.
First, two cards are dealt into each player’s hand. If the dealer’s hand has a value of
21 at this point, then the dealer wins. Otherwise, if the user has 21, then the user
wins. (This is called a “Blackjack”.) Note that the dealer wins on a tie, so if both
players have Blackjack, then the dealer wins.
Now, if the game has not ended, the user gets a chance to add some cards to her hand. In
this phase, the user sees her own cards and sees one of the dealer’s two cards. (In a
casino, the dealer deals himself one card face up and one card face down. All the user’s
cards are dealt face up.) The user makes a decision whether to “Hit”,
222 CHAPTER 5. OBJECTS AND CLASSES

which means to add another card to her hand, or to “Stand”, which means to stop
taking cards.
If the user Hits, there is a possibility that the user will go over 21. In that case, the
game is over and the user loses. If not, then the process continues. The user gets
to decide again whether to Hit or Stand.
If the user Stands, the game will end, but first the dealer gets a chance to draw
cards. The dealer only follows rules, without any choice. The rule is that as long
as the value of the dealer’s hand is less than or equal to 16, the dealer Hits (that
is, takes another card). The user should see all the dealer’s cards at this point.
Now, the winner can be determined: If the dealer has gone over 21, the user wins.
Otherwise, if the dealer’s total is greater than or equal to the user’s total, then the
dealer wins. Otherwise, the user wins.
Two notes on programming: At any point in the subroutine, as soon as you know
who the winner is, you can say “return true;” or “return false;” to end the
subroutine and return to the main program. To avoid having an overabundance of
variables in your subroutine, remember that a function call such as
[Link]() can be used anywhere that a number could be
used, including in an output statement or in the condition of an if statement.
Write a main program that lets the user play several games of Blackjack. To make
things interesting, give the user 100 dollars, and let the user make bets on the game. If
the user loses, subtract the bet from the user’s money. If the user wins, add an amount
equal to the bet to the user’s money. End the program when the user wants to quit or
when she runs out of money.
An applet version of this program can be found in the on-line version of this exercise.
You might want to try it out before you work on the program.

Subsection 5.7.6 discusses the possibility of representing the suits and values of
playing cards as enumerated types. Rewrite the Card class from Subsection 5.4.2
to use these enumerated types. Test your class with a program that prints out
the 52 possible playing cards. Suggestions: You can modify the source code file
[Link], but you should leave out support for Jokers. In your main program,
use nested for loops to generated cards of all possible suits and values; the for
loops will be “for-each” loops of the type discussed in Subsection 3.4.4. It would
be nice to add a toString() method to the Suit class from Subsection 5.7.6, so
that a suit prints out as “Spades” or “Hearts” instead of “SPADES” or
“HEARTS”.
Quiz 223

Quiz on Chapter 5

Object-oriented programming uses classes and objects. What are classes and what are
objects? What is the relationship between classes and objects?

Explain carefully what null means in Java, and why this special value is necessary.

What is a constructor? What is the purpose of a constructor in a class?

Suppose that Kumquat is the name of a class and that fruit is a variable of type
Kumquat. What is the meaning of the statement “fruit = new Kumquat();”? That
is, what does the computer do when it executes this statement? (Try to give a complete
answer. The computer does several things.)

What is meant by the terms instance variable and instance method ?

Explain what is meant by the terms subclass and superclass.

Modify the following class so that the two instance variables are private and there is a
getter method and a setter method for each instance variable:
public class Player {
String name;
int score;
}

Explain why the class Player that is defined in the previous question has an instance
method named toString(), even though no definition of this method appears in the
definition of the class.

Explain the term polymorphism.

Java uses “garbage collection” for memory management. Explain what is meant here by
garbage collection. What is the alternative to garbage collection?

For this problem, you should write a very simple but complete class. The class represents a
counter that counts 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, . . . . The name of the class should be Counter. It has
one private instance variable representing the value of the counter. It has two instance
methods: increment() adds one to the counter value, and getValue() returns the
current counter value. Write a complete definition for the class, Counter.

This problem uses the Counter class from the previous question. The following
program segment is meant to simulate tossing a coin 100 times. It should use
two Counter objects, headCount and tailCount, to count the number of heads
and the number of tails. Fill in the blanks so that it will do so:
224 CHAPTER 5. OBJECTS AND CLASSES
Counter headCount, tailCount;

tailCount = new Counter();

headCount = new Counter();
for ( int flip = 0; flip < 100; flip++ ) {
if ([Link]() < 0.5) // There’s a 50/50 chance that this is true.
; // Count a "head".
else
} ; // Count a "tail".

[Link]("There were " + + " heads.");

[Link]("There were " + + " tails.");
Chapter 6

Introduction to GUI Programming

Computer users today expect to interact with their computers using a graphical user interface
(GUI). Java can be used to write GUI programs ranging from simple applets which run on a Web
page to sophisticated stand-alone applications.
GUI programs differ from traditional “straight-through” programs that you have encoun-
tered in the first few chapters of this book. One big di fference is that GUI programs are
event-driven . That is, user actions such as clicking on a button or pressing a key on the
keyboard generate events, and the program must respond to these events as they occur.
Event-driven programming builds on all the skills you have learned in the first five chapters
of this text. You need to be able to write the subroutines that respond to events. Inside these
subrou-tines, you are doing the kind of programming-in-the-small that was covered in
Chapter 2 and Chapter 3.
And of course, objects are everywhere in GUI programming. Events are objects. Colors
and fonts are objects. GUI components such as buttons and menus are objects. Events are
handled by instance methods contained in objects. In Java, GUI programming is object-
oriented programming.
This chapter covers the basics of GUI programming. The discussion will continue in
Chap-ter 12 with more details and with more advanced techniques.

6.1 The Basic GUI Application

There are two basic types of GUI program in Java: stand-alone applications and applets. An
applet is a program that runs in a rectangular area on a Web page. Applets are generally small
programs, meant to do fairly simple things, although there is nothing to stop them from being
very complex. Applets were responsible for a lot of the initial excitement about Java when it was
introduced, since they could do things that could not otherwise be done on Web pages.
However, there are now easier ways to do many of the more basic things that can be done with
applets, and they are no longer the main focus of interest in Java. Nevertheless, there are still
some things that can be done best with applets, and they are still fairly common on the Web. We
will look at applets in the next section.
A stand-alone application is a program that runs on its own, without depending on a Web
browser. You’ve been writing stand-alone applications all along. Any class that has a main()
routine defines a stand-alone application; running the program just means executing this
main() routine. However, the programs that you’ve seen up till now have been “command-line”
programs, where the user and computer interact by typing things back and forth to each

225
226 CHAPTER 6. INTRODUCTION TO GUI PROGRAMMING

other. A GUI program offers a much richer type of user interface, where the user uses a
mouse and keyboard to interact with GUI components such as windows, menus, buttons,
check boxes, text input boxes, scroll bars, and so on. The main routine of a GUI program
creates one or more such components and displays them on the computer screen. Very
often, that’s all it does. Once a GUI component has been created, it follows its own
programming—programming that tells it how to draw itself on the screen and how to
respond to events such as being clicked on by the user.
A GUI program doesn’t have to be immensely complex. We can, for example, write a
very simple GUI “Hello World” program that says “Hello” to the user, but does it by opening a
window where the the greeting is displayed:
import [Link];
public class HelloWorldGUI1 {

public static void main(String[] args)

{ [Link]( null, "Hello
World!" );
}
}

When this program is run, a window appears on the screen that contains the message
“Hello World!”. The window also contains an “OK” button for the user to click after reading
the message. When the user clicks this button, the window closes and the program ends. By
the way, this program can be placed in a file named [Link], compiled, and
run just like any other Java program.
Now, this program is already doing some pretty fancy stuff. It creates a window, it draws
the contents of that window, and it handles the event that is generated when the user clicks
the button. The reason the program was so easy to write is that all the work is done by
showMessageDialog(), a static method in the built-in class JOptionPane. (Note that
the source code “imports” the class [Link] to make it possible to
refer to the JOptionPane class using its simple name. See Subsection 4.5.3 for information
about importing classes from Java’s standard packages.)
If you want to display a message to the user in a GUI program, this is a good way to do it:
Just use a standard class that already knows how to do the work! And in fact, JOptionPane is
regularly used for just this purpose (but as part of a larger program, usually). Of course, if you
want to do anything serious in a GUI program, there is a lot more to learn. To give you an idea of
the types of things that are involved, we’ll look at a short GUI program that does the same things
as the previous program—open a window containing a message and an OK button, and respond
to a click on the button by ending the program—but does it all by hand instead of by using the
built-in JOptionPane class. Mind you, this is not a good way to write the program, but it will
illustrate some important aspects of GUI programming in Java.
Here is the source code for the program. You are not expected to understand it yet. I will
explain how it works below, but it will take the rest of the chapter before you will really
understand completely. In this section, you will just get a brief overview of GUI programming.
import [Link].*;
import [Link].*;
import [Link].*;
public class HelloWorldGUI2 {

private static class HelloWorldDisplay extends JPanel {

6.1. THE BASIC GUI APPLICATION 227

public void paintComponent(Graphics g) {

[Link](g);
[Link]( "Hello World!", 20, 30 );
}
}

private static class ButtonHandler implements ActionListener

{ public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e) {
[Link](0);
}
}
public static void main(String[] args) {
HelloWorldDisplay displayPanel = new HelloWorldDisplay();
JButton okButton = new JButton("OK");
ButtonHandler listener = new ButtonHandler();
[Link](listener);

JPanel content = new JPanel();

[Link](new BorderLayout());
[Link](displayPanel, [Link]);
[Link](okButton, [Link]);

JFrame window = new JFrame("GUI Test");

[Link](content);
[Link](250,100);
[Link](100,100);
[Link](true);
}
}

6.1.1 JFrame and JPanel

In a Java GUI program, each GUI component in the interface is represented by an object in
the program. One of the most fundamental types of component is the window . Windows
have many behaviors. They can be opened and closed. They can be resized. They have
“titles” that are displayed in the title bar above the window. And most important, they can
contain other GUI components such as buttons and menus.
Java, of course, has a built-in class to represent windows. There are actually several
different types of window, but the most common type is represented by the JFrame class
(which is included in the package [Link]). A JFrame is an independent window that
can, for example, act as the main window of an application. One of the most important
things to understand is that a JFrame object comes with many of the behaviors of windows
already programmed in. In particular, it comes with the basic properties shared by all
windows, such as a titlebar and the ability to be opened and closed. Since a JFrame comes
with these behaviors, you don’t have to program them yourself ! This is, of course, one of
the central ideas of object-oriented programming. What a JFrame doesn’t come with, of
course, is content , the stuff that is contained in the window. If you don’t add any other
content to a JFrame, it will just display a large blank area. You can add content either by
creating a JFrame object and then adding the content to it or by creating a subclass of
JFrame and adding the content in the constructor of that subclass.
228 CHAPTER 6. INTRODUCTION TO GUI PROGRAMMING

The main program above declares a variable, window, of type JFrame and sets it to
refer to a new window object with the statement:
JFrame window = new JFrame("GUI Test");

The parameter in the constructor, “GUI Test”, specifies the title that will be displayed in the
titlebar of the window. This line creates the window object, but the window itself is not yet
visible on the screen. Before making the window visible, some of its properties are set with
these statements:
[Link](content);
[Link](250,100);
[Link](100,100);

The first line here sets the content of the window. (The content itself was created earlier in
the main program.) The second line says that the window will be 250 pixels wide and 100
pixels high. The third line says that the upper left corner of the window will be 100 pixels
over from the left edge of the screen and 100 pixels down from the top. Once all this has
been set up, the window is actually made visible on the screen with the command:
[Link](true);

It might look as if the program ends at that point, and, in fact, the main() routine does end.
However, the the window is still on the screen and the program as a whole does not end
until the user clicks the OK button.
∗∗∗
The content that is displayed in a JFrame is called its content pane. (In addition to its
content pane, a JFrame can also have a menu bar, which is a separate thing that I will talk
about later.) A basic JFrame already has a blank content pane; you can either add things to
that pane or you can replace the basic content pane entirely. In my sample program, the line
[Link](content) replaces the original blank content pane with a
different component. (Remember that a “component” is just a visual element of a graphical
user interface). In this case, the new content is a component of type JPanel.
JPanel is another of the fundamental classes in Swing. The basic JPanel is, again, just a
blank rectangle. There are two ways to make a useful JPanel : The first is to add other
components to the panel; the second is to draw something in the panel. Both of these
techniques are illustrated in the sample program. In fact, you will find two JPanel s in the
program: content, which is used to contain other components, and displayPanel,
which is used as a drawing surface.
Let’s look more closely at displayPanel. This variable is of type HelloWorldDisplay,
which is a nested static class inside the HelloWorldGUI2 class. (Nested classes were
introduced in Subsection 5.7.2.) This class defines just one instance method,
paintComponent(), which overrides a method of the same name in the JPanel class:
private static class HelloWorldDisplay extends JPanel
{ public void paintComponent(Graphics g) {
[Link](g);
[Link]( "Hello World!", 20, 30 );
}
}

The paintComponent() method is called by the system when a component needs to be painted on the
screen. In the JPanel class, the paintComponent method simply fills the panel with the
6.1. THE BASIC GUI APPLICATION 229

panel’s background color. The paintComponent() method in HelloWorldDisplay begins

by call-ing [Link](g). This calls the version of paintComponent()
that is defined in the superclass, JPanel ; that is, it fills the panel with the background color.
(See Subsection 5.6.2 for a discussion of the special variable super.) Then it calls
[Link]() to paint the string “Hello World!” onto the panel. The net result is that
whenever a HelloWorldDisplay is shown on the screen, it displays the string “Hello World!”.
We will often use JPanel s in this way, as drawing surfaces. Usually, when we do this,
we will define a nested class that is a subclass of JPanel and we will write a
paintComponent method in that class to draw the desired content in the panel.

6.1.2 Components and Layout

Another way of using a JPanel is as a container to hold other components. Java has many
classes that define GUI components. Before these components can appear on the screen,
they must be added to a container. In this program, the variable named content refers to
a JPanel that is used as a container, and two other components are added to that container.
This is done in the statements:
[Link](displayPanel, [Link]);
[Link](okButton, [Link]);

Here, content refers to an object of type JPanel ; later in the program, this panel becomes
the content pane of the window. The first component that is added to content is
displayPanel which, as discussed above, displays the message, “Hello World!”. The
second is okButton which represents the button that the user clicks to close the window.
The variable okButton is of type JButton, the Java class that represents push buttons.
The “BorderLayout” stuff in these statements has to do with how the two components
are arranged in the container. When components are added to a container, there has to be
some way of deciding how those components are arranged inside the container. This is
called “laying out” the components in the container, and the most common technique for
laying out components is to use a layout manager . A layout manager is an object that
implements some policy for how to arrange the components in a container; different types of
layout manager implement different policies. One type of layout manager is defined by the
BorderLayout class. In the program, the statement
[Link](new BorderLayout());

creates a new BorderLayout object and tells the content panel to use the new object as its
layout manager. Essentially, this line determines how components that are added to the content
panel will be arranged inside the panel. We will cover layout managers in much more detail later,
but for now all you need to know is that adding okButton in the [Link]
position puts the button at the bottom of the panel, and putting displayPanel in the
[Link] position makes it fill any space that is not taken up by the button.
This example shows a general technique for setting up a GUI: Create a container and assign
a layout manager to it, create components and add them to the container, and use the container
as the content pane of a window or applet. A container is itself a component, so it is possible that
some of the components that are added to the top-level container are themselves containers,
with their own layout managers and components. This makes it possible to build up complex
user interfaces in a hierarchical fashion, with containers inside containers inside containers. . .
230 CHAPTER 6. INTRODUCTION TO GUI PROGRAMMING

6.1.3 Events and Listeners

The structure of containers and components sets up the physical appearance of a GUI, but
it doesn’t say anything about how the GUI behaves. That is, what can the user do to the
GUI and how will it respond? GUIs are largely event-driven ; that is, the program waits for
events that are generated by the user’s actions (or by some other cause). When an event
occurs, the program responds by executing an event-handling method . In order to
program the behavior of a GUI, you have to write event-handling methods to respond to the
events that you are interested in.
The most common technique for handling events in Java is to use event listeners. A
listener is an object that includes one or more event-handling methods. When an event is
detected by another object, such as a button or menu, the listener object is notified and it
responds by running the appropriate event-handling method. An event is detected or
generated by an object. Another object, the listener, has the responsibility of responding to
the event. The event itself is actually represented by a third object, which carries information
about the type of event, when it occurred, and so on. This division of responsibilities makes
it easier to organize large programs.
As an example, consider the OK button in the sample program. When the user clicks the
button, an event is generated. This event is represented by an object belonging to the class
ActionEvent. The event that is generated is associated with the button; we say that the
button is the source of the event. The listener object in this case is an object belonging to
the class ButtonHandler, which is defined as a nested class inside HelloWorldGUI2 :
private static class ButtonHandler implements ActionListener
{ public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e) {
[Link](0);
}
}

This class implements the ActionListener interface—a requirement for listener objects
that handle events from buttons. (Interfaces were introduced in Subsection 5.7.1.) The
event-handling method is named actionPerformed, as specified by the ActionListener
interface. This method contains the code that is executed when the user clicks the button; in
this case, the code is a call to [Link](), which will terminate the program.
There is one more ingredient that is necessary to get the event from the button to the
listener object: The listener object must register itself with the button as an event listener.
This is done with the statement:
[Link](listener);

This statement tells okButton that when the user clicks the button, the ActionEvent that is
generated should be sent to listener. Without this statement, the button has no way of
knowing that some other object would like to listen for events from the button.
This example shows a general technique for programming the behavior of a GUI: Write classes that
include event-handling methods. Create objects that belong to these classes and register them as listeners
with the objects that will actually detect or generate the events. When an event occurs, the listener is notified,
and the code that you wrote in one of its event-handling methods is executed. At first, this might seem like a
very roundabout and complicated way to get things done, but as you gain experience with it, you will find that
it is very flexible and that it goes together very well with object oriented programming. (We will return to
events
6.2. APPLETS AND HTML 231

and listeners in much more detail in Section 6.3 and later sections, and I do not expect you
to completely understand them at this time.)

6.2 Applets and HTML

Although stand-alone applications are probably more important than applets at this point in the
history of Java, applets are still widely used. They can do things on Web pages that can’t easily
be done with other technologies. It is easy to distribute applets to users: The user just has to
open a Web page, and the applet is there, with no special installation required (although the user
must have an appropriate version of Java installed on their computer). And of course, applets
are fun; now that the Web has become such a common part of life, it’s nice to be able to see
your work running on a web page.
The good news is that writing applets is not much di fferent from writing stand-alone appli-
cations. The structure of an applet is essentially the same as the structure of the JFrames that
were introduced in the previous section, and events are handled in the same way in both types
of program. So, most of what you learn about applications applies to applets, and vice versa.
Of course, one difference is that an applet is dependent on a Web page, so to use
applets effectively, you have to learn at least a little about creating Web pages. Web pages
are written using a language called HTML (HyperText Markup Language). In Subsection
6.2.3, below, you’ll learn how to use HTML to create Web pages that display applets.

6.2.1 JApplet
The JApplet class (in package [Link]) can be used as a basis for writing applets in
the same way that JFrame is used for writing stand-alone applications. The basic JApplet
class represents a blank rectangular area. Since an applet is not a stand-alone application,
this area must appear on a Web page, or in some other environment that knows how to
display an applet. Like a JFrame, a JApplet contains a content pane (and can contain a
menu bar). You can add content to an applet either by adding content to its content pane or
by replacing the content pane with another component. In my examples, I will generally
create a JPanel and use it as a replacement for the applet’s content pane.
To create an applet, you will write a subclass of JApplet. The JApplet class defines
several instance methods that are unique to applets. These methods are called by the
applet’s environ-ment at certain points during the applet’s “life cycle.” In the JApplet class
itself, these methods do nothing; you can override these methods in a subclass. The most
important of these special applet methods is
public void init()

An applet’s init() method is called when the applet is created. You can use the init()
method as a place where you can set up the physical structure of the applet and the event
handling that will determine its behavior. (You can also do some initialization in the
constructor for your class, but there are certain aspects of the applet’s environment that are
set up after its constructor is called but before the init() method is called, so there are a
few operations that will work in the init() method but will not work in the constructor.)
The other applet life-cycle methods are start(), stop(), and destroy(). I will not use
these methods for the time being and will not discuss them here except to mention that
destroy() is called at the end of the applet’s lifetime and can be used as a place to do any
necessary cleanup, such as closing any windows that were opened by the applet.
232 CHAPTER 6. INTRODUCTION TO GUI PROGRAMMING

With this in mind, we can look at our first example of a JApplet. It is, of course, an applet
that says “Hello World!”. To make it a little more interesting, I have added a button that
changes the text of the message, and a state variable, currentMessage, that holds the
text of the current message. This example is very similar to the stand-alone application
HelloWorldGUI2 from the previous section. It uses an event-handling class to respond
when the user clicks the button, a panel to display the message, and another panel that
serves as a container for the message panel and the button. The second panel becomes the
content pane of the applet. Here is the source code for the applet; again, you are not
expected to understand all the details at this time:
import [Link].*;
import [Link].*;
import [Link].*;
/**
A simple applet that can display the messages "Hello World"
and "Goodbye World". The applet contains a button, and it
switches from one message to the other when the button is
clicked.
*/
public class HelloWorldApplet extends JApplet {
private String currentMessage = "Hello World!"; // Currently displayed message.
private MessageDisplay displayPanel; // The panel where the message is
displayed.

private class MessageDisplay extends JPanel { // Defines the

display panel. public void paintComponent(Graphics g) {
[Link](g);
[Link](currentMessage, 20, 30);
}
}

private class ButtonHandler implements ActionListener { // The event

listener. public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e) {
if ([Link]("Hello World!"))
currentMessage = "Goodbye World!";
else
currentMessage = "Hello World!";
[Link](); // Paint display panel with new message.
}
}
/**
The applet’s init() method creates the button and display panel and
adds them to the applet, and it sets up a listener to respond to
clicks on the button.
*/
public void init() {
displayPanel = new MessageDisplay();
JButton changeMessageButton = new JButton("Change
Message"); ButtonHandler listener = new ButtonHandler();
[Link](listener);

JPanel content = new JPanel();

[Link](new BorderLayout());
6.2. APPLETS AND HTML 233

[Link](displayPanel, [Link]);
[Link](changeMessageButton, [Link]);

setContentPane(content);
}
}

You should compare this class with [Link] from the previous section. One
subtle difference that you will notice is that the member variables and nested classes in this
example are non-static. Remember that an applet is an object. A single class can be used to
make several applets, and each of those applets will need its own copy of the applet data, so the
member variables in which the data is stored must be non-static instance variables. Since the
variables are non-static, the two nested classes, which use those variables, must also be non-
static. (Static nested classes cannot access non-static member variables in the containing class;
see Subsection 5.7.2.) Remember the basic rule for deciding whether to make a nested class
static: If it needs access to any instance variable or instance method in the containing class, the
nested class must be non-static; otherwise, it can be declared to be static.

6.2.2 Reusing Your JPanels

Both applets and frames can be programmed in the same way: Design a JPanel, and use it
to replace the default content pane in the applet or frame. This makes it very easy to write
two versions of a program, one which runs as an applet and one which runs as a frame. The
idea is to create a subclass of JPanel that represents the content pane for your program; all
the hard programming work is done in this panel class. An object of this class can then be
used as the content pane either in a frame or in an applet. Only a very simple main()
program is needed to show your panel in a frame, and only a very simple applet class is
needed to show your panel in an applet, so it’s easy to make both versions.
As an example, we can rewrite HelloWorldApplet by writing a subclass of JPanel. That
class can then be reused to make a frame in a standalone application. This class is very
similar to HelloWorldApplet, but now the initialization is done in a constructor instead of in an
init() method:
import [Link].*;
import [Link].*;
import [Link].*;
public class HelloWorldPanel extends JPanel {
private String currentMessage = "Hello World!"; // Currently displayed message.
private MessageDisplay displayPanel; // The panel where the message is
displayed.

private class MessageDisplay extends JPanel { // Defines the

display panel. public void paintComponent(Graphics g) {
[Link](g);
[Link](currentMessage, 20, 30);
}
}

private class ButtonHandler implements ActionListener { // The event

listener. public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e) {
if ([Link]("Hello World!"))
currentMessage = "Goodbye World!";
234 CHAPTER 6. INTRODUCTION TO GUI PROGRAMMING

else
currentMessage = "Hello World!";
[Link](); // Paint display panel with new message.
}
}
/**
The constructor creates the components that will be contained inside this
panel, and then adds those components to this panel.
*/
public HelloWorldPanel() {
displayPanel = new MessageDisplay(); // Create the display subpanel.

JButton changeMessageButton = new JButton("Change Message"); //

The button. ButtonHandler listener = new ButtonHandler();
[Link](listener);
setLayout(new BorderLayout()); // Set the layout manager for this panel.
add(displayPanel, [Link]); // Add the display panel.
add(changeMessageButton, [Link]); // Add the button.

}
}

Once this class exists, it can be used in an applet. The applet class only has to create an
object of type HelloWorldPanel and use that object as its content pane:
import [Link];

public class HelloWorldApplet2 extends

JApplet { public void init() {
HelloWorldPanel content = new
HelloWorldPanel(); setContentPane(content);
}
}

Similarly, its easy to make a frame that uses an object of type HelloWorldPanel as its
content pane:
import [Link];
public class HelloWorldGUI3 {
public static void main(String[] args) {
JFrame window = new JFrame("GUI Test");
HelloWorldPanel content = new HelloWorldPanel();
[Link](content);
[Link](250,100);
[Link](100,100);
[Link]( [Link] ON CLOSE );
[Link](true);
}
}

One new feature of this example is the line

[Link]( [Link] ON CLOSE );
6.2. APPLETS AND HTML 235

This says that when the user closes the window by clicking the close box in the title bar of
the window, the program should be terminated. This is necessary because no other way is
provided to end the program. Without this line, the default close operation of the window
would simply hide the window when the user clicks the close box, leaving the program
running. This brings up one of the difficulties of reusing the same panel class both in an
applet and in a frame: There are some things that a stand-alone application can do that an
applet can’t do. Terminating the program is one of those things. If an applet calls
[Link](), it has no effect except to generate an error.
Nevertheless, in spite of occasional minor difficulties, many of the GUI examples in this book
will be written as subclasses of JPanel that can be used either in an applet or in a frame.

6.2.3 Basic HTML

Before you can actually use an applet that you have written, you need to create a Web page
on which to place the applet. Such pages are themselves written in a language called HTML
(HyperText Markup Language). An HTML document describes the contents of a page. A
Web browser interprets the HTML code to determine what to display on the page. The
HTML code doesn’t look much like the resulting page that appears in the browser. The
HTML document does contain all the text that appears on the page, but that text is “marked
up” with commands that determine the structure and appearance of the text and determine
what will appear on the page in addition to the text.
HTML has become a rather complicated language. In this section, I will cover just the
most basic aspects of the language. You can easily find more information on the Web, if you
want to learn more. Although there are many Web-authoring programs that make it possible
to create Web pages without ever looking at the underlying HTML code, it is possible to
write an HTML page using an ordinary text editor, typing in all the mark-up commands by
hand, and it is worthwhile to learn how to create at least simple pages in this way.
There is a strict syntax for HTML documents (although in practice Web browsers will do
their best to display a page even if it does not follow the syntax strictly). Leaving out optional
features, an HTML document has the form:
<html>
<head>
<title> document-title </title>
</head>
<body>
document-content
</body>
</html>

The document-title is text that will appear in the title bar of the Web browser window when
the page is displayed. The document-content is what is displayed on the page itself. The
rest of this section describes some of the things that can go into the document-content
section of an HTML document
∗∗∗
The mark-up commands used by HTML are called tags. Examples include <html> and
<title> in the document outline given above. An HTML tag takes the form
< tag-name optional-modifiers >
236 CHAPTER 6. INTRODUCTION TO GUI PROGRAMMING

where the tag-name is a word that specifies the command, and the optional-modifiers , if
present, are used to provide additional information for the command (much like parameters
in subroutines). A modifier takes the form
modifier-name = value

Usually, the value is enclosed in quotes, and it must be if it is more than one word long or if
it contains certain special characters. There are a few modifiers which have no value, in
which case only the name of the modifier is present. HTML is case insensitive, which means
that you can use upper case and lower case letters interchangeably in tags and modifiers.
(However, lower case is generally used because XHTML, a successor language to HTML,
requires lower case.)
A simple example of a tag is <hr>, which draws a line—also called a “horizontal rule”—
across the page. The hr tag can take several possible modifiers such as width and
align. For example, a horizontal line that extends halfway across the page could be
generated with the tag:
<hr width="50%">

The width here is specified as 50% of the available space, meaning a line that extends
halfway across the page. The width could also be given as a fixed number of pixels.
Many tags require matching closing tags, which take the form
</ tag-name >

For example, the <html> tag at the beginning of an HTML document must be matched
by a closing </html> tag at the end of the document. As another example, the tag <pre>
must always have a matching closing tag </pre> later in the document. An
opening/closing tag pair applies to everything that comes between the opening tag and the
closing tag. The <pre> tag tells a Web browser to display everything between the <pre>
and the </pre> just as it is formatted in the original HTML source code, including all the
spaces and carriage returns. (But tags between <pre> and </pre> are still interpreted by
the browser.) “Pre” stands for preformatted text. All of the sample programs in the on-line
version of this book are formatted using the <pre> command.
It is important for you to understand that when you don’t use <pre>, the computer will
completely ignore the formatting of the text in the HTML source code. The only thing it pays
attention to is the tags. Five blank lines in the source code have no more e ffect than one
blank line or even a single blank space. Outside of <pre>, if you want to force a new line
on the Web page, you can use the tag <br>, which stands for “break”. For example, I might
give my address as:
David Eck<br>
Department of Mathematics and Computer Science<br>
Hobart and William Smith Colleges<br>
Geneva, NY 14456<br>

If you want extra vertical space in your web page, you can use several <br>’s in a row.
Similarly, you need a tag to indicate how the text should be broken up into paragraphs. This
is done with the <p> tag, which should be placed at the beginning of every paragraph. The <p>
tag has a matching </p>, which should be placed at the end of each paragraph. The closing </p>
is technically optional, but it is considered good form to use it. If you want all the lines of the
paragraph to be shoved over to the right, you can use <p align=right> instead of
6.2. APPLETS AND HTML 237

<p>. (This is mostly useful when used with one short line, or when used with <br> to make
several short lines.) You can also use <p align=center> for centered lines.
By the way, if tags like <p> and <hr> have special meanings in HTML, you might
wonder how one can get them to appear literally on a web page. To get certain special
characters to appear on the page, you have to use an entity name in the HTML source
code. The entity name for < is &lt;, and the entity name for > is &gt;. Entity names
begin with & and end with a semicolon. The character & is itself a special character whose
entity name is &amp;. There are also entity names for nonstandard characters such as an
accented “e”, which has the entity name &eacute;.
There are several useful tags that change the appearance of text. For example, to get
italic text, enclose the text between <i> and </i>. For example,
<i>Introduction to Programming using Java</i>

in an HTML document gives Introduction to Programming using Java in italics when the
document is displayed as a Web page. Similarly, the tags <b>, <u>, and <tt> can be
used for bold, underlined, and typewriter-style (“monospace”) text.
A headline, with very large text, can be made by placing the the text between <h1> and
</h1>. Headlines with smaller text can be made using <h2> or <h3> instead of <h1>.
Note that these headline tags stand on their own; they are not used inside paragraphs. You
can add the modifier align=center to center the headline, and you can include break
tags (<br>) in a headline to break it up into multiple lines. For example, the following HTML
code will produce a medium–sized, centered, two-line headline:
<h2 align=center>Chapter 6:<br>Introduction to GUI Programming</h2>

∗∗∗
The most distinctive feature of HTML is that documents can contain links to other docu-
ments. The user can follow links from page to page and in the process visit pages from all
over the Internet.
The <a> tag is used to create a link. The text between the <a> and its matching </a>
appears on the page as the text of the link; the user can follow the link by clicking on this
text. The <a> tag uses the modifier href to say which document the link should connect
to. The value for href must be a URL (Uniform Resource Locator). A URL is a coded set
of instructions for finding a document on the Internet. For example, the URL for my own
“home page” is
[Link]

To make a link to this page, I would use the HTML source code
<a href="[Link] Home Page</a>

The best place to find URLs is on existing Web pages. Web browsers display the URL for
the page you are currently viewing, and they can display the URL of a link if you point to the
link with the mouse.
If you are writing an HTML document and you want to make a link to another document
that is in the same directory, you can use a relative URL. The relative URL consists of just
the name of the file. For example, to create a link to a file named “[Link]” in the same
directory as the HTML document that you are writing, you could use
<a href="[Link]">Section 1</a>
238 CHAPTER 6. INTRODUCTION TO GUI PROGRAMMING

There are also relative URLs for linking to files that are in other directories. Using relative
URLs is a good idea, since if you use them, you can move a whole collection of files without
changing any of the links between them (as long as you don’t change the relative locations
of the files).
When you type a URL into a Web browser, you can omit the “[Link] at the beginning of
the URL. However, in an <a> tag in an HTML document, the “[Link] can only be omitted if
the URL is a relative URL. For a normal URL, it is required.
∗∗∗
You can add images to a Web page with the <img> tag. (This is a tag that has no matching
closing tag.) The actual image must be stored in a separate file from the HTML document. The
<img> tag has a required modifier, named src, to specify the URL of the image file. For most
browsers, the image should be in one of the formats PNG (with a file name ending in “.png”),
JPEG (with a file name ending in “.jpeg” or “.jpg”), or GIF (with a file name ending in “.gif”).
Usually, the image is stored in the same place as the HTML document, and a relative URL—that
is, just the name of the image file—is used to specify the image file.
The <img> tag also has several optional modifiers. It’s a good idea to always include the
height and width modifiers, which specify the size of the image in pixels. Some browsers
handle images better if they know in advance how big they are. The align modifier can be
used to affect the placement of the image: “align=right” will shove the image to the right edge of
the page, and the text on the page will flow around the image; “align=left” works similarly.
(Unfortunately, “align=center” doesn’t have the meaning you would expect. Browsers treat
images as if they are just big characters. Images can occur inside paragraphs, links, and
headings, for example. Alignment values of center, top, and bottom are used to specify
how the image should line up with other characters in a line of text: Should the baseline of the
text be at the center, the top, or the bottom of the image? Alignment values of right and left
were added to HTML later, but they are the most useful values. If you want an image centered
on the page, put it inside a <p align=center> tag.)
For example, here is HTML code that will place an image from a file named [Link]
on the page.
<img src="[Link]" align=right height=150 width=100>

The image is 100 pixels wide and 150 pixels high, and it will appear on the right edge of the
page.

6.2.4 Applets on Web Pages

The main point of this whole discussion of HTML is to learn how to use applets on the Web.
The <applet> tag can be used to add a Java applet to a Web page. This tag must have a
matching </applet>. A required modifier named code gives the name of the compiled
class file that contains the applet class. The modifiers height and width are required to
specify the size of the applet, in pixels. If you want the applet to be centered on the page,
you can put the applet in a paragraph with center alignment So, an applet tag to display
an applet named HelloWorldApplet centered on a Web page would look like this:
<p align=center>
<applet code="[Link]" height=100 width=250>
</applet>
</p>
6.2. APPLETS AND HTML 239

This assumes that the file [Link] is located in the same directory
with the HTML document. If this is not the case, you can use another modifier, codebase,
to give the URL of the directory that contains the class file. The value of code itself is
always just a class, not a URL.
If the applet uses other classes in addition to the applet class itself, then those class files
must be in the same directory as the applet class (always assuming that your classes are all in
the “default package”; see Subsection 2.6.4). If an applet requires more than one or two class
files, it’s a good idea to collect all the class files into a single jar file. Jar files are “archive files”
which hold a number of smaller files. If your class files are in a jar archive, then you have to
specify the name of the jar file in an archive modifier in the <applet> tag, as in
<applet code="[Link]" archive="[Link]" height=50...

I will have more to say about creating and using jar files at the end of this chapter.
Applets can use applet parameters to customize their behavior. Applet parameters are
specified by using <param> tags, which can only occur between an <applet> tag and the
closing </applet>. The param tag has required modifiers named name and value, and
it takes the form
<param name=" param-name " value=" param-value ">

The parameters are available to the applet when it runs. An applet can use the predefined
method getParameter() to check for parameters param tags. The getParameter()
specified in method has the following interface:
String getParameter(String paramName)

The parameter paramName corresponds to the param-name in a param tag. If the specified
paramName actually occurs in one of the param tags, then getParameter(paramName)
returns the associated param-value . If the specified paramName does not occur in any
param tag, then getParameter(paramName) returns the value null. Parameter names are
case-sensitive, so you cannot use “size” in the param tag and ask for “Size” in
getParameter. The getParameter() method is often called in the applet’s init()
method. It will not work correctly in the applet’s constructor, since it depends on information
about the applet’s environment that is not available when the constructor is called.
Here is an example of an applet tag with several params:
<applet code="[Link]" width=200
height=50> <param name="message" value="Goodbye
World!"> <param name="font" value="Serif">
<param name="size" value="36">
</applet>

The ShowMessage applet would presumably read these parameters in its init()
method, which could go something like this:
String message; // Instance variable: message to be displayed.
String fontName; // Instance variable: font to use for display.
int fontSize; // Instance variable: size of the display font.
public void init() {
String value;
value = getParameter("message"); // Get message param, if any.
if (value == null)
 240 CHAPTER 6. INTRODUCTION TO GUI PROGRAMMING
message = "Hello World!"; // Default value, if no param is present.

else
message = value; // Value from PARAM tag.
value = getParameter("font");
if (value == null)
fontName = "SansSerif"; // Default value, if no param is present.
else
fontName = value;
value = getParameter("size");
try {
fontSize = [Link](value); // Convert string to number.
}
catch (NumberFormatException e) {
fontSize = 20; // Default value, if no param is present, or if
} // the parameter value is not a legal integer.
.
.
.

Elsewhere in the applet, the instance variables message, fontName, and fontSize
would be used to determine the message displayed by the applet and the appearance of
that message. Note that the value returned by getParameter() is always a String. If the
param represents a numerical value, the string must be converted into a number, as is done
here for the size parameter.

6.3 Graphics and Painting

Everthing you see on a computer screen has to be drawn there, even the text. The Java API
includes a range of classes and methods that are devoted to drawing. In this section, I’ll look at
some of the most basic of these.
The physical structure of a GUI is built of components. The term component refers to a
visual element in a GUI, including buttons, menus, text-input boxes, scroll bars, check
boxes, and so on. In Java, GUI components are represented by objects belonging to
subclasses of the class [Link]. Most components in the Swing GUI—
although not top-level com-ponents like JApplet and JFrame—belong to subclasses of the
class [Link], which is itself a subclass of [Link].
Every component is responsible for drawing itself. If you want to use a standard component,
you only have to add it to your applet or frame. You don’t have to worry about painting it on
the screen. That will happen automatically, since it already knows how to draw itself.
Sometimes, however, you do want to draw on a component. You will have to do this
whenever you want to display something that is not included among the standard, pre-
defined component classes. When you want to do this, you have to define your own
component class and provide a method in that class for drawing the component. I will
always use a subclass of JPanel when I need a drawing surface of this kind, as I did for the
MessageDisplay class in the example [Link] in the previous section. A
JPanel, like any JComponent, draws its content in the method
public void paintComponent(Graphics g)

To create a drawing surface, you should define a subclass of JPanel and provide a custom
paintComponent() method. Create an object belonging to this class and use it in your applet
6.3. GRAPHICS AND PAINTING 241

or frame. When the time comes for your component to be drawn on the screen, the system will
call its paintComponent() to do the drawing. That is, the code that you put into the
paintComponent() method will be executed whenever the panel needs to be drawn on the
screen; by writing this method, you determine the picture that will be displayed in the panel.
Note that the paintComponent() method has a parameter of type Graphics. The Graphics
object will be provided by the system when it calls your method. You need this object to do the
actual drawing. To do any drawing at all in Java, you need a graphics context . A graphics
context is an object belonging to the class [Link]. Instance methods are
provided in this class for drawing shapes, text, and images. Any given Graphics object can draw
to only one location. In this chapter, that location will always be a GUI component belonging to
some subclass of JPanel. The Graphics class is an abstract class, which means that it is
impossible to create a graphics context directly, with a constructor. There are actually two ways
to get a graphics context for drawing on a component: First of all, of course, when the
paintComponent() method of a component is called by the system, the parameter to that
method is a graphics context for drawing on the component. Second, every component has an
instance method called getGraphics(). This method is a function that returns a graphics
context that can be used for drawing on the component outside its paintComponent()
method. The official line is that you should not do this, and I will avoid it for the most part. But I
have found it convenient to use getGraphics() in a few cases.
The paintComponent() method in the JPanel class simply fills the panel with the
panel’s background color. When defining a subclass of JPanel for use as a drawing surface,
you will almost always want to fill the panel with the background color before drawing other
content onto the panel (although it is not necessary to do this if the drawing commands in
the method cover the background of the component completely.) This is traditionally done
with a call to [Link](g), so most paintComponent() methods that
you write will have the form:
public void paintComponent(g) {
[Link](g);
. . . // Draw the content of the component.
}

∗∗∗
Most components do, in fact, do all drawing operations in their paintComponent() methods.
What happens if, in the middle of some other method, you realize that the content of the component
needs to be changed? You should not call paintComponent() directly to make the change; this
method is meant to be called only by the system. Instead, you have to inform the system that the
component needs to be redrawn, and let the system do its job by calling paintComponent(). You
do this by calling the component’s repaint() method. The method
public void repaint();

is defined in the Component class, and so can be used with any component. You should
call repaint() to inform the system that the component needs to be redrawn. The
repaint() method returns immediately, without doing any painting itself. The system will
call the com-ponent’s paintComponent() method later, as soon as it gets a chance to do
so, after processing other pending events if there are any.
Note that the system can also call paintComponent() for other reasons. It is called when
the component first appears on the screen. It will also be called if the component is resized or if it
is covered up by another window and then uncovered. The system does not save a copy of the
242 CHAPTER 6. INTRODUCTION TO GUI PROGRAMMING

component’s contents when it is covered. When it is uncovered, the component is

responsible for redrawing itself. (As you will see, some of our early examples will not be able
to do this correctly.)
This means that, to work properly, the paintComponent() method must be smart
enough to correctly redraw the component at any time. To make this possible, a program
should store data about the state of the component in its instance variables. These variables
should contain all the information necessary to redraw the component completely. The
paintComponent() method should use the data in these variables to decide what to draw.
When the program wants to change the content of the component, it should not simply draw
the new content. It should change the values of the relevant variables and call repaint().
When the system calls paintComponent(), that method will use the new values of the
variables and will draw the component with the desired modifications. This might seem a
roundabout way of doing things. Why not just draw the modifications directly? There are at
least two reasons. First of all, it really does turn out to be easier to get things right if all
drawing is done in one method. Second, even if you did make modifications directly, you
would still have to make the paintComponent() method aware of them in some way so
that it will be able to redraw the component correctly on demand.
You will see how all this works in practice as we work through examples in the rest of
this chapter. For now, we will spend the rest of this section looking at how to get some
actual drawing done.

6.3.1 Coordinates
The screen of a computer is a grid of little squares called pixels. The color of each pixel can be
set individually, and drawing on the screen just means setting the colors of individual pixels.

A graphics context draws in a rectangle made up of pixels. A position in the rectangle is

specified by a pair of integer coordinates, (x,y). The upper left corner has coordinates
(0,0). The x coordinate increases from left to right, and the y coordinate increases from
top to bottom. The illustration shows a 16-by-10 pixel component (with very large pixels). A
small line, rectangle, and oval are shown as they would be drawn by coloring individual
pixels. (Note that, properly speaking, the coordinates don’t belong to the pixels but to the
grid lines between them.)
For any component, you can find out the size of the rectangle that it occupies by calling the
instance methods getWidth() and getHeight(), which return the number of pixels in the horizontal
and vertical directions, respectively. In general, it ’s not a good idea to assume that you know the size of
a component, since the size is often set by a layout manager and can
6.3. GRAPHICS AND PAINTING 243

even change if the component is in a window and that window is resized by the user. This
means that it’s good form to check the size of a component before doing any drawing on
that component. For example, you can use a paintComponent() method that looks like:
public void paintComponent(Graphics g) {
[Link](g);
int width =getWidth(); // Find out the width of this component.
int height = getHeight(); // Find out its height.
. . . // Draw the content of the component.
}

Of course, your drawing commands will have to take the size into account. That is, they
will have to use (x,y) coordinates that are calculated based on the actual height and width
of the component.

6.3.2 Colors

You will probably want to use some color when you draw. Java is designed to work with the
RGB color system . An RGB color is specified by three numbers that give the level of red,
green, and blue, respectively, in the color. A color in Java is an object of the class,
[Link]. You can construct a new color by specifying its red, blue, and green
compo-nents. For example,
Color myColor = new Color(r,g,b);

There are two constructors that you can call in this way. In the one that I almost al-ways
use, r, g, and b are integers in the range 0 to 255. In the other, they are num-bers of type
float in the range 0.0F to 1.0F. (Recall that a literal of type float is written with an “F” to
distinguish it from a double number.) Often, you can avoid constructing new colors
altogether, since the Color class defines several named constants representing com-mon
colors: [Link], [Link], [Link], [Link], [Link],
[Link], [Link], [Link], [Link], [Link],
[Link] GRAY, [Link], and [Link] GRAY. (There are older,
alternative names for these constants that use lower case rather than upper case constants,
such as [Link] instead of [Link], but the upper case versions are preferred
because they follow the convention that constant names should be upper case.)
An alternative to RGB is the HSB color system . In the HSB system, a color is specified by
three numbers called the hue, the saturation, and the brightness. The hue is the basic color,
ranging from red through orange through all the other colors of the rainbow. The brightness is
pretty much what it sounds like. A fully saturated color is a pure color tone. Decreasing the
saturation is like mixing white or gray paint into the pure color. In Java, the hue, saturation and
brightness are always specified by values of type float in the range from 0.0F to 1.0F. The Color
class has a static member function named getHSBColor for creating HSB colors. To create
the color with HSB values given by h, s, and b, you can say:
Color myColor = [Link](h,s,b);

For example, to make a color with a random hue that is as bright and as saturated as
possible, you could use:
Color randomColor = [Link]( (float)[Link](), 1.0F, 1.0F );
244 CHAPTER 6. INTRODUCTION TO GUI PROGRAMMING

The type cast is necessary because the value returned by [Link]() is of type
double, and [Link]() requires values of type float. (By the way, you might
ask why RGB colors are created using a constructor while HSB colors are created using a
static member function. The problem is that we would need two di fferent constructors, both
of them with three parameters of type float. Unfortunately, this is impossible. You can have
two constructors only if the number of parameters or the parameter types differ.)
The RGB system and the HSB system are just different ways of describing the same set
of colors. It is possible to translate between one system and the other. The best way to
understand the color systems is to experiment with them. In the on-line version of this
section, you will find an applet that you can use to experiment with RGB and HSB colors.
One of the properties of a Graphics object is the current drawing color, which is used for all
drawing of shapes and text. If g is a graphics context, you can change the current drawing color
for g using the method [Link](c), where c is a Color. For example, if you want to draw
in green, you would just say [Link]([Link]) before doing the drawing. The
graphics context continues to use the color until you explicitly change it with another
setColor() command. If you want to know what the current drawing color is, you can call the
function [Link](), which returns an object of type Color. This can be useful if you want
to change to another drawing color temporarily and then restore the previous drawing color.
Every component has an associated foreground color and background color .
Generally, the component is filled with the background color before anything else is drawn
(although some components are “transparent,” meaning that the background color is
ignored). When a new graphics context is created for a component, the current drawing
color is set to the foreground color. Note that the foreground color and background color are
properties of the component, not of a graphics context.
The foreground and background colors can be set by instance methods
setForeground(c) and setBackground(c), which are defined in the Component
class and therefore are available for use with any component. This can be useful even for
standard components, if you want them to use colors that are different from the defaults.

6.3.3 Fonts
A font represents a particular size and style of text. The same character will appear
different in different fonts. In Java, a font is characterized by a font name, a style, and a
size. The available font names are system dependent, but you can always use the following
four strings as font names: “Serif”, “SansSerif”, “Monospaced”, and “Dialog”. (A “serif” is a
little decoration on a character, such as a short horizontal line at the bottom of the letter i.
“SansSerif” means “without serifs.” “Monospaced” means that all the characters in the font
have the same width. The “Dialog” font is the one that is typically used in dialog boxes.)
The style of a font is specified using named constants that are defined in the Font class.
You can specify the style as one of the four values:
[Link],
[Link],
[Link], or
[Link] + [Link].
The size of a font is an integer. Size typically ranges from about 10 to 36, although larger sizes can also be
used. The size of a font is usually about equal to the height of the largest characters in the font, in pixels, but
this is not an exact rule. The size of the default font is 12.
6.3. GRAPHICS AND PAINTING 245

Java uses the class named [Link] for representing fonts. You can construct
a new font by specifying its font name, style, and size in a constructor:
Font plainFont = new Font("Serif", [Link], 12); Font
bigBoldFont = new Font("SansSerif", [Link], 24);

Every graphics context has a current font, which is used for drawing text. You can
change the current font with the setFont() method. For example, if g is a graphics
context and bigBoldFont is a font, then the command [Link](bigBoldFont) will
set the current font of g to bigBoldFont. The new font will be used for any text that is
drawn after the setFont() command is given. You can find out the current font of g by
calling the method [Link](), which returns an object of type Font.
Every component has an associated font. It can be set with the instance method
setFont(font), which is defined in the Component class. When a graphics context is
cre-ated for drawing on a component, the graphic context’s current font is set equal to the
font of the component.

6.3.4 Shapes
The Graphics class includes a large number of instance methods for drawing various shapes,
such as lines, rectangles, and ovals. The shapes are specified using the (x,y) coordinate
system described above. They are drawn in the current drawing color of the graphics context.
The current drawing color is set to the foreground color of the component when the graphics
context is created, but it can be changed at any time using the setColor() method.
Here is a list of some of the most important drawing methods. With all these commands,
any drawing that is done outside the boundaries of the component is ignored. Note that all
these methods are in the Graphics class, so they all must be called through an object of
type Graphics.

drawString(String str, int x, int y) — Draws the text given by the string
str. The string is drawn using the current color and font of the graphics context. x
specifies the position of the left end of the string. y is the y-coordinate of the baseline
of the string. The baseline is a horizontal line on which the characters rest. Some parts
of the characters, such as the tail on a y or g, extend below the baseline.
drawLine(int x1, int y1, int x2, int y2) — Draws a line from the point
(x1,y1) to the point (x2,y2). The line is drawn as if with a pen that hangs one
pixel to the right and one pixel down from the (x,y) point where the pen is located.
For example, if g refers to an object of type Graphics, then the command
[Link](x,y,x,y), which corresponds to putting the pen down at a point, colors
the single pixel with upper left corner at the point (x,y).
drawRect(int x, int y, int width, int height) — Draws the outline of a rectangle.
The upper left corner is at (x,y), and the width and height of the rectangle are as specified. If
width equals height, then the rectangle is a square. If the width or the height is
negative, then nothing is drawn. The rectangle is drawn with the same pen that is used for
drawLine(). This means that the actual width of the rectangle as drawn is width+1, and
similarly for the height. There is an extra pixel along the right edge and the bottom edge. For
example, if you want to draw a rectangle around the edges of the component, you can say
“[Link](0, 0, getWidth()-1, getHeight()-1);”, where g is a graphics context
for the component. If you use “[Link](0, 0, getWidth(),
246 CHAPTER 6. INTRODUCTION TO GUI PROGRAMMING

getHeight());”, then the right and bottom edges of the rectangle will be drawn
outside the component.
drawOval(int x, int y, int width, int height) — Draws the outline of an
oval. The oval is one that just fits inside the rectangle specified by x, y, width, and
height. If width equals height, the oval is a circle.
drawRoundRect(int x, int y, int width, int height, int xdiam, int ydiam) —
Draws the outline of a rectangle with rounded corners. The basic rectangle is specified
by x, y, width, and height, but the corners are rounded. The degree of rounding is
given by xdiam and ydiam. The corners are arcs of an ellipse with horizontal
diameter xdiam and vertical diameter ydiam. A typical value for xdiam and ydiam
is 16, but the value used should really depend on how big the rectangle is.
draw3DRect(int x, int y, int width, int height, boolean raised) —
Draws the outline of a rectangle that is supposed to have a three-dimensional e ffect, as if it
is raised from the screen or pushed into the screen. The basic rectangle is specified by x,
y, width, and height. The raised parameter tells whether the rectangle seems to be
raised from the screen or pushed into it. The 3D e ffect is achieved by using brighter and
darker versions of the drawing color for different edges of the rectangle. The
documentation recommends setting the drawing color equal to the background color before
using this method. The effect won’t work well for some colors.
drawArc(int x, int y, int width, int height, int startAngle, int arcAngle) —
Draws part of the oval that just fits inside the rectangle specified by x, y, width, and
height. The part drawn is an arc that extends arcAngle degrees from a starting
angle at startAngle degrees. Angles are measured with 0 degrees at the 3 o’clock
position (the positive direction of the horizontal axis). Positive angles are measured
counterclockwise from zero, and negative angles are measured clockwise. To get an
arc of a circle, make sure that width is equal to height.
fillRect(int x, int y, int width, int height) — Draws a filled-in
rectangle. This fills in the interior of the rectangle that would be drawn by
drawRect(x,y,width,height). The extra pixel along the bottom and right edges is
not included. The width and height parameters give the exact width and height of
the rectangle. For example, if you wanted to fill in the entire component, you could say
“[Link](0, 0, getWidth(), getHeight());”
• fillOval(int x, int y, int width, int height) — Draws a filled-in oval.
fillRoundRect(int x, int y, int width, int height, int xdiam, int ydiam) —
Draws a filled-in rounded rectangle.
fill3DRect(int x, int y, int width, int height, boolean raised) —
Draws a filled-in three-dimensional rectangle.
fillArc(int x, int y, int width, int height, int startAngle, int arcAngle) —
Draw a filled-in arc. This looks like a wedge of pie, whose crust is the arc that would be
drawn by the drawArc method.

6.3.5 Graphics2D
All drawing in Java is done through an object of type Graphics. The Graphics class provides basic
commands for such things as drawing shapes and text and for selecting a drawing color.
6.3. GRAPHICS AND PAINTING 247

These commands are adequate in many cases, but they fall far short of what’s needed in a
serious computer graphics program. Java has another class, Graphics2D, that provides a
larger set of drawing operations. Graphics2D is a sub-class of Graphics, so all the methods
from the Graphics class are also available in a Graphics2D.
The paintComponent() method of a JComponent gives you a graphics context of
type Graphics that you can use for drawing on the component. In fact, the graphics context
actually belongs to the sub-class Graphics2D (in Java version 1.2 and later), and can be
type-cast to gain access to the advanced Graphics2D drawing methods:
public void paintComponent(Graphics g) {
[Link](g);
Graphics2D g2;
g2 = (Graphics2D)g;
.
// Draw on the component using g2.

Drawing in Graphics2D is based on shapes, which are objects that implement an interface
named Shape. Shape classes include Line2D, Rectangle2D, Ellipse2D, Arc2D, and
CubicCurve2D, among others; all these classes are defined in the package [Link].
CubicCurve2D can be used to draw Bezier Curves, which are used in many graphics programs.
Graphics2D has methods draw(Shape) and fill(Shape) for drawing the outline of a shape
and for filling its interior. Advanced capabilities include: lines that are more than one pixel thick,
dotted and dashed lines, filling a shape with a texture (this is, with a repeated image), filling a
shape with a gradient, and drawing translucent objects that will blend with their background.
In the Graphics class, coordinates are specified as integers and are based on pixels. The
shapes that are used with Graphics2D use real numbers for coordinates, and they are not
neces-sarily bound to pixels. In fact, you can change the coordinate system and use any
coordinates that are convenient to your application. In computer graphics terms, you can
apply a “transfor-mation” to the coordinate system. The transformation can be any
combination of translation, scaling, and rotation.
I mention Graphics2D here for completeness. I will not use any of the advanced
capabilities of Graphics2D in this chapter, but I will cover a few of them in Section 12.2.

6.3.6 An Example
Let’s use some of the material covered in this section to write a subclass of JPanel for use
as a drawing surface. The panel can then be used in either an applet or a frame, as
discussed in Subsection 6.2.2. All the drawing will be done in the paintComponent()
method of the panel class. The panel will draw multiple copies of a message on a black
background. Each copy of the message is in a random color. Five different fonts are used,
with different sizes and styles. The message can be specified in the constructor; if the
default constructor is used, the message is the string “Java!”. The panel works OK no matter
what its size. Here is what the panel looks like:
248 CHAPTER 6. INTRODUCTION TO GUI PROGRAMMING

There is one problem with the way this class works. When the panel’s paintComponent()
method is called, it chooses random colors, fonts, and locations for the messages. The informa-
tion about which colors, fonts, and locations are used is not stored anywhere. The next time
paintComponent() is called, it will make different random choices and will draw a di fferent
picture. For this particular applet, the problem only really appears when the panel is partially
covered and then uncovered (and even then the problem does not show up in all environments).
It is possible that only the part that was covered will be redrawn, and in the part that’s not
redrawn, the old picture will remain. The user might see partial messages, cut o ff by the di-viding
line between the new picture and the old. A better approach would be to compute the contents of
the picture elsewhere, outside the paintComponent() method. Information about the picture
should be stored in instance variables, and the paintComponent() method should use that
information to draw the picture. If paintComponent() is called twice, it should draw the same
picture twice, unless the data has changed in the meantime. Unfortunately, to store the data for
the picture in this applet, we would need to use either arrays, which will not be covered until
Chapter 7, or off-screen images, which will not be covered until Chapter 12. Other examples in
this chapter will suffer from the same problem.
The source for the panel class is shown below. I use an instance variable called
message to hold the message that the panel will display. There are five instance variables
of type Font that represent different sizes and styles of text. These variables are initialized in
the constructor and are used in the paintComponent() method.
The paintComponent() method for the panel simply draws 25 copies of the message. For
each copy, it chooses one of the five fonts at random, and it calls [Link]() to select that
font for drawing the text. It creates a random HSB color and uses [Link]() to select that
color for drawing. It then chooses random (x,y) coordinates for the location of the message.
The x coordinate gives the horizontal position of the left end of the string. The formula used for
the x coordinate, “-50 + (int)([Link]() * (width+40))” gives a random integer
in the range from -50 to width-10. This makes it possible for the string to extend beyond the
left edge or the right edge of the panel. Similarly, the formula for y allows the string to extend
beyond the top and bottom of the applet.
Here is the complete source code for the RandomStringsPanel
import [Link];
import [Link];
import [Link];
import [Link];
/**
This panel displays 25 copies of a message. The color and
position of each message is selected at random. The font
6.3. GRAPHICS AND PAINTING 249

of each message is randomly chosen from among five possible

fonts. The messages are displayed on a black background.
<p>Note: The style of drawing used here is bad, because every
time the paintComponent() method is called, new random values are
used. This means that a different picture will be drawn each
time. This is particularly bad if only part of the panel
needs to be redrawn, since then the panel will contain
cut-off pieces of messages.
<p>This panel is meant to be used as the content pane in
either an applet or a frame.
*/
public class RandomStringsPanel extends JPanel {
private String message; // The message to be
displayed. This can be set in
the constructor. If no value is provided in the
constructor, then the string "Java!" is used.
private Font font1, font2, font3, font4, font5; // The five fonts.
/**
Default constructor creates a panel that displays the message "Java!".

*/
public RandomStringsPanel() {
this(null); // Call the other constructor, with parameter null.
}
/**
Constructor creates a panel to display 25 copies of a specified message.
@param messageString The message to be displayed. If this is null,
then the default message "Java!" is displayed.
*/
public RandomStringsPanel(String messageString) {
message = messageString;
if (message == null)
message = "Java!";
font1 = new Font("Serif", [Link], 14);
font2 = new Font("SansSerif", [Link] + [Link],
24); font3 = new Font("Monospaced", [Link], 30);
font4 = new Font("Dialog", [Link], 36);
font5 = new Font("Serif", [Link], 48);
setBackground([Link]);
}
/**
The paintComponent method is responsible for drawing the content of the panel.
It draws 25 copies of the message string, using a random color, font, and
position for each string.
*/
public void paintComponent(Graphics g) {
[Link](g); // Call the paintComponent method from the
superclass, JPanel. This simply fills the
entire panel with the background color, black.
250 CHAPTER 6. INTRODUCTION TO GUI PROGRAMMING

int width = getWidth();

int height = getHeight();
for (int i = 0; i < 25; i++) {
Draw one string. First, set the font to be one of the five
available fonts, at random.
int fontNum = (int)(5*[Link]()) + 1;
switch (fontNum) {
case 1:
[Link](font1);
break;
case 2:
[Link](font2);
break;
case 3:
[Link](font3);
break;
case 4:
[Link](font4);
break;
case 5:
[Link](font5);
break;
} // end switch
// Set the color to a bright, saturated color, with random hue.

float hue = (float)[Link]();

[Link]( [Link](hue, 1.0F, 1.0F) );
// Select the position of the string, at random.
int x,y;
= -50 + (int)([Link]()*(width+40)); y
= (int)([Link]()*(height+20));

Draw the message.

[Link](message,x,y);

} // end for
} // end paintComponent()

} // end class RandomStringsPanel

This class defines a panel, which is not something that can stand on its own. To see it on
the screen, we have to use it in an applet or a frame. Here is a simple applet class that uses
a RandomStringsPanel as its content pane:
import [Link];
/**
A RandomStringsApplet displays 25 copies of a string, using random colors,
fonts, and positions for the copies. The message can be specified as the
value of an applet param with name "message." If no param with name
"message" is present, then the default message "Java!" is displayed.
6.4. MOUSE EVENTS 251

The actual content of the applet is an object of type

RandomStringsPanel. */
public class RandomStringsApplet extends JApplet {
public void init() {
String message = getParameter("message");
RandomStringsPanel content = new
RandomStringsPanel(message); setContentPane(content);
}
}

Note that the message to be displayed in the applet can be set using an applet parameter when the
applet is added to an HTML document. Using applets on Web pages was discussed in Sub-section
6.2.4. Remember that to use the applet on a Web page, you must include both the panel class file,
[Link], and the applet class file, [Link], in the
same directory as the HTML document (or, alternatively, bundle the two class files into a jar file, and
put the jar file in the document directory).
Instead of writing an applet, of course, we could use the panel in the window of a stand-
alone application. You can find the source code for a main program that does this in the file
[Link].

6.4 Mouse Events

Events are central to programming for a graphical user interface. A GUI program doesn’t have a
main() routine that outlines what will happen when the program is run, in a step-by-step
process from beginning to end. Instead, the program must be prepared to respond to various
kinds of events that can happen at unpredictable times and in an order that the program doesn’t
control. The most basic kinds of events are generated by the mouse and keyboard. The user can
press any key on the keyboard, move the mouse, or press a button on the mouse. The user can
do any of these things at any time, and the computer has to respond appropriately.
In Java, events are represented by objects. When an event occurs, the system collects
all the information relevant to the event and constructs an object to contain that information.
Different types of events are represented by objects belonging to different classes. For
example, when the user presses one of the buttons on a mouse, an object belonging to a
class called MouseEvent is constructed. The object contains information such as the source
of the event (that is, the component on which the user clicked), the (x,y) coordinates of
the point in the component where the click occurred, and which button on the mouse was
pressed. When the user presses a key on the keyboard, a KeyEvent is created. After the
event object is constructed, it is passed as a parameter to a designated subroutine. By
writing that subroutine, the programmer says what should happen when the event occurs.
As a Java programmer, you get a fairly high-level view of events. There is a lot of
processing that goes on between the time that the user presses a key or moves the mouse
and the time that a subroutine in your program is called to respond to the event. Fortunately,
you don’t need to know much about that processing. But you should understand this much:
Even though your GUI program doesn’t have a main() routine, there is a sort of main
routine running somewhere that executes a loop of the form
while the program is still running:
Wait for the next event to occur
Call a subroutine to handle the event
252 CHAPTER 6. INTRODUCTION TO GUI PROGRAMMING

This loop is called an event loop. Every GUI program has an event loop. In Java, you
don’t have to write the loop. It’s part of “the system.” If you write a GUI program in some
other language, you might have to provide a main routine that runs an event loop.
In this section, we’ll look at handling mouse events in Java, and we’ll cover the
framework for handling events in general. The next section will cover keyboard-related
events and timer events. Java also has other types of events, which are produced by GUI
components. These will be introduced in Section 6.6.

6.4.1 Event Handling

For an event to have any effect, a program must detect the event and react to it. In order to
detect an event, the program must “listen” for it. Listening for events is something that is done by
an object called an event listener . An event listener object must contain instance methods for
handling the events for which it listens. For example, if an object is to serve as a listener for
events of type MouseEvent, then it must contain the following method (among several others):
public void mousePressed(MouseEvent evt) { . . . }

The body of the method defines how the object responds when it is notified that a mouse
button has been pressed. The parameter, evt, contains information about the event. This
information can be used by the listener object to determine its response.
The methods that are required in a mouse event listener are specified in an interface
named MouseListener. To be used as a listener for mouse events, an object must implement
this MouseListener interface. Java interfaces were covered in Subsection 5.7.1. (To review
briefly: An interface in Java is just a list of instance methods. A class can “implement” an
interface by doing two things. First, the class must be declared to implement the interface, as in
“class MyListener implements MouseListener” or “class MyApplet extends
JApplet implements MouseListener”. Second, the class must include a definition for
each instance method specified in the interface. An interface can be used as the type for a
variable or formal parameter. We say that an object implements the MouseListener interface if it
belongs to a class that implements the MouseListener interface. Note that it is not enough for the
object to include the specified methods. It must also belong to a class that is specifically
declared to implement the interface.)
Many events in Java are associated with GUI components. For example, when the user
presses a button on the mouse, the associated component is the one that the user clicked on.
Before a listener object can “hear” events associated with a given component, the lis-tener
object must be registered with the component. If a MouseListener object, mListener, needs to
hear mouse events associated with a Component object, comp, the listener must be registered
with the component by calling “[Link](mListener);”. The
addMouseListener() method is an instance method in class Component, and so can be
used with any GUI component object. In our first few examples, we will listen for events on a
JPanel that is being used as a drawing surface.
The event classes, such as MouseEvent, and the listener interfaces, such as
MouseListener, are defined in the package [Link]. This means that if you want
to work with events, you should either include the line “import [Link].*;” at
the beginning of your source code file or import the individual classes and interfaces.
Admittedly, there is a large number of details to tend to when you want to use events. To summarize, you
must
6.4. MOUSE EVENTS 253

Put the import specification “import [Link].*;” (or individual imports) at

the beginning of your source code;
Declare that some class implements the appropriate listener interface, such as
MouseLis-tener ;
Provide definitions in that class for the subroutines from the interface;
Register the listener object with the component that will generate the events by calling a
method such as addMouseListener() in the component.

Any object can act as an event listener, provided that it implements the appropriate in-
terface. A component can listen for the events that it itself generates. A panel can listen for
events from components that are contained in the panel. A special class can be created just
for the purpose of defining a listening object. Many people consider it to be good form to use
anonymous inner classes to define listening objects (see Subsection 5.7.3). You will see all
of these patterns in examples in this textbook.

6.4.2 MouseEvent and MouseListener

The MouseListener interface specifies five different instance methods:
public void mousePressed(MouseEvent evt);
public void mouseReleased(MouseEvent evt);
public void mouseClicked(MouseEvent evt);
public void mouseEntered(MouseEvent evt);
public void mouseExited(MouseEvent evt);

The mousePressed method is called as soon as the user presses down on one of the
mouse buttons, and mouseReleased is called when the user releases a button. These are the
two methods that are most commonly used, but any mouse listener object must define all five
methods; you can leave the body of a method empty if you don’t want to define a response. The
mouseClicked method is called if the user presses a mouse button and then releases it
quickly, without moving the mouse. (When the user does this, all three routines—
mousePressed, mouseReleased, and mouseClicked—will be called in that order.) In most
cases, you should define mousePressed instead of mouseClicked. The mouseEntered
and mouseExited methods are called when the mouse cursor enters or leaves the component.
For example, if you want the component to change appearance whenever the user moves the
mouse over the component, you could define these two methods.
As an example, we will look at a small addition to the RandomStringsPanel example
from the previous section. In the new version, the panel will repaint itself when the user
clicks on it. In order for this to happen, a mouse listener should listen for mouse events on
the panel, and when the listener detects a mousePressed event, it should respond by
calling the repaint() method of the panel.
For the new version of the program, we need an object that implements the MouseListener
interface. One way to create the object is to define a separate class, such as:
import [Link];
import [Link].*;
/**
An object of type RepaintOnClick is a MouseListener that
will respond to a mousePressed event by calling the repaint()
method of the source of the event. That is, a RepaintOnClick
254 CHAPTER 6. INTRODUCTION TO GUI PROGRAMMING

object can be added as a mouse listener to any Component;

when the user clicks that component, the component will be
repainted.
*/
public class RepaintOnClick implements MouseListener {

public void mousePressed(MouseEvent evt)

{ Component source =
(Component)[Link]();
[Link](); // Call repaint() on the Component that was clicked.
}

public void mouseClicked(MouseEvent evt) { }

public void mouseReleased(MouseEvent evt) { }
public void mouseEntered(MouseEvent evt) { }
public void mouseExited(MouseEvent evt) { }

This class does three of the four things that we need to do in order to handle mouse events:
First, it imports [Link].* for easy access to event-related classes. Second, it is
declared that the class “implements MouseListener”. And third, it provides definitions
for the five methods that are specified in the MouseListener interface. (Note that four of the
five event-handling methods have empty defintions. We really only want to define a
response to mousePressed events, but in order to implement the MouseListener interface,
a class must define all five methods.)
We must do one more thing to set up the event handling for this example: We must
register an event-handling object as a listener with the component that will generate the
events. In this case, the mouse events that we are interested in will be generated by an
object of type RandomStringsPanel. If panel is a variable that refers to the panel object,
we can create a mouse listener object and register it with the panel with the statements:
RepaintOnClick listener = new RepaintOnClick(); // Create MouseListener
object.
[Link](listener); // Register MouseListener with the panel.

Once this is done, the listener object will be notified of mouse events on the panel. When a
mousePressed event occurs, the mousePressed() method in the listener will be called.
The code in this method calls the repaint() method in the component that is the source of
the event, that is, in the panel. The result is that the RandomStringsPanel is repainted with
its strings in new random colors, fonts, and positions.
Although we have written the RepaintOnClick class for use with our RandomStringsPanel
example, the event-handling class contains no reference at all to the RandomStringsPanel class.
How can this be? The mousePressed() method in class RepaintOnClick looks at the source
of the event, and calls its repaint() method. If we have registered the RepaintOnClick object
as a listener on a RandomStringsPanel, then it is that panel that is repainted. But the listener
object could be used with any type of component, and it would work in the same way.
Similarly, the RandomStringsPanel class contains no reference to the RepaintOnClick
class— in fact, RandomStringsPanel was written before we even knew anything about
mouse events! The panel will send mouse events to any object that has registered with it as
a mouse listener. It does not need to know anything about that object except that it is
capable of receiving mouse events.
The relationship between an object that generates an event and an object that responds to that event is
rather loose. The relationship is set up by registering one object to listen for
6.4. MOUSE EVENTS 255

events from the other object. This is something that can potentially be done from outside
both objects. Each object can be developed independently, with no knowledge of the
internal operation of the other object. This is the essence of modular design: Build a
complex system out of modules that interact only in straightforward, easy to understand
ways. Then each module is a separate design problem that can be tackled independently.
To make this clearer, consider the application version of the
ClickableRandomStrings program. I have included RepaintOnClick as a nested class,
although it could just as easily be a separate class. The main point is that this program uses
the same RandomStringsPanel class that was used in the original program, which did not
respond to mouse clicks. The mouse handling has been “bolted on” to an existing class,
without having to make any changes at all to that class:
import [Link];
import [Link];
import [Link];
import [Link];

/**
Displays a window that shows 25 copies of the string "Java!" in
random colors, fonts, and positions. The content of the window
is an object of type RandomStringsPanel. When the user clicks
the window, the content of the window is repainted, with the
strings in newly selected random colors, fonts, and
positions. */
public class ClickableRandomStringsApp {

public static void main(String[] args) {

JFrame window = new JFrame("Random Strings");
RandomStringsPanel content = new RandomStringsPanel();
[Link]( new RepaintOnClick() ); // Register mouse
listener.
[Link](content);
[Link]([Link] ON CLOSE);
[Link](100,75);
[Link](300,240);
[Link](true);
}

private static class RepaintOnClick implements MouseListener {

public void mousePressed(MouseEvent evt)

{ Component source =
(Component)[Link](); [Link]();
}

public void mouseClicked(MouseEvent evt) { }

public void mouseReleased(MouseEvent evt) { }
public void mouseEntered(MouseEvent evt) { }
public void mouseExited(MouseEvent evt) { }

}
}
256 CHAPTER 6. INTRODUCTION TO GUI PROGRAMMING

6.4.3 Mouse Coordinates

Often, when a mouse event occurs, you want to know the location of the mouse cursor. This
information is available from the MouseEvent parameter to the event-handling method,
which contains instance methods that return information about the event. If evt is the
parame-ter, then you can find out the coordinates of the mouse cursor by calling
[Link]() and [Link](). These methods return integers which give the x and y
coordinates where the mouse cursor was positioned at the time when the event occurred.
The coordinates are ex-pressed in the coordinate system of the component that generated
the event, where the top left corner of the component is (0,0).
The user can hold down certain modifier keys while using the mouse. The possible
mod-ifier keys include: the Shift key, the Control key, the ALT key (called the Option key on
the Macintosh), and the Meta key (called the Command or Apple key on the Macintosh). You
might want to respond to a mouse event differently when the user is holding down a modi-
fier key. The boolean-valued instance methods [Link](),
[Link](), [Link](), and [Link]() can be called to
test whether the modifier keys are pressed.
You might also want to have different responses depending on whether the user presses
the left mouse button, the middle mouse button, or the right mouse button. Now, not every
mouse has a middle button and a right button, so Java handles the information in a peculiar
way. It treats pressing the right button as equivalent to holding down the Meta key while
pressing the left mouse button. That is, if the right button is pressed, then the instance
method [Link]() will return true (even if the Meta key is not pressed).
Similarly, pressing the middle mouse button is equivalent to holding down the ALT key. In
practice, what this really means is that pressing the right mouse button under Windows is
equivalent to holding down the Command key while pressing the mouse button on
Macintosh. A program tests for either of these by calling [Link]().
As an example, consider a JPanel that does the following: Clicking on the panel with the
left mouse button will place a red rectangle on the panel at the point where the mouse was
clicked. Clicking with the right mouse button (or holding down the Command key while
clicking on a Macintosh) will place a blue oval on the applet. Holding down the Shift key
while clicking will clear the panel by removing all the shapes that have been placed.
There are several ways to write this example. I could write a separate class to handle
mouse events, as I did in the previous example. However, in this case, I decided to let the
panel respond to mouse events itself. Any object can be a mouse listener, as long as it
imple-ments the MouseListener interface. In this case, the panel class implements the
MouseListener interface, so any object belonging to that class can act as a mouse listener.
The constructor for the panel class registers the panel with itself as a mouse listener. It
does this with the statement “addMouseListener(this)”. Since this command is in a
method in the panel class, the addMouseListener() method in the panel object is being
called, and a listener is being registered with that panel. The parameter “this” also refers to
the panel object, so it is the same panel object that is listening for events. Thus, the panel
object plays a dual role here. (If you find this too confusing, remember that you can always
write a separate class to define the listening object.)
The source code for the panel class is shown below. You should check how the instance
methods in the MouseEvent object are used. You can also check for the Four Steps of
Event Handling (“import [Link].*”, “implements MouseListener”, definitions for the
event-handling methods, and “addMouseListener”):
6.4. MOUSE EVENTS 257

import [Link].*;
import [Link].*;
import [Link].*;
/**
A simple demonstration of MouseEvents. Shapes are drawn
on a black background when the user clicks the panel If
the user Shift-clicks, the applet is cleared. If the user
right-clicks the applet, a blue oval is drawn. Otherwise,
when the user clicks, a red rectangle is drawn. The contents of
the panel are not persistent. For example, they might disappear
if the panel is covered and uncovered.
*/
public class SimpleStamperPanel extends JPanel implements MouseListener {
/**
This constructor simply sets the background color of the panel to be black
and sets the panel to listen for mouse events on itself.
*/
public SimpleStamperPanel() {
setBackground([Link]);
addMouseListener(this);
}

/**
Since this panel has been set to listen for mouse events on itself,
this method will be called when the user clicks the mouse on the panel.
This method is part of the MouseListener interface.
*/
public void mousePressed(MouseEvent evt) {
if ( [Link]() ) {
The user was holding down the Shift key. Just repaint the panel.
Since this class does not define a paintComponent() method, the
method from the superclass, JPanel, is called. That method simply
fills the panel with its background color, which is black. The
effect is to clear the panel.
repaint();
return;
}
int x = [Link](); // x-coordinate where user clicked.
int y = [Link](); // y-coordinate where user clicked.

Graphics g = getGraphics(); // Graphics context for drawing directly.

// NOTE: This is considered to be bad style!
if ( [Link]() ) {
User right-clicked at the point (x,y). Draw a blue oval centered
at the point (x,y). (A black outline around the oval will make it
more distinct when ovals and rects
overlap.) [Link]([Link]); // Blue
interior. [Link]( x - 30, y - 15, 60,
30 ); [Link]([Link]); // Black
outline. [Link]( x - 30, y - 15, 60, 30 );
}
258 CHAPTER 6. INTRODUCTION TO GUI PROGRAMMING

else {
User left-clicked (or middle-clicked) at (x,y).
Draw a red rectangle centered at (x,y).
[Link]([Link]); // Red interior.
[Link]( x - 30, y - 15, 60, 30 );
[Link]([Link]); // Black outline.
[Link]( x - 30, y - 15, 60, 30 );
}
[Link](); // We are finished with the graphics context, so dispose of it.
} // end mousePressed();

The next four empty routines are required by the MouseListener interface.
Since they don’t do anything in this class, so their definitions are empty.

public void mouseEntered(MouseEvent evt) { }

public void mouseExited(MouseEvent evt) { }
public void mouseClicked(MouseEvent evt) { }
public void mouseReleased(MouseEvent evt) { }

} // end class SimpleStamperPanel

Note, by the way, that this class violates the rule that all drawing should be done in a
paintComponent() method. The rectangles and ovals are drawn directly in the
mousePressed() routine. To make this possible, I need to obtain a graphics context by
saying “g = getGraphics()”. After using g for drawing, I call [Link]() to inform
the operating system that I will no longer be using g for drawing. It is a good idea to do this
to free the system resources that are used by the graphics context. I do not advise doing
this type of direct drawing if it can be avoided, but you can see that it does work in this case,
and at this point we really have no other way to write this example.

6.4.4 MouseMotionListeners and Dragging

Whenever the mouse is moved, it generates events. The operating system of the computer
detects these events and uses them to move the mouse cursor on the screen. It is also
possible for a program to listen for these “mouse motion” events and respond to them. The
most common reason to do so is to implement dragging . Dragging occurs when the user
moves the mouse while holding down a mouse button.
The methods for responding to mouse motion events are defined in an interface named
MouseMotionListener. This interface specifies two event-handling methods:
public void mouseDragged(MouseEvent evt);
public void mouseMoved(MouseEvent evt);

The mouseDragged method is called if the mouse is moved while a button on the mouse
is pressed. If the mouse is moved while no mouse button is down, then mouseMoved is
called instead. The parameter, evt, is an object of type MouseEvent. It contains the x and y
coordi-nates of the mouse’s location. As long as the user continues to move the mouse, one
of these methods will be called over and over. (So many events are generated that it would
be inefficient for a program to hear them all, if it doesn’t want to do anything in response.
This is why the mouse motion event-handlers are defined in a separate interface from the
other mouse events: You can listen for the mouse events defined in MouseListener without
automatically hearing all mouse motion events as well.)
6.4. MOUSE EVENTS 259

If you want your program to respond to mouse motion events, you must create an object that
implements the MouseMotionListener interface, and you must register that object to listen for
events. The registration is done by calling a component’s addMouseMotionListener
method. The object will then listen for mouseDragged and mouseMoved events associated
with that component. In most cases, the listener object will also implement the MouseListener
interface so that it can respond to the other mouse events as well.
To get a better idea of how mouse events work, you should try the SimpleTrackMouseApplet
in the on-line version of this section. The applet is programmed to respond to any of the seven
different kinds of mouse events by displaying the coordinates of the mouse, the type of event,
and a list of the modifier keys that are down (Shift, Control, Meta, and Alt). You can experiment
with the applet to see what happens when you use the mouse on the applet. (Alternatively, you
could run the stand-alone application version of the program, [Link].)
The source code for the applet can be found in [Link], which
defines the panel that is used as the content pane of the applet, and in
[Link], which defines the applet class. The panel class includes a
nested class, MouseHandler, that defines the mouse-handling object. I encourage you to
read the source code. You should now be familiar with all the techniques that it uses.
It is interesting to look at what a program needs to do in order to respond to dragging op-
erations. In general, the response involves three methods: mousePressed(),
mouseDragged(), and mouseReleased(). The dragging gesture starts when the user
presses a mouse button, it continues while the mouse is dragged, and it ends when the user
releases the button. This means that the programming for the response to one dragging gesture
must be spread out over the three methods! Furthermore, the mouseDragged() method can
be called many times as the mouse moves. To keep track of what is going on between one
method call and the next, you need to set up some instance variables. In many applications, for
example, in order to process a mouseDragged event, you need to remember the previous
coordinates of the mouse. You can store this information in two instance variables prevX and
prevY of type int. It can also be useful to save the starting coordinates, where the
mousePressed event occurred, in instance variables. I also suggest having a boolean variable,
dragging, which is set to true while a dragging gesture is being processed. This is necessary
because not every mousePressed event starts a dragging operation to which you want to
respond. The mouseDragged and mouseReleased methods can use the value of dragging
to check whether a drag operation is actually in progress. You might need other instance
variables as well, but in general outline, a class that handles mouse dragging looks like this:
import [Link].*;
public class MouseDragHandler implements MouseListener, MouseMotionListener {

private int startX, startY; // Point where mouse is pressed.

private int prevX, prevY; // Most recently processed mouse coords.
private boolean dragging; // Set to true when dragging is in
process.
. . . // other instance variables for use in dragging
public void mousePressed(MouseEvent evt) {
if ( we-want-to-start-dragging ) {
dragging = true;
startX = [Link](); // Remember starting position.
startY = [Link]();
prevX = startX; // Remember most recent coords.
prevY = startY;
260 CHAPTER 6. INTRODUCTION TO GUI PROGRAMMING

.
// Other processing.

}
}

public void mouseDragged(MouseEvent evt) {

if ( dragging == false ) // First, check if we are
return; // processing a dragging gesture.
int x = [Link](); // Current position of Mouse.
int y = [Link]();
.
. // Process a mouse movement from (prevX, prevY) to (x,y).
.
prevX = x; // Remember the current position for the next call.
prevY = y;
}

public void mouseReleased(MouseEvent evt) {

if ( dragging == false ) // First, check if we are
return; // processing a dragging gesture.
dragging = false; // We are done dragging.
.
// Other processing and clean-up.

As an example, let’s look at a typical use of dragging: allowing the user to sketch a curve
by dragging the mouse. This example also shows many other features of graphics and
mouse pro-cessing. In the program, you can draw a curve by dragging the mouse on a large
white drawing area, and you can select a color for drawing by clicking on one of several
colored rectangles to the right of the drawing area. The complete source code can be found
in [Link], which can be run as a stand-alone application, and you can find an
applet version in the on-line version of this section. Here is a picture of the program:
6.4. MOUSE EVENTS 261

I will discuss a few aspects of the source code here, but I encourage you to read it
carefully in its entirety. There are lots of informative comments in the source code. (The
source code uses one unusual technique: It defines a subclass of JApplet, but it also
includes a main() routine. The main() routine has nothing to do with the class’s use as
an applet, but it makes it possible to run the class as a stand-alone application. When this is
done, the application opens a window that shows the same panel that would be shown in
the applet version. This example thus shows how to write a single file that can be used
either as a stand-alone application or as an applet.)
The panel class for this example is designed to work for any reasonable size, that is, unless
the panel is too small. This means that coordinates are computed in terms of the actual width
and height of the panel. (The width and height are obtained by calling getWidth() and
getHeight().) This makes things quite a bit harder than they would be if we assumed some
particular fixed size for the panel. Let’s look at some of these computations in detail. For
example, the large white drawing area extends from y = 3 to y = height - 3 vertically and
from x = 3 to x = width - 56 horizontally. These numbers are needed in order to interpret
the meaning of a mouse click. They take into account a gray border around the panel and the
color palette along the right edge of the panel. The border is 3 pixels wide. The colored
rectangles are 50 pixels wide. Together with the 3-pixel border around the panel and a 3-pixel
divider between the drawing area and the colored rectangles, this adds up to put the right edge
of the drawing area 56 pixels from the right edge of the panel.
A white square labeled “CLEAR” occupies a 50-by-50 pixel region beneath the colored rect-angles
on the right edge of the panel. Allowing for this square, we can figure out how much vertical space is
available for the seven colored rectangles, and then divide that space by 7 to get the vertical space
available for each rectangle. This quantity is represented by a variable, colorSpace. Out of this
space, 3 pixels are used as spacing between the rectangles, so the height of each rectangle is
colorSpace - 3. The top of the N-th rectangle is located (N*colorSpace
3) pixels down from the top of the panel, assuming that we count the rectangles starting
with zero. This is because there are N rectangles above the N-th rectangle, each of which
uses colorSpace pixels. The extra 3 is for the border at the top of the panel. After all that,
we can write down the command for drawing the N-th rectangle:
[Link](width - 53, N*colorSpace + 3, 50, colorSpace - 3);

That was not easy! But it shows the kind of careful thinking and precision graphics that are
sometimes necessary to get good results.
The mouse in this panel is used to do three different things: Select a color, clear the drawing,
and draw a curve. Only the third of these involves dragging, so not every mouse click will start a
dragging operation. The mousePressed routine has to look at the (x,y) coordinates where
the mouse was clicked and decide how to respond. If the user clicked on the CLEAR rectangle,
the drawing area is cleared by calling repaint(). If the user clicked somewhere in the strip of
colored rectangles, the selected color is changed. This involves computing which color the user
clicked on, which is done by dividing the y coordinate by colorSpace. Finally, if the user
clicked on the drawing area, a drag operation is initiated. A boolean variable, dragging, is set
to true so that the mouseDragged and mouseReleased methods will know that a curve is
being drawn. The code for this follows the general form given above. The actual drawing of the
curve is done in the mouseDragged method, which draws a line from the previous location of
the mouse to its current location. Some effort is required to make sure that the line does not
extend beyond the white drawing area of the panel. This is not automatic, since as far as the
computer is concerned, the border and the color bar are part of the drawing surface. If the
262 CHAPTER 6. INTRODUCTION TO GUI PROGRAMMING

user drags the mouse outside the drawing area while drawing a line, the mouseDragged
routine changes the x and y coordinates to make them lie within the drawing area.

6.4.5 Anonymous Event Handlers

As I mentioned above, it is a fairly common practice to use anonymous nested classes to
define listener objects. As discussed in Subsection 5.7.3, a special form of the new operator
is used to create an object that belongs to an anonymous class. For example, a mouse
listener object can be created with an expression of the form:
new MouseListener() {
public void mousePressed(MouseEvent evt) { . . . }
public void mouseReleased(MouseEvent evt) { . . . }
public void mouseClicked(MouseEvent evt) { . . . }
public void mouseEntered(MouseEvent evt) { . . . }
public void mouseExited(MouseEvent evt) { . . . }
}

This is all just one long expression that both defines an un-named class and creates an object
that belongs to that class. To use the object as a mouse listener, it should be passed as the
parameter to some component’s addMouseListener() method in a command of the form:
[Link]( new MouseListener() { public
void mousePressed(MouseEvent evt) { . . . } public
void mouseReleased(MouseEvent evt) { . . . } public
void mouseClicked(MouseEvent evt) { . . . } public
void mouseEntered(MouseEvent evt) { . . . } public
void mouseExited(MouseEvent evt) { . . . }
} );

Now, in a typical application, most of the method definitions in this class will be empty. A
class that implements an interface must provide definitions for all the methods in that
interface, even if the definitions are empty. To avoid the tedium of writing empty method
definitions in cases like this, Java provides adapter classes. An adapter class implements a
listener interface by providing empty definitions for all the methods in the interface. An
adapter class is useful only as a basis for making subclasses. In the subclass, you can
define just those methods that you actually want to use. For the remaining methods, the
empty definitions that are provided by the adapter class will be used. The adapter class for
the MouseListener interface is named MouseAdapter. For example, if you want a mouse
listener that only responds to mouse-pressed events, you can use a command of the form:
[Link]( new MouseAdapter() {
public void mousePressed(MouseEvent evt) { . . . }
} );

To see how this works in a real example, let’s write another version of the
ClickableRandomStringsApp application from Subsection 6.4.2. This version uses an
anony-mous class based on MouseAdapter to handle mouse events:
import [Link];
import [Link];
import [Link];
import [Link];

public class ClickableRandomStringsApp {

6.4. MOUSE EVENTS 263

public static void main(String[] args) {

JFrame window = new JFrame("Random Strings");
RandomStringsPanel content = new RandomStringsPanel();
[Link]( new MouseAdapter() {
Register a mouse listener that is defined by an anonymous subclass
of MouseAdapter. This replaces the RepaintOnClick class that was
used in the original version.
public void mousePressed(MouseEvent evt)
{ Component source =
(Component)[Link](); [Link]();
}
} );
[Link](content);
[Link]([Link] ON CLOSE);
[Link](100,75);
[Link](300,240);
[Link](true);
}
}

Anonymous inner classes can be used for other purposes besides event handling. For
ex-ample, suppose that you want to define a subclass of JPanel to represent a drawing
surface. The subclass will only be used once. It will redefine the paintComponent()
method, but will make no other changes to JPanel. It might make sense to define the
subclass as an anony-mous nested class. As an example, I present [Link].
This version is a variation of [Link] that uses anonymous nested classes
where the original program uses ordinary, named nested classes:
import [Link].*;
import [Link].*;
import [Link].*;
/**
A simple GUI program that creates and opens a JFrame containing
the message "Hello World" and an "OK" button. When the user clicks
the OK button, the program ends. This version uses anonymous
classes to define the message display panel and the action listener
object. Compare to HelloWorldGUI2, which uses nested classes.
*/
public class HelloWorldGUI4 {
/**
The main program creates a window containing a HelloWorldDisplay
and a button that will end the program when the user
clicks it. */
public static void main(String[] args) {
JPanel displayPanel = new JPanel() {
An anonymous subclass of JPanel that displays "Hello
World!". public void paintComponent(Graphics g) {
[Link](g);
[Link]( "Hello World!", 20, 30 );
}
264 CHAPTER 6. INTRODUCTION TO GUI PROGRAMMING

};
JButton okButton = new JButton("OK");
[Link]( new ActionListener() {
An anonymous class that defines the listener
object. public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e) {
[Link](0);
}
} );

JPanel content = new JPanel();

[Link](new BorderLayout());
[Link](displayPanel, [Link]);
[Link](okButton, [Link]);

JFrame window = new JFrame("GUI Test");

[Link](content);
[Link](250,100);
[Link](100,100);
[Link](true);
}
}

6.5 Timer and Keyboard Events

Not every event is generated by an action on the part of the user. Events can also be generated
by objects as part of their regular programming, and these events can be monitored by other
objects so that they can take appropriate actions when the events occur. One example of this is
the class [Link]. A Timer generates events at regular intervals. These events
can be used to drive an animation or to perform some other task at regular intervals. We will
begin this section with a look at timer events and animation. We will then look at another type of
basic user-generated event: the KeyEvent s that are generated when the user types on the
keyboard. The example at the end of the section uses both a timer and keyboard events to
implement a simple game.

6.5.1 Timers and Animation

An object belonging to the class [Link] exists only to generate events. A
Timer, by default, generates a sequence of events with a fixed delay between each event
and the next. (It is also possible to set a Timer to emit a single event after a specified time
delay; in that case, the timer is being used as an “alarm.”) Each event belongs to the class
ActionEvent. An object that is to listen for the events must implement the interface
ActionListener, which defines just one method:
public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent evt)

To use a Timer, you must create an object that implements the ActionListener interface. That is,
the object must belong to a class that is declared to “implement ActionListener”, and that class
must define the actionPerformed method. Then, if the object is set to listen for
6.5. TIMER AND KEYBOARD EVENTS 265

events from the timer, the code in the listener’s actionPerformed method will be
executed every time the timer generates an event.
Since there is no point to having a timer without having a listener to respond to its
events, the action listener for a timer is specified as a parameter in the timer’s constructor.
The time delay between timer events is also specified in the constructor. If timer is a
variable of type Timer, then the statement
timer = new Timer( millisDelay, listener );

creates a timer with a delay of millisDelay milliseconds between events (where 1000
mil-liseconds equal one second). Events from the timer are sent to the listener.
(millisDelay must be of type int, and listener must be of type ActionListener.) Note
that a timer is not guaranteed to deliver events at precisely regular intervals. If the computer
is busy with some other task, an event might be delayed or even dropped altogether.
A timer does not automatically start generating events when the timer object is created.
The start() method in the timer must be called to tell the timer to start generating events.
The timer’s stop() method can be used to turn the stream of events off—it can be
restarted by calling start() again.
∗∗∗
One application of timers is computer animation. A computer animation is just a
sequence of still images, presented to the user one after the other. If the time between
images is short, and if the change from one image to another is not too great, then the user
perceives continuous motion. The easiest way to do animation in Java is to use a Timer to
drive the animation. Each time the timer generates an event, the next frame of the animation
is computed and drawn on the screen—the code that implements this goes in the
actionPerformed method of an object that listens for events from the timer.
Our first example of using a timer is not exactly an animation, but it does display a new
image for each timer event. The program shows randomly generated images that vaguely
resemble works of abstract art. In fact, the program draws a new random image every time
its paintComponent() method is called, and the response to a timer event is simply to
call repaint(), which in turn triggers a call to paintComponent. The work of the
program is done in a subclass of JPanel, which starts like this:
import [Link].*;
import [Link].*;
import [Link].*;
public class RandomArtPanel extends JPanel {
/**
A RepaintAction object calls the repaint method of this panel each
time its actionPerformed() method is called. An object of this
type is used as an action listener for a Timer that generates an
ActionEvent every four seconds. The result is that the panel is
redrawn every four seconds.
*/
private class RepaintAction implements ActionListener
{ public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent evt) {
repaint(); // Call the repaint() method in the panel class.
}
}
266 CHAPTER 6. INTRODUCTION TO GUI PROGRAMMING

/**
The constructor creates a timer with a delay time of four seconds
(4000 milliseconds), and with a RepaintAction object as its
ActionListener. It also starts the timer running.
*/
public RandomArtPanel() {
RepaintAction action = new RepaintAction();
Timer timer = new Timer(4000, action);
[Link]();
}
/**
The paintComponent() method fills the panel with a random shade of
gray and then draws one of three types of random "art". The type
of art to be drawn is chosen at random.
*/
public void paintComponent(Graphics g) {
.
// The rest of the class is omitted

You can find the full source code for this class in the file [Link]; An application
version of the program is [Link], while the applet version is [Link].
You can see the applet version in the on-line version of this section.
Later in this section, we will use a timer to drive the animation in a simple computer game.

6.5.2 Keyboard Events

In Java, user actions become events in a program. These events are associated with GUI
components. When the user presses a button on the mouse, the event that is generated is associated
with the component that contains the mouse cursor. What about keyboard events? When the user
presses a key, what component is associated with the key event that is generated?
A GUI uses the idea of input focus to determine the component associated with
keyboard events. At any given time, exactly one interface element on the screen has the
input focus, and that is where all keyboard events are directed. If the interface element
happens to be a Java component, then the information about the keyboard event becomes
a Java object of type KeyEvent, and it is delivered to any listener objects that are listening
for KeyEvents associated with that component. The necessity of managing input focus
adds an extra twist to working with keyboard events.
It’s a good idea to give the user some visual feedback about which component has the
input focus. For example, if the component is the typing area of a word-processor, the
feedback is usually in the form of a blinking text cursor. Another common visual clue is to
draw a brightly colored border around the edge of a component when it has the input focus,
as I do in the examples given later in this section.
A component that wants to have the input focus can call the method requestFocus(), which is
defined in the Component class. Calling this method does not absolutely guarantee that the component will
actually get the input focus. Several components might request the focus; only one will get it. This method
should only be used in certain circumstances in any case, since it can be a rude surprise to the user to have the
focus suddenly pulled away from a component that the user is working with. In a typical user interface, the
user can choose to
6.5. TIMER AND KEYBOARD EVENTS 267

give the focus to a component by clicking on that component with the mouse. And pressing
the tab key will often move the focus from one component to another.
Some components do not automatically request the input focus when the user clicks on
them. To solve this problem, a program has to register a mouse listener with the compo-nent to
detect user clicks. In response to a user click, the mousePressed() method should call
requestFocus() for the component. This is true, in particular, for the components that are
used as drawing surfaces in the examples in this chapter. These components are defined as
subclasses of JPanel, and JPanel objects do not receive the input focus automatically. If you
want to be able to use the keyboard to interact with a JPanel named drawingSurface, you
have to register a listener to listen for mouse events on the drawingSurface and call
[Link]() in the mousePressed() method of the listener object.
As our first example of processing key events, we look at a simple program in which the user
moves a square up, down, left, and right by pressing arrow keys. When the user hits the ’R’, ’G’,
’B’, or ’K’ key, the color of the square is set to red, green, blue, or black, respectively. Of course,
none of these key events are delivered to the program unless it has the input focus. The panel in
the program changes its appearance when it has the input focus: When it does, a cyan-colored
border is drawn around the panel; when it does not, a gray-colored border is drawn. Also, the
panel displays a different message in each case. If the panel does not have the input focus, the
user can give the input focus to the panel by clicking on it. The complete source code for this
example can be found in the file [Link]. I will discuss some aspects of
it below. After reading this section, you should be able to understand the source code in its
entirety. Here is what the program looks like in its focussed state:

In Java, keyboard event objects belong to a class called KeyEvent. An object that needs to
listen for KeyEvent s must implement the interface named KeyListener. Furthermore, the object
must be registered with a component by calling the component’s addKeyListener() method.
The registration is done with the command “[Link](listener);”
where listener is the object that is to listen for key events, and component is the object that
will generate the key events (when it has the input focus). It is possible for component and
listener to be the same object. All this is, of course, directly analogous to what you learned
about mouse events in the previous section. The KeyListener interface defines the following
methods, which must be included in any class that implements KeyListener :
public void keyPressed(KeyEvent evt);
public void keyReleased(KeyEvent evt);
public void keyTyped(KeyEvent evt);

Java makes a careful distinction between the keys that you press and the characters that
you type. There are lots of keys on a keyboard: letter keys, number keys, modifier keys such as
Control and Shift, arrow keys, page up and page down keys, keypad keys, function keys. In
268 CHAPTER 6. INTRODUCTION TO GUI PROGRAMMING

many cases, pressing a key does not type a character. On the other hand, typing a character
sometimes involves pressing several keys. For example, to type an uppercase ’A’, you have to
press the Shift key and then press the A key before releasing the Shift key. On my Macintosh
computer, I can type an accented e, by holding down the Option key, pressing the E key,
releasing the Option key, and pressing E again. Only one character was typed, but I had to
perform three key-presses and I had to release a key at the right time. In Java, there are three
types of KeyEvent. The types correspond to pressing a key, releasing a key, and typing a
character. The keyPressed method is called when the user presses a key, the keyReleased
method is called when the user releases a key, and the keyTyped method is called when the
user types a character. Note that one user action, such as pressing the E key, can be
responsible for two events, a keyPressed event and a keyTyped event. Typing an upper
case ’A’ can generate two keyPressed, two keyReleased, and one keyTyped event.
Usually, it is better to think in terms of two separate streams of events, one consisting of
keyPressed and keyReleased events and the other consisting of keyTyped events. For some
applications, you want to monitor the first stream; for other applications, you want to monitor the
second one. Of course, the information in the keyTyped stream could be extracted from the
keyPressed/keyReleased stream, but it would be difficult (and also system-dependent to some
extent). Some user actions, such as pressing the Shift key, can only be detected as keyPressed
events. I have a solitaire game on my computer that hilites every card that can be moved, when I
hold down the Shift key. You could do something like that in Java by hiliting the cards when the Shift
key is pressed and removing the hilite when the Shift key is released.
There is one more complication. Usually, when you hold down a key on the keyboard,
that key will auto-repeat . This means that it will generate multiple keyPressed events, as
long as it is held down. It can also generate multiple keyTyped events. For the most part,
this will not affect your programming, but you should not expect every keyPressed event
to have a corresponding keyReleased event.
Every key on the keyboard has an integer code number. (Actually, this is only true for keys
that Java knows about. Many keyboards have extra keys that can’t be used with Java.) When the
keyPressed or keyReleased method is called, the parameter, evt, contains the code of the
key that was pressed or released. The code can be obtained by calling the function
[Link](). Rather than asking you to memorize a table of code numbers, Java
provides a named constant for each key. These constants are defined in the KeyEvent class. For
example the constant for the shift key is [Link] SHIFT. If you want to test whether the
key that the user pressed is the Shift key, you could say “if ([Link]()
[Link] SHIFT)”. The key codes for the four arrow keys are [Link] LEFT,
[Link] RIGHT, [Link] UP, and [Link] DOWN. Other keys have
similar codes. (The “VK” stands for “Virtual Keyboard”. In reality, different keyboards use
different key codes, but Java translates the actual codes from the keyboard into its own
“virtual” codes. Your program only sees these virtual key codes, so it will work with various
keyboards on various platforms without modification.)
In the case of a keyTyped event, you want to know which character was typed. This
information can be obtained from the parameter, evt, in the keyTyped method by calling
the function [Link](). This function returns a value of type char representing
the character that was typed.
In the KeyboardAndFocusDemo program, I use the keyPressed routine to respond when the
user presses one of the arrow keys. The applet includes instance variables, squareLeft and
squareTop, that give the position of the upper left corner of the movable square. When the
6.5. TIMER AND KEYBOARD EVENTS 269

user presses one of the arrow keys, the keyPressed routine modifies the appropriate
instance variable and calls repaint() to redraw the panel with the square in its new
position. Note that the values of squareLeft and squareTop are restricted so that the
square never moves outside the white area of the panel:
/**
This is called each time the user presses a key while the panel has
the input focus. If the key pressed was one of the arrow keys,
the square is moved (except that it is not allowed to move off the
edge of the panel, allowing for a 3-pixel border).
*/
public void keyPressed(KeyEvent evt) {
int key = [Link](); // keyboard code for the pressed key

if (key == [Link] LEFT) { // move the

square left squareLeft -= 8;

if (squareLeft < 3)
squareLeft = 3;
repaint();
}
else if (key == [Link] RIGHT) { // move the
square right squareLeft += 8;

if (squareLeft > getWidth() - 3 - SQUARE SIZE)

squareLeft = getWidth() - 3 - SQUARE SIZE;
repaint();
}
else if (key == [Link] UP) { // move the
squre up squareTop -= 8;

if (squareTop < 3)
squareTop = 3;
repaint();
}
else if (key == [Link] DOWN) { // move the
square down squareTop += 8;

if (squareTop > getHeight() - 3 - SQUARE SIZE)

squareTop = getHeight() - 3 - SQUARE SIZE;
repaint();
}
} // end keyPressed()

Color changes—which happen when the user types the characters ’R’, ’G’, ’B’, and ’K’,
or the lower case equivalents—are handled in the keyTyped method. I won’t include it
here, since it is so similar to the keyPressed method. Finally, to complete the KeyListener
interface, the keyReleased method must be defined. In the sample program, the body of
this method is empty since the applet does nothing in response to keyReleased events.

6.5.3 Focus Events

If a component is to change its appearance when it has the input focus, it needs some way
to know when it has the focus. In Java, objects are notified about changes of input focus by
events of type FocusEvent. An object that wants to be notified of changes in focus can
implement the FocusListener interface. This interface declares two methods:
270 CHAPTER 6. INTRODUCTION TO GUI PROGRAMMING

public void focusGained(FocusEvent evt);

public void focusLost(FocusEvent evt);

Furthermore, the addFocusListener() method must be used to set up a listener for

the focus events. When a component gets the input focus, it calls the focusGained()
method of any object that has been registered with that component as a FocusListener.
When it loses the focus, it calls the listener’s focusLost() method. Sometimes, it is the
component itself that listens for focus events.
In the sample KeyboardAndFocusDemo program, the response to a focus event is simply
to redraw the panel. The paintComponent() method checks whether the panel has the input
focus by calling the boolean-valued function hasFocus(), which is defined in the Component
class, and it draws a different picture depending on whether or not the panel has the input focus.
The net result is that the appearance of the panel changes when the panel gains or loses focus.
The methods from the FocusListener interface are defined simply as:
public void focusGained(FocusEvent evt) {
// The panel now has the input focus.
repaint(); // will redraw with a new message and a cyan border
}
public void focusLost(FocusEvent evt) {
// The panel has now lost the input focus.
repaint(); // will redraw with a new message and a gray border
}

The other aspect of handling focus is to make sure that the panel gets the focus when
the user clicks on it. To do this, the panel implements the MouseListener interface and
listens for mouse events on itself. It defines a mousePressed routine that asks that the
input focus be given to the panel:
public void mousePressed(MouseEvent evt) {
requestFocus();
}

The other four methods of the mouseListener interface are defined to be empty. Note
that the panel implements three different listener interfaces, KeyListener, FocusListener,
and MouseLis-tener, and the constructor in the panel class registers itself to listen for all
three types of events with the statements:
addKeyListener(this);
addFocusListener(this);
addMouseListener(this);

There are, of course, other ways to organize this example. It would be possible, for
example, to use a nested class to define the listening object. Or anonymous classes could
be used to define separate listening objects for each type of event. In my next example, I will
take the latter approach.

6.5.4 State Machines

The information stored in an object’s instance variables is said to represent the state of that
object. When one of the object’s methods is called, the action taken by the object can depend on its state.
(Or, in the terminology we have been using, the definition of the method can look at the instance variables to
decide what to do.) Furthermore, the state can change. (That
6.5. TIMER AND KEYBOARD EVENTS 271

is, the definition of the method can assign new values to the instance variables.) In
computer science, there is the idea of a state machine, which is just something that has a
state and can change state in response to events or inputs. The response of a state
machine to an event or input depends on what state it’s in. An object is a kind of state
machine. Sometimes, this point of view can be very useful in designing classes.
The state machine point of view can be especially useful in the type of event-oriented
programming that is required by graphical user interfaces. When designing a GUI program,
you can ask yourself: What information about state do I need to keep track of ? What events
can change the state of the program? How will my response to a given event depend on the
current state? Should the appearance of the GUI be changed to reflect a change in state?
How should the paintComponent() method take the state into account? All this is an
alternative to the top-down, step-wise-refinement style of program design, which does not
apply to the overall design of an event-oriented program.
In the KeyboardAndFocusDemo program, shown above, the state of the program is
recorded in the instance variables squareColor, squareLeft, and squareTop. These
state variables are used in the paintComponent() method to decide how to draw the
panel. They are changed in the two key-event-handling methods.
In the rest of this section, we’ll look at another example, where the state plays an even
bigger role. In this example, the user plays a simple arcade-style game by pressing the
arrow keys. The main panel of the program is defined in the souce code file
[Link]. An applet that uses this panel can be found in [Link],
while the stand-alone application version is [Link]. You can try out the applet in the
on-line version of this section. Here is what it looks like:

You have to click on the panel to give it the input focus. The program shows a black
“submarine” near the bottom of the panel. When the panel has the input focus, this
submarine moves back and forth erratically near the bottom. Near the top, there is a blue
“boat”. You can move this boat back and forth by pressing the left and right arrow keys.
Attached to the boat is a red “bomb” (or “depth charge”). You can drop the bomb by hitting
the down arrow key. The objective is to blow up the submarine by hitting it with the bomb. If
the bomb falls off the bottom of the screen, you get a new one. If the submarine explodes, a
new sub is created and you get a new bomb. Try it! Make sure to hit the sub at least once,
so you can see the explosion.
Let’s think about how this program can be programmed. First of all, since we are doing
object-oriented programming, I decided to represent the boat, the depth charge, and the sub-
marine as objects. Each of these objects is defined by a separate nested class inside the main
panel class, and each object has its own state which is represented by the instance variables in
272 CHAPTER 6. INTRODUCTION TO GUI PROGRAMMING

the corresponding class. I use variables boat, bomb, and sub in the panel class to refer
to the boat, bomb, and submarine objects.
Now, what constitutes the “state” of the program? That is, what things change from time to
time and affect the appearance or behavior of the program? Of course, the state includes the
positions of the boat, submarine, and bomb, so I need variables to store the positions. Anything
else, possibly less obvious? Well, sometimes the bomb is falling, and sometimes it’s not. That is
a difference in state. Since there are two possibilities, I represent this aspect of the state with a
boolean variable in the bomb object, [Link]. Sometimes the submarine is moving
left and sometimes it is moving right. The difference is represented by another boolean variable,
[Link]. Sometimes, the sub is exploding. This is also part of the state, and it is
represented by a boolean variable, [Link]. However, the explosions require a little
more thought. An explosion is something that takes place over a series of frames. While an
explosion is in progress, the sub looks different in each frame, as the size of the explosion
increases. Also, I need to know when the explosion is over so that I can go back to moving and
drawing the sub as usual. So, I use an integer variable, [Link] to
record how many frames have been drawn since the explosion started; the value of this variable
is used only when an explosion is in progress.
How and when do the values of these state variables change? Some of them seem to
change on their own: For example, as the sub moves left and right, the state variables the
that specify its position are changing. Of course, these variables are changing because of
an animation, and that animation is driven by a timer. Each time an event is generated by
the timer, some of the state variables have to change to get ready for the next frame of the
animation. The changes are made by the action listener that listens for events from the
timer. The boat, bomb, and sub objects each contain an updateForNextFrame()
method that updates the state variables of the object to get ready for the next frame of the
animation. The action listener for the timer calls these methods with the statements
[Link]();
[Link]();
[Link]();

The action listener also calls repaint(), so that the panel will be redrawn to reflect its new state.
There are several state variables that change in these update methods, in addition to the position of
the sub: If the bomb is falling, then its y-coordinate increases from one frame to the next. If the bomb
hits the sub, then the isExploding variable of the sub changes to true, and the isFalling
variable of the bomb becomes false. The isFalling variable also becomes false when the bomb
falls off the bottom of the screen. If the sub is exploding, then its explosionFrameNumber
increases from one frame to the next, and when it reaches a certain value, the explosion ends and
isExploding is reset to false. At random times, the sub switches between moving to the left and
moving to the right. Its direction of motion is recorded in the the sub’s isMovingLeft variable. The
sub’s updateForNewFrame() method includes the lines
if ( [Link]() < 0.04 )
isMovingLeft = ! isMovingLeft;

There is a 1 in 25 chance that [Link]() will be less than 0.04, so the statement
“isMovingLeft = ! isMovingLeft” is executed in one in every twenty-five frames, on
the average. The effect of this statement is to reverse the value of isMovingLeft, from
false to true or from true to false. That is, the direction of motion of the sub is reversed.
In addtion to changes in state that take place from one frame to the next, a few state variables change
when the user presses certain keys. In the program, this is checked in a
6.6. BASIC COMPONENTS 273

method that responds to user keystrokes. If the user presses the left or right arrow key, the
position of the boat is changed. If the user presses the down arrow key, the bomb changes
from not-falling to falling. This is coded in the keyPressed()method of a KeyListener that
is registered to listen for key events on the panel; that method reads as follows:
public void keyPressed(KeyEvent evt) {
int code = [Link](); // which key was pressed.
if (code == [Link] LEFT) {
Move the boat left. (If this moves the boat out of the frame, its
position will be adjusted in the [Link]()
method.) [Link] -= 15;
}
else if (code == [Link] RIGHT) {
Move the boat right. (If this moves boat out of the frame, its
position will be adjusted in the [Link]()
method.) [Link] += 15;
}
else if (code == [Link] DOWN) {
Start the bomb falling, it is is not already
falling. if ( [Link] == false )
[Link] = true;
}
}

Note that it’s not necessary to call repaint() when the state changes, since this panel shows
an animation that is constantly being redrawn anyway. Any changes in the state will become
visible to the user as soon as the next frame is drawn. At some point in the program, I have to
make sure that the user does not move the boat off the screen. I could have done this in
keyPressed(), but I choose to check for this in another routine, in the boat object.
I encourage you to read the source code in [Link]. Although a few points are
tricky, you should with some effort be able to read and understand the entire program. Try to
understand the program in terms of state machines. Note how the state of each of the three
objects in the program changes in response to events from the timer and from the user.
You should also note that the program uses four listeners, to respond to action events
from the timer, key events from the user, focus events, and mouse events. (The mouse is
used only to request the input focus when the user clicks the panel.) The timer runs only
when the panel has the input focus; this is programmed by having the focus listener start the
timer when the panel gains the input focus and stop the timer when the panel loses the input
focus. All four listeners are created in the constructor of the SubKillerPanel class using
anonymous inner classes. (See Subsection 6.4.5.)
While it’s not at all sophisticated as arcade games go, the SubKiller game does use
some interesting programming. And it nicely illustrates how to apply state-machine thinking
in event-oriented programming.

6.6 Basic Components

In preceding sections, you’ve seen how to use a graphics context to draw on the screen and
how to handle mouse events and keyboard events. In one sense, that’s all there is to GUI
programming. If you’re willing to program all the drawing and handle all the mouse and keyboard
events, you have nothing more to learn. However, you would either be doing a lot
274 CHAPTER 6. INTRODUCTION TO GUI PROGRAMMING

more work than you need to do, or you would be limiting yourself to very simple user interfaces.
A typical user interface uses standard GUI components such as buttons, scroll bars, text-input
boxes, and menus. These components have already been written for you, so you don’t have to
duplicate the work involved in developing them. They know how to draw themselves, and they
can handle the details of processing the mouse and keyboard events that concern them.
Consider one of the simplest user interface components, a push button. The button has
a border, and it displays some text. This text can be changed. Sometimes the button is
disabled, so that clicking on it doesn’t have any effect. When it is disabled, its appearance
changes. When the user clicks on the push button, the button changes appearance while
the mouse button is pressed and changes back when the mouse button is released. In fact,
it’s more complicated than that. If the user moves the mouse outside the push button before
releasing the mouse button, the button changes to its regular appearance. To implement
this, it is necessary to respond to mouse exit or mouse drag events. Furthermore, on many
platforms, a button can receive the input focus. The button changes appearance when it has
the focus. If the button has the focus and the user presses the space bar, the button is
triggered. This means that the button must respond to keyboard and focus events as well.
Fortunately, you don’t have to program any of this, provided you use an object belonging
to the standard class [Link]. A JButton object draws itself and
processes mouse, keyboard, and focus events on its own. You only hear from the Button
when the user triggers it by clicking on it or pressing the space bar while the button has the
input focus. When this happens, the JButton object creates an event object belonging to the
class [Link]. The event object is sent to any registered
listeners to tell them that the button has been pushed. Your program gets only the
information it needs—the fact that a button was pushed.
∗∗∗
The standard components that are defined as part of the Swing graphical user interface API
are defined by subclasses of the class JComponent, which is itself a subclass of Component.
(Note that this includes the JPanel class that we have already been working with extensively.)
Many useful methods are defined in the Component and JComponent classes and so can be
used with any Swing component. We begin by looking at a few of these methods. Suppose that
comp is a variable that refers to some JComponent. Then the following methods can be used:

[Link]() and [Link]() are functions that give the current size
of the component, in pixels. One warning: When a component is first created, its size is
zero. The size will be set later, probably by a layout manager. A common mistake is to
check the size of a component before that size has been set, such as in a constructor.
[Link](true) and [Link](false) can be used to enable
and disable the component. When a component is disabled, its appearance might
change, and the user cannot do anything with it. There is a boolean-valued function,
[Link]() that you can call to discover whether the component is enabled.
[Link](true) and [Link](false) can be called to hide or
show the component.
[Link](font) sets the font that is used for text displayed on the component.
See Subsection 6.3.3 for a discussion of fonts.
[Link](color) and [Link](color) set the background and
foreground colors for the component. See Subsection 6.3.2.
6.6. BASIC COMPONENTS 275

[Link](true) tells the component that the area occupied by the component
should be filled with the component’s background color before the content of the com-
ponent is painted. By default, only JLabels are non-opaque. A non-opaque, or “trans-
parent”, component ignores its background color and simply paints its content over the
content of its container. This usually means that it inherits the background color from its
container.
[Link](string) sets the specified string as a “tool tip” for the
component. The tool tip is displayed if the mouse cursor is in the component and the
mouse is not moved for a few seconds. The tool tip should give some information about
the meaning of the component or how to use it.
[Link](size) sets the size at which the component should be
displayed, if possible. The parameter is of type [Link], where an object
of type Di-mension has two public integer-valued instance variables, width and height.
A call to this method usually looks something like “setPreferredSize( new
Dimension(100,50) )”. The preferred size is used as a hint by layout managers, but
will not be respected in all cases. Standard components generally compute a correct
preferred size automatically, but it can be useful to set it in some cases. For example, if you
use a JPanel as a drawing surface, it might be a good idea to set a preferred size for it.

Note that using any component is a multi-step process. The component object must be
created with a constructor. It must be added to a container. In many cases, a listener must
be registered to respond to events from the component. And in some cases, a reference to
the component must be saved in an instance variable so that the component can be
manipulated by the program after it has been created. In this section, we will look at a few of
the basic standard components that are available in Swing. In the next section we will
consider the problem of laying out components in containers.

6.6.1 JButton
An object of class JButton is a push button that the user can click to trigger some action.
You’ve already seen buttons used in Section 6.1 and Section 6.2, but we consider them in
much more detail here. To use any component effectively, there are several aspects of the
corresponding class that you should be familiar with. For JButton, as an example, I list these
aspects explicitely:

Constructors: The JButton class has a constructor that takes a string as a parameter.
This string becomes the text displayed on the button. For example: stopGoButton =
new JButton("Go"). This creates a button object that will display the text, “Go” (but
remember that the button must still be added to a container before it can appear on the
screen).
Events: When the user clicks on a button, the button generates an event of type Action-
Event. This event is sent to any listener that has been registered with the button as an
ActionListener.
Listeners: An object that wants to handle events generated by buttons must imple-ment
the ActionListener interface. This interface defines just one method, “public void
actionPerformed(ActionEvent evt)”, which is called to notify the object of an
action event.
276 CHAPTER 6. INTRODUCTION TO GUI PROGRAMMING

Registration of Listeners: In order to actually receive notification of an event from a

button, an ActionListener must be registered with the button. This is done with the but-
ton’s addActionListener() method. For example:
[Link]( buttonHandler );
Event methods: When actionPerformed(evt) is called by the button, the parameter,
evt, contains information about the event. This information can be retrieved by calling
methods in the ActionEvent class. In particular, [Link]() returns a
String giving the command associated with the button. By default, this command is the text
that is displayed on the button, but it is possible to set it to some other string. The method
[Link]() returns a reference to the Object that produced the event, that is, to
the JButton that was pressed. The return value is of type Object, not JButton, because
other types of components can also produce ActionEvent s.
Component methods: Several useful methods are defined in the JButton class. For
example, [Link]("Stop") changes the text displayed on the
button to “Stop”. And [Link]("sgb") changes the
action command associated to this button for action events.

Of course, JButtons also have all the general Component methods, such as
setEnabled() and setFont(). The setEnabled() and setText() methods of a
button are particularly useful for giving the user information about what is going on in the
program. A disabled button is better than a button that gives an obnoxious error message
such as “Sorry, you can’t click on me now!”

6.6.2 JLabel
JLabel is certainly the simplest type of component. An object of type JLabel exists just to
display a line of text. The text cannot be edited by the user, although it can be changed by
your program. The constructor for a JLabel specifies the text to be displayed:
JLabel message = new JLabel("Hello World!");

There is another constructor that specifies where in the label the text is located, if there is
extra space. The possible alignments are given by the constants [Link],
[Link], and [Link]. For example,
JLabel message = new JLabel("Hello World!", [Link]);

creates a label whose text is centered in the available space. You can change the text
displayed in a label by calling the label’s setText() method:
[Link]("Goodby World!");

Since the JLabel class is a subclass of JComponent, you can use methods such as
setForeground() with labels. If you want the background color to have any effect, you
should call setOpaque(true) on the label, since otherwise the JLabel might not fill in its
background. For example:
JLabel message = new JLabel("Hello World!", [Link]);
[Link]([Link]); // Display red text...
[Link]([Link]); // on a black background...
[Link](new Font("Serif",[Link],18)); // in a big bold font.
[Link](true); // Make sure background is filled in.
6.6. BASIC COMPONENTS 277

6.6.3 JCheckBox

A JCheckBox is a component that has two states: selected or unselected. The user can
change the state of a check box by clicking on it. The state of a checkbox is represented by
a boolean value that is true if the box is selected and false if the box is unselected. A
checkbox has a label, which is specified when the box is constructed:
JCheckBox showTime = new JCheckBox("Show Current Time");

Usually, it’s the user who sets the state of a JCheckBox, but you can also set the state in
your program. The current state of a checkbox is set using its setSelected(boolean)
method. For example, if you want the checkbox showTime to be checked, you would say
“[Link](true)". To uncheck the box, say
“[Link](false)". You can determine the current state of a checkbox
by calling its isSelected() method, which returns a boolean value.
In many cases, you don’t need to worry about events from checkboxes. Your program can
just check the state whenever it needs to know it by calling the isSelected() method.
However, a checkbox does generate an event when its state is changed by the user, and you
can detect this event and respond to it if you want something to happen at the moment the state
changes. When the state of a checkbox is changed by the user, it generates an event of type
ActionEvent. If you want something to happen when the user changes the state, you must
register an ActionListener with the checkbox by calling its addActionListener() method.
(Note that if you change the state by calling the setSelected() method, no ActionEvent is
generated. However, there is another method in the JCheckBox class, doClick(), which
simulates a user click on the checkbox and does generate an ActionEvent.)
When handling an ActionEvent, you can call [Link]() in the
actionPerformed() method to find out which object generated the event. (Of course, if
you are only listening for events from one component, you don’t even have to do this.) The
returned value is of type Object, but you can type-cast it to another type if you want. Once
you know the object that generated the event, you can ask the object to tell you its current
state. For example, if you know that the event had to come from one of two checkboxes,
cb1 or cb2, then your actionPerformed() method might look like this:

public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent

evt) { Object source = [Link]();
if (source == cb1) {
boolean newState = [Link]();
... // respond to the change of state
}
else if (source == cb2) {
boolean newState = [Link]();
... // respond to the change of state
}
}

Alternatively, you can use [Link]() to retrieve the action command

asso-ciated with the source. For a JCheckBox, the action command is, by default, the label
of the checkbox.
278 CHAPTER 6. INTRODUCTION TO GUI PROGRAMMING

6.6.4 JTextField and JTextArea

The JTextField and JTextArea classes represent components that contain text that can be
edited by the user. A JTextField holds a single line of text, while a JTextArea can hold
multiple lines. It is also possible to set a JTextField or JTextArea to be read-only so that the
user can read the text that it contains but cannot edit the text. Both classes are subclasses
of an abstract class, JTextComponent, which defines their common properties.
JTextField and JTextArea have many methods in common. The instance method
setText(), which takes a parameter of type String, can be used to change the text that is
displayed in an input component. The contents of the component can be retrieved by calling
its getText() instance method, which returns a value of type String. If you want to stop
the user from modifying the text, you can call setEditable(false). Call the same
method with a parameter of true to make the input component user-editable again.
The user can only type into a text component when it has the input focus. The user can
give the input focus to a text component by clicking it with the mouse, but sometimes it is
useful to give the input focus to a text field programmatically. You can do this by calling its
requestFocus() method. For example, when I discover an error in the user’s input, I
usually call requestFocus() on the text field that contains the error. This helps the user
see where the error occurred and lets the user start typing the correction immediately.
By default, there is no space between the text in a text component and the edge of the
component, which usually doesn’t look very good. You can use the setMargin() method
of the component to add some blank space between the edge of the component and the
text. This method takes a parameter of type [Link] which contains four
integer instance variables that specify the margins on the top, left, bottom, and right edge of
the component. For example,
[Link]( new Insets(5,5,5,5) );

adds a five-pixel margin between the text in textComponent and each edge of the component.
∗∗∗
The JTextField class has a constructor
public JTextField(int columns)

where columns is an integer that specifies the number of characters that should be visible
in the text field. This is used to determine the preferred width of the text field. (Because
characters can be of different sizes and because the preferred width is not always
respected, the actual number of characters visible in the text field might not be equal to
columns.) You don’t have to specify the number of columns; for example, you might use
the text field in a context where it will expand to fill whatever space is available. In that case,
you can use the constructor JTextField(), with no parameters. You can also use the
following constructors, which specify the initial contents of the text field:
public JTextField(String contents);
public JTextField(String contents, int columns);

The constructors for a JTextArea are

public JTextArea()
public JTextArea(int rows, int columns)
public JTextArea(String contents)
public JTextArea(String contents, int rows, int columns)
6.6. BASIC COMPONENTS 279

The parameter rows specifies how many lines of text should be visible in the text area. This
determines the preferred height of the text area, just as columns determines the preferred
width. However, the text area can actually contain any number of lines; the text area can be
scrolled to reveal lines that are not currently visible. It is common to use a JTextArea as the
CENTER component of a BorderLayout. In that case, it is less useful to specify the number of
lines and columns, since the TextArea will expand to fill all the space available in the center
area of the container.
The JTextArea class adds a few useful methods to those inherited from JTextComponent.
For example, the instance method append(moreText), where moreText is of type String,
adds the specified text at the end of the current content of the text area. (When using append()
or setText() to add text to a JTextArea, line breaks can be inserted in the text by using the
newline character, ’\n’.) And setLineWrap(wrap), where wrap is of type boolean, tells
what should happen when a line of text is too long to be displayed in the text area. If wrap is
true, then any line that is too long will be “wrapped” onto the next line; if wrap is false, the line
will simply extend outside the text area, and the user will have to scroll the text area horizontally
to see the entire line. The default value of wrap is false.
Since it might be necessary to scroll a text area to see all the text that it contains, you
might expect a text area to come with scroll bars. Unfortunately, this does not happen
automatically. To get scroll bars for a text area, you have to put the JTextArea inside
another component, called a JScrollPane. This can be done as follows:
JTextArea inputArea = new JTextArea();
JScrollPane scroller = new JScrollPane( inputArea );

The scroll pane provides scroll bars that can be used to scroll the text in the text area. The
scroll bars will appear only when needed, that is when the size of the text exceeds the size
of the text area. Note that when you want to put the text area into a container, you should
add the scroll pane, not the text area itself, to the container.
∗∗∗
When the user is typing in a JTextField and presses return, an ActionEvent is generated.
If you want to respond to such events, you can register an ActionListener with the text field,
using the text field’s addActionListener() method. (Since a JTextArea can contain
multiple lines of text, pressing return in a text area does not generate an event; is simply
begins a new line of text.)
JTextField has a subclass, JPasswordField, which is identical except that it does not
reveal the text that it contains. The characters in a JPasswordField are all displayed as
asterisks (or some other fixed character). A password field is, obviously, designed to let the
user enter a password without showing that password on the screen.
Text components are actually quite complex, and I have covered only their most basic
properties here. I will return to the topic of text components in Subsection 12.4.4.

6.6.5 JComboBox
The JComboBox class provides a way to let the user select one option from a list of options.
The options are presented as a kind of pop-up menu, and only the currently selected option
is visible on the screen.
When a JComboBox object is first constructed, it initially contains no items. An item is
added to the bottom of the menu by calling the combo box’s instance method,
addItem(str), where str is the string that will be displayed in the menu.
280 CHAPTER 6. INTRODUCTION TO GUI PROGRAMMING

For example, the following code will create an object of type JComboBox that contains
the options Red, Blue, Green, and Black:
JComboBox colorChoice = new JComboBox();
[Link]("Red");
[Link]("Blue");
[Link]("Green");
[Link]("Black");

You can call the getSelectedIndex() method of a JComboBox to find out which
item is currently selected. This method returns an integer that gives the position of the
selected item in the list, where the items are numbered starting from zero. Alternatively, you
can call getSelectedItem() to get the selected item itself. (This method returns a value
of type Object, since a JComboBox can actually hold other types of objects besides
strings.) You can change the selection by calling the method setSelectedIndex(n),
where n is an integer giving the position of the item that you want to select.
The most common way to use a JComboBox is to call its getSelectedIndex()
method when you have a need to know which item is currently selected. However, like other
components that we have seen, JComboBox components generate ActionEvent s when the
user selects an item. You can register an ActionListener with the JComboBox if you want to
respond to such events as they occur.
JComboBoxes have a nifty feature, which is probably not all that useful in practice. You can
make a JComboBox “editable” by calling its method setEditable(true). If you do this, the
user can edit the selection by clicking on the JComboBox and typing. This allows the user to
make a selection that is not in the pre-configured list that you provide. (The “Combo” in the name
“JComboBox” refers to the fact that it’s a kind of combination of menu and text-input box.) If the
user has edited the selection in this way, then the getSelectedIndex() method will return
the value -1, and getSelectedItem() will return the string that the user typed. An
ActionEvent is triggered if the user presses return while typing in the JComboBox.

6.6.6 JSlider
A JSlider provides a way for the user to select an integer value from a range of possible
values. The user does this by dragging a “knob” along a bar. A slider can, optionally, be
decorated with tick marks and with labels. This picture shows three sliders with di fferent
decorations and with different ranges of values:

Here, the second slider is decorated with ticks, and the third one is decorated with labels.
It’s possible for a single slider to have both types of decorations.
The most commonly used constructor for JSliders specifies the start and end of the
range of values for the slider and its initial value when it first appears on the screen:
public JSlider(int minimum, int maximum, int value)
6.6. BASIC COMPONENTS 281

If the parameters are omitted, the values 0, 100, and 50 are used. By default, a slider is horizon-
tal, but you can make it vertical by calling its method
setOrientation([Link]). The current value of a JSlider can be read at any
time with its getValue() method, which returns a value of type int. If you want to change the
value, you can do so with the method setValue(n), which takes a parameter of type int.
If you want to respond immediately when the user changes the value of a slider, you can register
a listener with the slider. JSliders, unlike other components we have seen, do not generate
ActionEvents. Instead, they generate events of type ChangeEvent. ChangeEvent and related
classes are defined in the package [Link] rather than [Link], so if you
want to use ChangeEvents, you should import [Link].* at the beginning of
your program. You must also define some object to implement the ChangeListener interface, and you
must register the change listener with the slider by calling its addChangeListener() method. A
ChangeListener must provide a definition for the method:
public void stateChanged(ChangeEvent evt)

This method will be called whenever the value of the slider changes. (Note that it will also be
called when you change the value with the setValue() method, as well as when the user
changes the value.) In the stateChanged() method, you can call [Link]() to
find out which object generated the event.
Using tick marks on a slider is a two-step process: Specify the interval between the tick
marks, and tell the slider that the tick marks should be displayed. There are actually two
types of tick marks, “major” tick marks and “minor” tick marks. You can have one or the other
or both. Major tick marks are a bit longer than minor tick marks. The method
setMinorTickSpacing(i) indicates that there should be a minor tick mark every i units
along the slider. The parameter is an integer. (The spacing is in terms of values on the
slider, not pixels.) For the major tick marks, there is a similar command,
setMajorTickSpacing(i). Calling these methods is not enough to make the tick marks
appear. You also have to call setPaintTicks(true). For example, the second slider in
the above picture was created and configured using the commands:
slider2 = new JSlider(); // (Uses default min, max, and value.)
[Link](this);
[Link](25);
[Link](5);
[Link](true);

Labels on a slider are handled similarly. You have to specify the labels and tell the slider to
paint them. Specifying labels is a tricky business, but the JSlider class has a method to simplify
it. You can create a set of labels and add them to a slider named sldr with the command:
[Link]( [Link](i) );

where i is an integer giving the spacing between the labels. To arrange for the labels to be
displayed, call setPaintLabels(true). For example, the third slider in the above picture
was created and configured with the commands:
slider3 = new JSlider(2000,2100,2006);
[Link](this);
[Link]( [Link](50) );
[Link](true);
282 CHAPTER 6. INTRODUCTION TO GUI PROGRAMMING

6.7 Basic Layout

Components are the fundamental building blocks of a graphical user interface. But you have to
do more with components besides create them. Another aspect of GUI programming is laying
out components on the screen, that is, deciding where they are drawn and how big they are.
You have probably noticed that computing coordinates can be a di fficult problem, especially if
you don’t assume a fixed size for the drawing area. Java has a solution for this, as well.

Components are the visible objects that make up a GUI. Some components are
containers, which can hold other components. Containers in Java are objects that belong to
some subclass of [Link]. The content pane of a JApplet or JFrame is an
example of a container. The standard class JPanel, which we have mostly used as a
drawing surface up till now, is another example of a container.
Because a JPanel object is a container, it can hold other components. Because a JPanel
is itself a component, you can add a JPanel to another JPanel. This makes complex nesting
of components possible. JPanels can be used to organize complicated user interfaces, as
shown in this illustration:

The components in a container must be “laid out,” which means setting their sizes and
positions. It’s possible to program the layout yourself, but ordinarily layout is done by a
layout manager . A layout manager is an object associated with a container that
implements some policy for laying out the components in that container. Di fferent types of
layout manager implement different policies. In this section, we will cover the three most
common types of layout manager, and then we will look at several programming examples
that use components and layout.
Every container has an instance method, setLayout(), that takes a parameter of type
LayoutManager and that is used to specify the layout manager that will be responsible for
laying out any components that are added to the container. Components are added to a
container by calling an instance method named add() in the container object. There are
actually several versions of the add() method, with different parameter lists. Different
versions of add() are appropriate for different layout managers, as we will see below.
6.7. BASIC LAYOUT 283

6.7.1 Basic Layout Managers

Java has a variety of standard layout managers that can be used as parameters in the
setLayout() method. They are defined by classes in the package [Link]. Here, we will
look at just three of these layout manager classes: FlowLayout, BorderLayout, and GridLayout.
A FlowLayout simply lines up components in a row across the container. The size of
each component is equal to that component’s “preferred size.” After laying out as many
items as will fit in a row across the container, the layout manager will move on to the next
row. The default layout for a JPanel is a FlowLayout ; that is, a JPanel uses a FlowLayout
unless you specify a different layout manager by calling the panel’s setLayout() method.
The components in a given row can be either left-aligned, right-aligned, or centered
within that row, and there can be horizontal and vertical gaps between components. If the
default constructor, “new FlowLayout()”, is used, then the components on each row will
be centered and both the horizontal and the vertical gaps will be five pixels. The constructor
public FlowLayout(int align, int hgap, int vgap)

can be used to specify alternative alignment and gaps. The possible values of align are
[Link], [Link], and [Link].
Suppose that cntr is a container object that is using a FlowLayout as its layout
manager. Then, a component, comp, can be added to the container with the statement
[Link](comp);

The FlowLayout will line up all the components that have been added to the container in this
way. They will be lined up in the order in which they were added. For example, this picture
shows five buttons in a panel that uses a FlowLayout :

Note that since the five buttons will not fit in a single row across the panel, they are arranged
in two rows. In each row, the buttons are grouped together and are centered in the row. The
buttons were added to the panel using the statements:
[Link](button1);
[Link](button2);
[Link](button3);
[Link](button4);
[Link](button5);

When a container uses a layout manager, the layout manager is ordinarily responsible
for computing the preferred size of the container (although a different preferred size could
be set by calling the container’s setPreferredSize method). A FlowLayout prefers to put
its components in a single row, so the preferred width is the total of the preferred widths of
all the components, plus the horizontal gaps between the components. The preferred height
is the maximum preferred height of all the components.
∗∗∗
284 CHAPTER 6. INTRODUCTION TO GUI PROGRAMMING

A BorderLayout layout manager is designed to display one large, central component,

with up to four smaller components arranged along the edges of the central component. If a
container, cntr, is using a BorderLayout, then a component, comp, should be added to the
container using a statement of the form
[Link]( comp, borderLayoutPosition );

where borderLayoutPosition specifies what position the component should occupy in

the layout and is given as one of the constants [Link],
[Link], [Link], [Link], or
[Link]. The meaning of the five positions is shown in this diagram:

Note that a border layout can contain fewer than five compompontnts, so that not all five of
the possible positions need to be filled.
A BorderLayout selects the sizes of its components as follows: The NORTH and SOUTH
com-ponents (if present) are shown at their preferred heights, but their width is set equal to the
full width of the container. The EAST and WEST components are shown at their preferred
widths, but their height is set to the height of the container, minus the space occupied by the
NORTH and SOUTH components. Finally, the CENTER component takes up any remaining
space; the preferred size of the CENTER component is completely ignored. You should make
sure that the components that you put into a BorderLayout are suitable for the positions that they
will occupy. A horizontal slider or text field, for example, would work well in the NORTH or
SOUTH position, but wouldn’t make much sense in the EAST or WEST position.
The default constructor, new BorderLayout(), leaves no space between
components. If you would like to leave some space, you can specify horizontal and vertical
gaps in the constructor of the BorderLayout object. For example, if you say
[Link](new BorderLayout(5,7));

then the layout manager will insert horizontal gaps of 5 pixels between components and
vertical gaps of 7 pixels between components. The background color of the container will
show through in these gaps. The default layout for the original content pane that comes with
a JFrame or JApplet is a BorderLayout with no horizontal or vertical gap.
∗∗∗
Finally, we consider the GridLayout layout manager. A grid layout lays out components in a grid of
equal sized rectangles. This illustration shows how the components would be arranged in a grid layout with 3
rows and 2 columns:
6.7. BASIC LAYOUT 285

If a container uses a GridLayout, the appropriate add method for the container takes a
single parameter of type Component (for example: [Link](comp)). Components are
added to the grid in the order shown; that is, each row is filled from left to right before going
on the next row.
The constructor for a GridLayout takes the form “new GridLayout(R,C)”, where R is
the number of rows and C is the number of columns. If you want to leave horizontal gaps of
H pixels between columns and vertical gaps of V pixels between rows, use “new
GridLayout(R,C,H,V)” instead.
When you use a GridLayout, it’s probably good form to add just enough components to fill
the grid. However, this is not required. In fact, as long as you specify a non-zero value for the
number of rows, then the number of columns is essentially ignored. The system will use just as
many columns as are necessary to hold all the components that you add to the container. If you
want to depend on this behavior, you should probably specify zero as the number of columns.
You can also specify the number of rows as zero. In that case, you must give a non-zero number
of columns. The system will use the specified number of columns, with just as many rows as
necessary to hold the components that are added to the container.
Horizontal grids, with a single row, and vertical grids, with a single column, are very com-
mon. For example, suppose that button1, button2, and button3 are buttons and that
you’d like to display them in a horizontal row in a panel. If you use a horizontal grid for the
panel, then the buttons will completely fill that panel and will all be the same size. The panel
can be created as follows:
JPanel buttonBar = new JPanel();
[Link]( new GridLayout(1,3) );
(Note: The "3" here is pretty much ignored, and
you could also say "new GridLayout(1,0)".
To leave gaps between the buttons, you could use
"new GridLayout(1,0,5,5)".)
[Link](button1);
[Link](button2);
[Link](button3);

You might find this button bar to be more attractive than the one that uses the default
FlowLay-out layout manager.

6.7.2 Borders
We have seen how to leave gaps between the components in a container, but what if you
would like to leave a border around the outside of the container? This problem is not
handled by layout managers. Instead, borders in Swing are represented by objects. A
Border object can be added to any JComponent, not just to containers. Borders can be
more than just empty space. The class [Link] contains a large
number of static methods for creating border objects. For example, the function
286 CHAPTER 6. INTRODUCTION TO GUI PROGRAMMING

[Link]([Link])

returns an object that represents a one-pixel wide black line around the outside of a
component. If comp is a JComponent, a border can be added to comp using its
setBorder() method. For example:
[Link]( [Link]([Link]) );

When a border has been set for a JComponent, the border is drawn automatically,
without any further effort on the part of the programmer. The border is drawn along the
edges of the component, just inside its boundary. The layout manager of a JPanel or other
container will take the space occupied by the border into account. The components that are
added to the container will be displayed in the area inside the border. I don’t recommend
using a border on a JPanel that is being used as a drawing surface. However, if you do
this, you should take the border into account. If you draw in the area occupied by the border,
that part of your drawing will be covered by the border.
Here are some of the static methods that can be used to create borders:
[Link](top,left,bottom,right) — leaves an
empty bor-der around the edges of a component. Nothing is drawn in this space, so the
background color of the component will appear in the area occupied by the border. The
parameters are integers that give the width of the border along the top, left, bottom,
and right edges of the component. This is actually very useful when used on a JPanel
that contains other components. It puts some space between the components and the
edge of the panel. It can also be useful on a JLabel, which otherwise would not have
any space between the text and the edge of the label.
[Link](color,thickness) — draws a line around
all four edges of a component. The first parameter is of type Color and specifies the
color of the line. The second parameter is an integer that specifies the thickness of the
border. If the second parameter is omitted, a line of thickness 1 is drawn.
[Link](top,left,bottom,right,color) — is
similar to createLineBorder, except that you can specify individual thicknesses for
the top, left, bottom, and right edges of the component.
[Link]() — creates a border that looks like a
groove etched around the boundary of the component. The effect is achieved using
lighter and darker shades of the component’s background color, and it does not work
well with every background color.
[Link]()—gives a component a three-
dimensional effect that makes it look like it is lowered into the computer screen. As
with an Etched-Border, this only works well for certain background colors.
[Link]()—similar to a LoweredBevelBorder, but
the component looks like it is raised above the computer screen.
[Link](title)—creates a border with a title. The
title is a String, which is displayed in the upper left corner of the border.
There are many other methods in the BorderFactory class, most of them providing vari-ations of
the basic border styles given here. The following illustration shows six components with six different border
styles. The text in each component is the command that created the border for that component:
6.7. BASIC LAYOUT 287

(The source code for the applet that produced this picture can be found in [Link].)

6.7.3 SliderAndComboBoxDemo
Now that we have looked at components and layouts, it’s time to put them together into
some complete programs. We start with a simple demo that uses a JLabel, a JComboBox,
and a couple of JSlider s, all laid out in a GridLayout, as shown in this picture:

The sliders in this applet control the foreground and background color of the label, and the
combo box controls its font style. Writing this program is a matter of creating the components,
laying them out, and programming listeners to respond to events from the sliders and combo
box. In my program, I define a subclass of JPanel which will be used for the applet’s content
pane. This class implements ChangeListener and ActionListener, so the panel itself can act as
the listener for change events from the sliders and action events from the combo box. In the
constructor, the four components are created and configured, a GridLayout is installed as the
layout manager for the panel, and the components are added to the panel:
/* Create the sliders, and set up this panel to listen for
ChangeEvents that are generated by the sliders. */

bgColorSlider = new JSlider(0,255,100);

[Link](this);
fgColorSlider = new JSlider(0,255,200);
[Link](this);
288 CHAPTER 6. INTRODUCTION TO GUI PROGRAMMING

/* Create the combo box, and add four items to it,

listing different font styles. Set up the panel to
listen for ActionEvents from the combo box. */

fontStyleSelect = new JComboBox();

[Link]("Plain Font");
[Link]("Italic Font");
[Link]("Bold Font");
[Link]("Bold Italic Font");
[Link](2);
[Link](this);

/* Create the display label, with properties to match the

values of the sliders and the setting of the combo box. */

displayLabel = new JLabel("Hello World!", [Link]);

[Link](true);
[Link]( new Color(100,100,100) );
[Link]( new Color(255, 200, 200) );
[Link]( new Font("Serif", [Link], 30) );

/* Set the layout for the panel, and add the four components.
Use a GridLayout with 4 rows and 1 column. */
setLayout(new GridLayout(4,1));
add(displayLabel);
add(bgColorSlider);
add(fgColorSlider);
add(fontStyleSelect);

The class also defines the methods required by the ActionListener and ChangeListener
inter-faces. The actionPerformed() method is called when the user selects an item in
the combo box. This method changes the font in the JLable, where the font depends on
which item is currently selected in the combo box, fontStyleSelect:
public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent evt)
{ switch ( [Link]()
) { case 0:
[Link]( new Font("Serif",
[Link], 30) ); break;
case 1:
[Link]( new Font("Serif",
[Link], 30) ); break;
case 2:
[Link]( new Font("Serif",
[Link], 30) ); break;
case 3:
[Link]( new Font("Serif", [Link] +
[Link], 30) ); break;
}
}

And the stateChanged() method, which is called when the user manipulates one of the
sliders, uses the value on the slider to compute a new foreground or background color for
the label. The method checks [Link]() to determine which slider was changed:
6.7. BASIC LAYOUT 289

public void stateChanged(ChangeEvent evt) {

if ([Link]() == bgColorSlider) {
int bgVal = [Link]();
[Link]( new Color(bgVal,bgVal,bgVal) );
NOTE: The background color is a shade of gray,
determined by the setting on the slider.
}
else {
int fgVal = [Link]();
[Link]( new Color( 255, fgVal, fgVal) );
Note: The foreground color ranges from pure red to pure
white as the slider value increases from 0 to 255.
}
}

(The complete source code is in the file [Link].)

6.7.4 A Simple Calculator

As our next example, we look briefly at an example that uses nested subpanels to build a
more complex user interface. The program has two JTextField s where the user can enter
two numbers, four JButtons that the user can click to add, subtract, multiply, or divide the
two numbers, and a JLabel that displays the result of the operation:

Like the previous example, this example uses a main panel with a GridLayout that has four
rows and one column. In this case, the layout is created with the statement:
setLayout(new GridLayout(4,1,3,3));

which allows a 3-pixel gap between the rows where the gray background color of the panel
is visible. The gray border around the edges of the panel is added with the statement
setBorder( [Link](5,5,5,5) );

The first row of the grid layout actually contains two components, a JLabel displaying the text
“x =” and a JTextField. A grid layout can only only have one component in each position. In this
case, that component is a JPanel, a subpanel that is nested inside the main panel. This
subpanel in turn contains the label and text field. This can be programmed as follows:
xInput = new JTextField("0", 10); // Create a text field sized to
hold 10 chars. JPanel xPanel = new JPanel(); // Create the subpanel.
[Link]( new JLabel(" x = ")); // Add a label to the subpanel.
[Link](xInput); // Add the text field to the subpanel
[Link](xPanel); // Add the subpanel to the main panel.
290 CHAPTER 6. INTRODUCTION TO GUI PROGRAMMING

The subpanel uses the default FlowLayout layout manager, so the label and text field are
simply placed next to each other in the subpanel at their preferred size, and are centered in
the subpanel.
Similarly, the third row of the grid layout is a subpanel that contains four buttons. In this
case, the subpanel uses a GridLayout with one row and four columns, so that the buttons
are all the same size and completely fill the subpanel.
One other point of interest in this example is the actionPerformed() method that
responds when the user clicks one of the buttons. This method must retrieve the user’s numbers
from the text field, perform the appropriate arithmetic operation on them (depending on which
button was clicked), and set the text of the label to represent the result. However, the contents of
the text fields can only be retrieved as strings, and these strings must be converted into
numbers. If the conversion fails, the label is set to display an error message:
public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent evt) {
double x, y; // The numbers from the input boxes.

try {
String xStr = [Link]();
x = [Link](xStr);
}
catch (NumberFormatException e) {
The string xStr is not a legal
number. [Link]("Illegal data
for x."); [Link]();
return;
}
try {
String yStr = [Link]();
y = [Link](yStr);
}
catch (NumberFormatException e) {
The string yStr is not a legal
number. [Link]("Illegal data
for y."); [Link]();
return;
}
/* Perfrom the operation based on the action command from the
button. The action command is the text displayed on the button.
Note that division by zero produces an error message. */

String op = [Link]();
if ([Link]("+"))
[Link]( "x + y = " + (x+y) );
else if ([Link]("-"))
[Link]( "x - y = " + (x-y) );
else if ([Link]("*"))
[Link]( "x * y = " + (x*y) );
else if ([Link]("/")) {
if (y == 0)
[Link]("Can’t divide by zero!");
else
[Link]( "x / y = " + (x/y) );
6.7. BASIC LAYOUT 291

}
} // end actionPerformed()
(The complete source code for this example can be found in [Link].)

6.7.5 Using a null Layout

As mentioned above, it is possible to do without a layout manager altogether. For out next
example, we’ll look at a panel that does not use a layout manager. If you set the layout
manager of a container to be null, by calling [Link](null), then you
assume complete responsibility for positioning and sizing the components in that container.
If comp is any component, then the statement
[Link](x, y, width, height);
puts the top left corner of the component at the point (x,y), measured in the coordinate system of
the container that contains the component, and it sets the width and height of the component to the
specified values. You should only set the bounds of a component if the container that contains it has
a null layout manager. In a container that has a non-null layout manager, the layout manager is
responsible for setting the bounds, and you should not interfere with its job.
Assuming that you have set the layout manager to null, you can call the
setBounds() method any time you like. (You can even make a component that moves or
changes size while the user is watching.) If you are writing a panel that has a known, fixed
size, then you can set the bounds of each component in the panel’s constructor. Note that
you must also add the components to the panel, using the panel’s add(component)
instance method; otherwise, the component will not appear on the screen.
Our example contains four components: two buttons, a label, and a panel that displays a
checkerboard pattern:

This is just an example of using a null layout; it doesn’t do anything, except that clicking the
buttons changes the text of the label. (We will use this example in Section 7.5 as a starting
point for a checkers game.)
For its content pane, this example uses a main panel that is defined by a class named
NullLayoutPanel. The four components are created and added to the panel in the
constructor of the NullLayoutPanel class. Then the setBounds() method of each
component is called to set the size and position of the component:
292 CHAPTER 6. INTRODUCTION TO GUI PROGRAMMING

public NullLayoutPanel() {

setLayout(null); // I will do the layout myself!

setBackground(new Color(0,150,0)); // A dark green background.

setBorder( [Link]() );

setPreferredSize( new Dimension(350,240) );

// I assume that the size of the panel is, in fact, 350-by-240.

/* Create the components and add them to the content

pane. If you don’t add them to the a container, they
won’t appear, even if you set their bounds! */

board = new Checkerboard();

(Checkerborad is a subclass of JPanel, defined
elsewhere.) add(board);

newGameButton = new JButton("New Game");

[Link](this);
add(newGameButton);

resignButton = new JButton("Resign");

[Link](this);
add(resignButton);

message = new JLabel("Click \"New Game\" to begin a

game."); [Link]( new
Color(100,255,100) ); // Light green. [Link](new
Font("Serif", [Link], 14)); add(message);

/* Set the position and size of each component by

calling its setBounds() method. */

[Link](20,20,164,164);
[Link](210, 60, 120, 30);
[Link](210, 120, 120, 30);
[Link](20, 200, 330, 30);

} // end constructor

It’s reasonably easy, in this case, to get an attractive layout. It’s much more di fficult to do
your own layout if you want to allow for changes of size. In that case, you have to respond to
changes in the container’s size by recomputing the sizes and positions of all the
components that it contains. If you want to respond to changes in a container’s size, you can
register an appropriate listener with the container. Any component generates an event of
type ComponentEvent when its size changes (and also when it is moved, hidden, or
shown). You can register a ComponentListener with the container and respond to size
change events by recomputing the sizes and positions of all the components in the
container. Consult a Java reference for more information about ComponentEvents.
However, my real advice is that if you want to allow for changes in the container’s size, try to
find a layout manager to do the work for you.
(The complete source code for this example is in [Link].)
6.7. BASIC LAYOUT 293

6.7.6 A Little Card Game

For a final example, let’s look at something a little more interesting as a program. The
example is a simple card game in which you look at a playing card and try to predict whether
the next card will be higher or lower in value. (Aces have the lowest value in this game.)
You’ve seen a text-oriented version of the same game in Subsection 5.4.3. Section 5.4 also
introduced Deck, Hand, and Card classes that are used in the game program. In this GUI
version of the game, you click on a button to make your prediction. If you predict wrong, you
lose. If you make three correct predictions, you win. After completing one game, you can
click the “New Game” button to start a new game. Here is what the game looks like:

The complete source code for this example is in the file [Link]. You can try out
the game in the on-line version of this section, or by running the program as a stand-alone
application.
The overall structure of the main panel in this example should be clear: It has three buttons
in a subpanel at the bottom of the main panel and a large drawing surface that displays the
cards and a message. The main panel uses a BorderLayout. The drawing surface occupies the
CENTER position of the border layout. The subpanel that contains the buttons occupies the
SOUTH position of the border layout, and the other three positions of the layout are empty.
The drawing surface is defined by a nested class named CardPanel, which is a subclass
of JPanel. I have chosen to let the drawing surface object do most of the work of the game:
It listens for events from the three buttons and responds by taking the appropriate actions.
The main panel is defined by HighLowGUI itself, which is another subclass of JPanel. The
constructor of the HighLowGUI class creates all the other components, sets up event
handling, and lays out the components:
public HighLowGUI() { // The constructor.
setBackground( new Color(130,50,40) );
setLayout( new BorderLayout(3,3) ); BorderLayout with 3-pixel gaps.

CardPanel board = new CardPanel(); Where the cards are drawn.

add(board, [Link]);

JPanel buttonPanel = new JPanel(); // The subpanel that holds the

buttons. [Link]( new Color(220,200,180) );
add(buttonPanel, [Link]);

JButton higher = new JButton( "Higher" );

 294 CHAPTER 6. INTRODUCTION TO GUI PROGRAMMING
[Link](board); // The CardPanel listens for events.

[Link](higher);
JButton lower = new JButton( "Lower" );
[Link](board);
[Link](lower);
JButton newGame = new JButton( "New Game" );
[Link](board);
[Link](newGame);
setBorder([Link]( new Color(130,50,40), 3) );

} // end constructor

The programming of the drawing surface class, CardPanel, is a nice example of thinking in
terms of a state machine. (See Subsection 6.5.4.) It is important to think in terms of the states
that the game can be in, how the state can change, and how the response to events can depend
on the state. The approach that produced the original, text-oriented game in Subsection 5.4.3 is
not appropriate here. Trying to think about the game in terms of a process that goes step-by-step
from beginning to end is more likely to confuse you than to help you.
The state of the game includes the cards and the message. The cards are stored in an
object of type Hand. The message is a String. These values are stored in instance variables.
There is also another, less obvious aspect of the state: Sometimes a game is in progress,
and the user is supposed to make a prediction about the next card. Sometimes we are
between games, and the user is supposed to click the “New Game” button. It’s a good idea
to keep track of this basic difference in state. The CardPanel class uses a boolean instance
variable named gameInProgress for this purpose.
The state of the game can change whenever the user clicks on a button. The CardPanel
class implements the ActionListener interface and defines an actionPerformed()
method to respond to the user’s clicks. This method simply calls one of three other methods,
doHigher(), doLower(), or newGame(), depending on which button was pressed. It’s in
these three event-handling methods that the action of the game takes place.
We don’t want to let the user start a new game if a game is currently in progress. That
would be cheating. So, the response in the newGame() method is different depending on
whether the state variable gameInProgress is true or false. If a game is in progress, the
message instance variable should be set to show an error message. If a game is not in
progress, then all the state variables should be set to appropriate values for the beginning of
a new game. In any case, the board must be repainted so that the user can see that the
state has changed. The complete newGame() method is as follows:
/**
Called by the CardPanel constructor, and called by actionPerformed() if
the user clicks the "New Game" button. Start a new game.
*/
void doNewGame() {
if (gameInProgress) {
If the current game is not over, it is an error to try
to start a new game.
message = "You still have to finish this game!";
repaint();
return;
}
6.7. BASIC LAYOUT 295

deck = new Deck(); // Create the deck and hand to use for this game.
hand = new Hand();
[Link]();
[Link]( [Link]() ); // Deal the first card into the
hand.
message = "Is the next card higher or lower?";
gameInProgress = true;
repaint();
} // end doNewGame()

The doHigher() and doLower() methods are almost identical to each other (and could
probably have been combined into one method with a parameter, if I were more clever). Let’s
look at the doHigher() routine. This is called when the user clicks the “Higher” button. This
only makes sense if a game is in progress, so the first thing doHigher() should do is check
the value of the state variable gameInProgress. If the value is false, then doHigher()
should just set up an error message. If a game is in progress, a new card should be added to the
hand and the user’s prediction should be tested. The user might win or lose at this time. If so, the
value of the state variable gameInProgress must be set to false because the game is over.
In any case, the board is repainted to show the new state. Here is the doHigher() method:
/**
Called by actionPerformmed() when user clicks "Higher" button.
Check the user’s prediction. Game ends if user guessed
wrong or if the user has made three correct predictions.
*/
void doHigher() {
if (gameInProgress == false) {
If the game has ended, it was an error to click "Higher",
So set up an error message and abort processing.
message = "Click \"New Game\" to start a new game!";
repaint();
return;
}
[Link]( [Link]() ); // Deal a card to the hand.
int cardCt = [Link]();
Card thisCard = [Link]( cardCt - 1 ); // Card just dealt.
Card prevCard = [Link]( cardCt - 2 ); // The previous card.
if ( [Link]() < [Link]() )
{ gameInProgress = false;
message = "Too bad! You lose.";
}
else if ( [Link]() ==
[Link]() ) { gameInProgress = false;
message = "Too bad! You lose on ties.";
}
else if ( cardCt == 4) {
gameInProgress = false;
message = "You win! You made three correct guesses.";
}
else {
message = "Got it right! Try for " + cardCt + ".";
}
repaint();
} // end doHigher()
296 CHAPTER 6. INTRODUCTION TO GUI PROGRAMMING

The paintComponent() method of the CardPanel class uses the values in the state variables
to decide what to show. It displays the string stored in the message variable. It draws each of the
cards in the hand. There is one little tricky bit: If a game is in progress, it draws an extra face-down
card, which is not in the hand, to represent the next card in the deck. Drawing the cards requires
some care and computation. I wrote a method, “void drawCard(Graphics g, Card card,
int x, int y)”, which draws a card with its upper left corner at the point (x,y). The
paintComponent() routine decides where to draw each card and calls this routine to do the
drawing. You can check out all the details in the source code, [Link].
∗∗∗
One further note on the programming of this example: The source code defines HighLowGUI
as a subclass of JPanel. The class contains a main() routine so that it can be run as a stand-
alone application; the main() routine simply opens a window that uses a panel of type
HighLowGUI as its content pane. In addition, I decided to write an applet version of the program
as a static nested class named Applet inside the HighLowGUI class. Since this is a nested class,
its full name is [Link] and the class file that is produced when the source code is
compiled is named HighLowGUI$[Link]. This class is used for the applet version of
the program in the on-line version of the book. The <applet> tag lists the class file for the applet
as code="HighLowGUI$[Link]". This is admittedly an unusual way to organize the
program, and it is probably more natural to have the panel, applet, and stand-alone program
defined in separate classes. However, writing the program in this way does show the flexibility of
Java classes. (Nested classes were discussed in Subsection 5.7.2.)

6.8 Menus and Dialogs

We have already encountered many of the basic aspects of GUI programming, but professional
programs use many additional features. We will cover some of the advanced features of Java
GUI programming in Chapter 12, but in this section we look briefly at a few more basic features
that are essential for writing GUI programs. I will discuss these features in the context of a
“MosaicDraw” program that is shown in this picture:
6.8. MENUS AND DIALOGS 297

As the user clicks-and-drags the mouse in the large drawing area of this program, it leaves a
trail of little colored squares. There is some random variation in the color of the squares.
(This is meant to make the picture look a little more like a real mosaic, which is a picture
made out of small colored stones in which there would be some natural color variation.)
There is a menu bar above the drawing area. The “Control” menu contains commands for
filling and clearing the drawing area, along with a few options that a ffect the appearance of
the picture. The “Color” menu lets the user select the color that will be used when the user
draws. The “Tools” menu affects the behavior of the mouse. Using the default “Draw” tool,
the mouse leaves a trail of single squares. Using the “Draw 3x3” tool, the mouse leaves a
swath of colored squares that is three squares wide. There are also “Erase” tools, which let
the user set squares back to their default black color.
The drawing area of the program is a panel that belongs to the MosaicPanel class, a
subclass of JPanel that is defined in [Link]. MosaicPanel is a highly reusable
class for repre-senting mosaics of colored rectangles. It does not directly support drawing on
the mosaic, but it does support setting the color of each individual square. The MosaicDraw
program installs a mouse listener on the panel; the mouse listener responds to
mousePressed and mouseDragged events on the panel by setting the color of the square
that contains the mouse. This is a nice example of applying a listener to an object to do
something that was not programmed into the object itself.
Most of the programming for MosaicDraw can be found in [Link].
(It could have gone into the MosaicPanel class, if I had not decided to use that pre-existing
class in unmodified form.) It is the MosaicDrawController class that creates a MosaicPanel
object and adds a mouse listener to it. It also creates the menu bar that is shown at the top
of the program and implements all the commands in the menu bar. It has an instance
method getMosaicPanel() that returns a reference to the mosaic panel that it has
created, and it has another instance method getMenuBar() that returns a menu bar for
the program. These methods are used to obtain the panel and menu bar so that they can be
added to an applet or a frame.
To get a working program, an object of type JApplet or JFrame is needed. The files Mo-
[Link] and [Link] define the applet and frame versions of
the program. These are rather simple classes; they simply create a MosaicDrawController
object and use its mosaic panel and menu bar. I urge you to study these files, along with
[Link]. I will not be discussing all aspects of the code here, but you
should be able to understand it all after reading this section. As for [Link], it
uses some techniques that you would not understand at this point, but I encourage you to at
least read the comments in this file to learn about the API for mosaic panels.

6.8.1 Menus and Menubars

MosaicDraw is the first example that we have seen that uses a menu bar. Fortunately, menus
are very easy to use in Java. The items in a menu are represented by the class JMenuItem (this
class and other menu-related classes are in package [Link]). Menu items are used in
almost exactly the same way as buttons. In fact, JMenuItem and JButton are both subclasses of
a class, AbstractButton, that defines their common behavior. In particular, a JMenuItem is
created using a constructor that specifies the text of the menu item, such as:
JMenuItem fillCommand = new JMenuItem("Fill");

You can add an ActionListener to a JMenuItem by calling the menu item’s addActionListener()
298 CHAPTER 6. INTRODUCTION TO GUI PROGRAMMING

method. The actionPerformed() method of the action listener is called when the user
selects the item from the menu. You can change the text of the item by calling its
setText(String) method, and you can enable it and disable it using the
setEnabled(boolean) method. All this works in exactly the same way as for a JButton.
The main difference between a menu item and a button, of course, is that a menu item is
meant to appear in a menu rather than in a panel. A menu in Java is represented by the
class JMenu. A JMenu has a name, which is specified in the constructor, and it has an
add(JMenuItem) method that can be used to add a JMenuItem to the menu. So, the
“Tools” menu in the MosaicDraw program could be created as follows, where listener is
a variable of type ActionListener:
JMenu toolsMenu = new JMenu("Tools"); // Create a menu with name "Tools"

JMenuItem drawCommand = new JMenuItem("Draw"); // Create a menu item.

[Link](listener); // Add listener to menu item.
[Link](drawCommand); // Add menu item to menu.
JMenuItem eraseCommand = new JMenuItem("Erase"); // Create a menu item.
[Link](listener); // Add listener to menu item.
[Link](eraseCommand); // Add menu item to menu.
.
. // Create and add other menu items.
.

Once a menu has been created, it must be added to a menu bar. A menu bar is represented
by the class JMenuBar. A menu bar is just a container for menus. It does not have a name,
and its constructor does not have any parameters. It has an add(JMenu) method that can
be used to add menus to the menu bar. For example, the MosaicDraw program uses three
menus, controlMenu, colorMenu, and toolsMenu. We could create a menu bar and
add the menus to it with the statements:
JMenuBar menuBar = new JMenuBar();
[Link](controlMenu);
[Link](colorMenu);
[Link](toolsMenu);

The final step in using menus is to use the menu bar in a JApplet or JFrame. We have
already seen that an applet or frame has a “content pane.” The menu bar is another
component of the applet or frame, not contained inside the content pane. Both the JApplet
and the JFrame classes include an instance method setMenuBar(JMenuBar) that can be
used to set the menu bar. (There can only be one, so this is a “set” method rather than an
“add” method.) In the MosaicDraw program, the menu bar is created by a
MosaicDrawController object and can be obtained by calling that object’s getMenuBar()
method. Here is the basic code that is used (in somewhat modified form) to set up the
interface both in the applet and in the frame version of the program:
MosaicDrawController controller = new MosaicDrawController();

MoasicPanel content = [Link]();

setContentPane( content ); // Use panel from controller as content pane.

JMenuBar menuBar = [Link]();

setJMenuBar( menuBar ); // Use the menu bar from the controller.
6.8. MENUS AND DIALOGS 299

Using menus always follows the same general pattern: Create a menu bar. Create
menus and add them to the menu bar. Create menu items and add them to the menus (and
set up listening to handle action events from the menu items). Use the menu bar in a
JApplet or JFrame by calling the setJMenuBar() method of the applet or frame.
∗∗∗
There are other kinds of menu items, defined by subclasses of JMenuItem, that can be
added to menus. One of these is JCheckBoxMenuItem, which represents menu items that
can be in one of two states, selected or not selected. A JCheckBoxMenuItem has the same
functionality and is used in the same way as a JCheckBox (see Subsection 6.6.3). Three
JCheckBoxMenuItems are used in the “Control” menu of the MosaicDraw program. One can
be used to turn the random color variation of the squares on and o ff. Another turns a
symmetry feature on and off; when symmetry is turned on, the user’s drawing is reflected
horizontally and vertically to produce a symmetric pattern. And the third check box menu
item shows and hides the “grouting” in the mosaic; the grouting is the gray lines that are
drawn around each of the little squares in the mosaic. The menu item that corresponds to
the “Use Randomness” option in the “Control” menu could be set up with the statements:
JMenuItem useRandomnessToggle = new JCheckBoxMenuItem("Use Randomness");
[Link](listener); // Set up a listener.
[Link](true); // Randomness is initially turned
on.
[Link](useRandomnessToggle); // Add the menu item to the menu.

The “Use Randomness” JCheckBoxMenuItem corresponds to a boolean-valued instance

vari-able named useRandomness in the MosaicDrawController class. This variable is part of
the state of the controller object. Its value is tested whenever the user draws one of the squares,
to decide whether or not to add a random variation to the color of the square. When the user
selects the “Use Randomness” command from the menu, the state of the JCheckBoxMenuItem
is re-versed, from selected to not-selected or from not-selected to selected. The ActionListener
for the menu item checks whether the menu item is selected or not, and it changes the value of
useRandomness to match. Note that selecting the menu command does not have any
immediate effect on the picture that is shown in the window. It just changes the state of the
program so that future drawing operations on the part of the user will have a di fferent e ffect. The
“Use Symmetry” option in the “Control” menu works in much the same way. The “Show
Grouting” option is a little different. Selecting the “Show Grouting” option does have an
immediate effect: The picture is redrawn with or without the grouting, depending on the state of
the menu item.
My program uses a single ActionListener to respond to all of the menu items in all the
menus. This is not a particularly good design, but it is easy to implement for a small program
like this one. The actionPerformed() method of the listener object uses the statement
String command = [Link]();

to get the action command of the source of the event; this will be the text of the menu item.
The listener tests the value of command to determine which menu item was selected by the
user. If the menu item is a JCheckBoxMenuItem, the listener must check the state of the
menu item. Then menu item is the source of the event that is being processed. The listener
can get its hands on the menu item object by calling [Link](). Since the return
value of getSource() is Object, the the return value must be type-cast to the correct type.
Here, for example, is the code that handles the “Use Randomness” command:
if ([Link]("Use Randomness")) {
// Set the value of useRandomness depending on the menu item’s state.
300 CHAPTER 6. INTRODUCTION TO GUI PROGRAMMING

JCheckBoxMenuItem toggle = (JCheckBoxMenuItem)[Link]();

useRandomness = [Link]();
}

∗∗∗
In addition to menu items, a menu can contain lines that separate the menu items into
groups. In the MosaicDraw program, the “Control” menu contains a separator. A JMenu has
an instance method addSeparator() that can be used to add a separator to the menu.
For example, the separator in the “Control” menu was created with the statement:
[Link]();

A menu can also contain a submenu. The name of the submenu appears as an item in the
main menu. When the user moves the mouse over the submenu name, the submenu pops up.
(There is no example of this in the MosaicDraw program.) It is very easy to do this in Java: You
can add one JMenu to another JMenu using a statement such as [Link](submenu).

6.8.2 Dialogs
One of the commands in the “Color” menu of the MosaicDraw program is “Custom Color. . .
”. When the user selects this command, a new window appears where the user can select a
color. This window is an example of a dialog or dialog box . A dialog is a type of window
that is generally used for short, single purpose interactions with the user. For example, a
dialog box can be used to display a message to the user, to ask the user a question, to let
the user select a file to be opened, or to let the user select a color. In Swing, a dialog box is
represented by an object belonging to the class JDialog or to a subclass.
The JDialog class is very similar to JFrame and is used in much the same way. Like a frame,
a dialog box is a separate window. Unlike a frame, however, a dialog is not completely
independent. Every dialog is associated with a frame (or another dialog), which is called its
parent window . The dialog box is dependent on its parent. For example, if the parent is closed,
the dialog box will also be closed. It is possible to create a dialog box without specifying a
parent, but in that case a an invisible frame is created by the system to serve as the parent.
Dialog boxes can be either modal or modeless. When a modal dialog is created, its parent
frame is blocked. That is, the user will not be able to interact with the parent until the dialog box
is closed. Modeless dialog boxes do not block their parents in the same way, so they seem a lot
more like independent windows. In practice, modal dialog boxes are easier to use and are much
more common than modeless dialogs. All the examples we will look at are modal.
Aside from having a parent, a JDialog can be created and used in the same way as a JFrame.
However, I will not give any examples here of using JDialog directly. Swing has many convenient
methods for creating many common types of dialog boxes. For example, the color choice dialog that
appears when the user selects the “Custom Color” command in the MosaicDraw program belongs to
the class JColorChooser, which is a subclass of JDialog. The JColorChooser class has a static
method static method that makes color choice dialogs very easy to use:
Color [Link](Component parentComp,
String title, Color initialColor)

When you call this method, a dialog box appears that allows the user to select a color. The
first parameter specifies the parent of the dialog; the parent window of the dialog will be the
window (if any) that contains parentComp; this parameter can be null and it can itself be a frame
or dialog object. The second parameter is a string that appears in the title bar of the
6.8. MENUS AND DIALOGS 301

dialog box. And the third parameter, initialColor, specifies the color that is selected when
the color choice dialog first appears. The dialog has a sophisticated interface that allows the user
to change the selected color. When the user presses an “OK” button, the dialog box closes and
the selected color is returned as the value of the method. The user can also click a “Cancel”
button or close the dialog box in some other way; in that case, null is returned as the value of
the method. By using this predefined color chooser dialog, you can write one line of code that
will let the user select an arbitrary color. Swing also has a JFileChooser class that makes it
almost as easy to show a dialog box that lets the user select a file to be opened or saved.
The JOptionPane class includes a variety of methods for making simple dialog boxes
that are variations on three basic types: a “message” dialog, a “confirm” dialog, and an
“input” dialog. (The variations allow you to provide a title for the dialog box, to specify the
icon that appears in the dialog, and to add other components to the dialog box. I will only
cover the most basic forms here.) The on-line version of this section includes an applet that
demonstrates JOptionPane as well as JColorChooser.
A message dialog simply displays a message string to the user. The user (hopefully)
reads the message and dismisses the dialog by clicking the “OK” button. A message dialog
can be shown by calling the static method:
void [Link](Component parentComp, String message)

The message can be more than one line long. Lines in the message should be separated by
newline characters, \n. New lines will not be inserted automatically, even if the message is
very long.
An input dialog displays a question or request and lets the user type in a string as a response.
You can show an input dialog by calling:
String [Link](Component parentComp, String question)

Again, the question can include newline characters. The dialog box will contain an input box,
an “OK” button, and a “Cancel” button. If the user clicks “Cancel”, or closes the dialog box in
some other way, then the return value of the method is null. If the user clicks “OK”, then
the return value is the string that was entered by the user. Note that the return value can be
an empty string (which is not the same as a null value), if the user clicks “OK” without
typing anything in the input box. If you want to use an input dialog to get a numerical value
from the user, you will have to convert the return value into a number; see Subsection 3.7.2.
Finally, a confirm dialog presents a question and three response buttons: “Yes”, “No”,
and “Cancel”. A confirm dialog can be shown by calling:
int [Link](Component parentComp, String question)

The return value tells you the user’s response. It is one of the following constants:
[Link] OPTION — the user clicked the “Yes” button
[Link] OPTION — the user clicked the “No” button
[Link] OPTION — the user clicked the “Cancel” button
[Link] OPTION — the dialog was closed in some other way.
By the way, it is possible to omit the Cancel button from a confirm dialog by calling one
of the other methods in the JOptionPane class. Just call:
[Link](
parent, question, title, [Link] NO OPTION )
302 CHAPTER 6. INTRODUCTION TO GUI PROGRAMMING

The final parameter is a constant which specifies that only a “Yes” button and a “No” button
should be used. The third parameter is a string that will be displayed as the title of the dialog
box window.
If you would like to see how dialogs are created and used in the sample applet, you can
find the source code in the file [Link].

6.8.3 Fine Points of Frames

In previous sections, whenever I used a frame, I created a JFrame object in a main()
routine and installed a panel as the content pane of that frame. This works fine, but a more
object-oriented approach is to define a subclass of JFrame and to set up the contents of the
frame in the constructor of that class. This is what I did in the case of the MosaicDraw
program. MosaicDrawFrame is defined as a subclass of JFrame. The definition of this class
is very short, but it illustrates several new features of frames that I want to discuss:
public class MosaicDrawFrame extends JFrame {

public static void main(String[] args) { JFrame

window = new MosaicDrawFrame();
[Link]([Link] ON
CLOSE); [Link](true);
}
public MosaicDrawFrame() {
super("Mosaic Draw");
MosaicDrawController controller = new
MosaicDrawController();
setContentPane( [Link]() );
setJMenuBar( [Link]() ); pack();
Dimension screensize = [Link]().getScreenSize();
setLocation( ([Link] - getWidth())/2,
([Link] - getHeight())/2 );
}
}

The constructor in this class begins with the statement super("Mosaic Draw"),
which calls the constructor in the superclass, JFrame. The parameter specifies a title that
will appear in the title bar of the window. The next three lines of the constructor set up the
contents of the window; a MosaicDrawController is created, and the content pane and menu
bar of the window are obtained from the controller. The next line is something new. If
window is a variable of type JFrame (or JDialog ), then the statement [Link]() will
resize the window so that its size matches the preferred size of its contents. (In this case, of
course, “pack()” is equivalent to “[Link]()”; that is, it refers to the window that is
being created by the constructor.) The pack() method is usually the best way to set the
size of a window. Note that it will only work correctly if every component in the window has a
correct preferred size. This is only a problem in two cases: when a panel is used as a
drawing surface and when a panel is used as a container with a null layout manager. In
both these cases there is no way for the system to determine the correct preferred size
automatically, and you should set a preferred size by hand. For example:
[Link]( new Dimension(400, 250) );
6.8. MENUS AND DIALOGS 303

The last two lines in the constructor position the window so that it is exactly centered on
the screen. The line
Dimension screensize = [Link]().getScreenSize();

determines the size of the screen. The size of the screen is [Link] pixels in the hor-
izontal direction and [Link] pixels in the vertical direction. The setLocation()
method of the frame sets the position of the upper left corner of the frame on the screen. The
expression “[Link] - getWidth()” is the amount of horizontal space left on the
screen after subtracting the width of the window. This is divided by 2 so that half of the empty space
will be to the left of the window, leaving the other half of the space to the right of the window.
Similarly, half of the extra vertical space is above the window, and half is below.
Note that the constructor has created the window and set its size and position, but that at
the end of the constructor, the window is not yet visible on the screen. (More exactly, the
constructor has created the window object, but the visual representation of that object on
the screen has not yet been created.) To show the window on the screen, it will be
necessary to call its instance method, [Link](true).
In addition to the constructor, the MosaicDrawFrame class includes a main() routine.
This makes it possible to run MosaicDrawFrame as a stand-alone application. (The main()
routine, as a static method, has nothing to do with the function of a MosaicDrawFrame
object, and it could (and perhaps should) be in a separate class.) The main() routine
creates a MosaicDrawFrame and makes it visible on the screen. It also calls
[Link]([Link] ON CLOSE);

which means that the program will end when the user closes the window. Note that this is
not done in the constructor because doing it there would make MosaicDrawFrame less
flexible. It would be possible, for example, to write a program that lets the user open multiple
MosaicDraw windows. In that case, we don’t want to end the program just because the user
has closed one of the windows. Furthermore, it is possible for an applet to create a frame,
which will open as a separate window on the screen. An applet is not allowed to “terminate
the program” (and it’s not even clear what that should mean in the case of an applet), and
attempting to do so will produce an exception. There are other possible values for the
default close operation of a window:

[Link] NOTHING ON CLOSE — the user’s attempts to close the window by

clicking its close box will be ignored.
[Link] ON CLOSE — when the user clicks its close box, the window will be
hidden just as if [Link](false) were called. The window can be
made visible again by calling [Link](true). This is the value that is
used if you do not specify another value by calling setDefaultCloseOperation.
[Link] ON CLOSE — the window is closed and any operating system resources
used by the window are released. It is not possible to make the window visible again. (This is
the proper way to permanently get rid of a window without ending the program. You can
accomplish the same thing by calling the instance method [Link]().)

I’ve written an applet version of the MosaicDraw program that appears on a Web page
as a single button. When the user clicks the button, the applet opens a MosaicDrawFrame.
In this case, the applet sets the default close operation of the window to [Link]
ON CLOSE. You can try the applet in the on-line version of this section.
304 CHAPTER 6. INTRODUCTION TO GUI PROGRAMMING

The file [Link] contains the source code for the applet. One
interesting point in the applet is that the text of the button changes depending on whether a
window is open or not. If there is no window, the text reads “Launch MosaicDraw”. When the
window is open, it changes to “Close MosaicDraw”, and clicking the button will close the
window. The change is implemented by attaching a WindowListener to the window. The
listener responds to WindowEvent s that are generated when the window opens and closes.
Although I will not discuss window events further here, you can look at the source code for
an example of how they can be used.

6.8.4 Creating Jar Files

As the final topic for this chapter, we look again at jar files. Recall that a jar file is a “java archive”
that can contain a number of class files. When creating a program that uses more than one
class, it’s usually a good idea to place all the classes that are required by the program into a jar
file, since then a user will only need that one file to run the program. Subsection 6.2.4 discusses
how a jar file can be used for an applet. Jar files can also be used for stand-alone applications.
In fact, it is possible to make a so-called executable jar file. A user can run an executable jar
file in much the same way as any other application, usually by double-clicking the icon of the jar
file. (The user’s computer must have a correct version of Java installed, and the computer must
be configured correctly for this to work. The configuration is usually done automatically when
Java is installed, at least on Windows and Mac OS.)
The question, then, is how to create a jar file. The answer depends on what
programming environment you are using. The two basic types of programming environment
—command line and IDE—were discussed in Section 2.6. Any IDE (Integrated
Programming Environment) for Java should have a command for creating jar files. In the
Eclipse IDE, for example, it’s done as follows: In the Package Explorer pane, select the
programming project (or just all the individual source code files that you need). Right-click
on the selection, and choose “Export” from the menu that pops up. In the window that
appears, select “JAR file” and click “Next”. In the window that appears next, enter a name
for the jar file in the box labeled “JAR file”. (Click the “Browse” button next to this box to
select the file name using a file dialog box.) The name of the file should end with “.jar”. If you
are creating a regular jar file, not an executable one, you can hit “Finish” at this point, and
the jar file will be created. You could do this, for example, if the jar file contains an applet but
no main program. To create an executable file, hit the “Next” button twice to get to the “Jar
Manifest Specification” screen. At the bottom of this screen is an input box labeled “Main
class”. You have to enter the name of the class that contains the main() routine that will
be run when the jar file is executed. If you hit the “Browse” button next to the “Main class”
box, you can select the class from a list of classes that contain main() routines. Once
you’ve selected the main class, you can click the “Finish” button to create the executable jar
file.
It is also possible to create jar files on the command line. The Java Development Kit includes
a command-line program named jar that can be used to create jar files. If all your classes are
in the default package (like the examples in this book), then the jar command is easy to use.
To create a non-executable jar file on the command line, change to the directory that contains
the class files that you want to include in the jar. Then give the command
jar cf [Link] *.class

where JarFileName can be any name that you want to use for the jar file. The “*” in “*.class” is a
wildcard that makes *.class match every class file in the current directory. This means
6.8. MENUS AND DIALOGS 305

that all the class files in the directory will be included in the jar file. If you want to include only
certain class files, you can name them individually, separated by spaces. (Things get more
complicated if your classes are not in the default package. In that case, the class files must
be in subdirectories of the directory in which you issue the jar file. See Subsection 2.6.4.)
Making an executable jar file on the command line is a little more complicated. There has to
be some way of specifying which class contains the main() routine. This is done by creating a
manifest file. The manifest file can be a plain text file containing a single line of the form
Main-Class: ClassName

where ClassName should be replaced by the name of the class that contains the main()
routine. For example, if the main() routine is in the class MosaicDrawFrame, then the
manifest file should read “Main-Class: MosaicDrawFrame”. You can give the manifest
file any name you like. Put it in the same directory where you will issue the jar command,
and use a command of the form
jar cmf ManifestFileName [Link] *.class

to create the jar file. (The jar command is capable of performing a variety of different
opera-tions. The first parameter to the command, such as “cf” or “cmf”, tells it which
operation to perform.)
By the way, if you have successfully created an executable jar file, you can run it on the
command line using the command “java -jar”. For example:
java -jar [Link]
306 CHAPTER 6. INTRODUCTION TO GUI PROGRAMMING

Exercises for Chapter 6

In the SimpleStamperPanel example from Subsection 6.4.2, a rectangle or oval is drawn

on the panel when the user clicks the mouse, except that when the user shift-clicks, the
panel is cleared instead. Modify this class so that the modified version will continue to
draw figures as the user drags the mouse. That is, the mouse will leave a trail of figures
as the user drags the mouse. However, if the user shift-clicks, the panel should simply
be cleared and no figures should be drawn even if the user drags the mouse after shift-
clicking. Use your panel either in an applet or in a stand-alone application (or both).
Here is a picture of my solution:

The source code for the original panel class is [Link]. An

applet that uses this class can be found in [Link], and a main
program that uses the panel in a frame is in [Link]. See the discussion
of dragging in Subsection 6.4.4. (Note that in the original version, I drew a black outline
around each shape. In the modified version, I decided that it would look better to draw
a gray outline instead.)

Write a panel that shows a small red square and a small blue square. The user should be
able to drag either square with the mouse. (You’ll need an instance variable to
remember which square the user is dragging.) The user can drag the square o ff the
applet if she wants; if she does this, it’s gone. Use your panel in either an applet or a
stand-alone application.

Write a panel that shows a pair of dice. When the user clicks on the panel, the dice
should be rolled (that is, the dice should be assigned newly computed random
values). Each die should be drawn as a square showing from 1 to 6 dots. Since
you have to draw two dice, its a good idea to write a subroutine, “void
drawDie(Graphics g, int val, int x, int y)”, to draw a die at the specified (x,y)
coordinates. The second parameter, val, specifies the value that is showing on
the die. Assume that the size of the panel is 100 by 100 pixels. Also write an
applet that uses your panel as its content pane. Here is a picture of the applet:
Exercises 307

In Exercise 6.3, you wrote a pair-of-dice panel where the dice are rolled when the user
clicks on the panel Now make a pair-of-dice program in which the user rolls the dice by
clicking a button. The button should appear under the panel that shows the dice. Also
make the following change: When the dice are rolled, instead of just showing the new
value, show a short animation during which the values on the dice are changed in
every frame. The animation is supposed to make the dice look more like they are
actually rolling. Write your program as a stand-alone application.

In Exercise 3.6, you drew a checkerboard. For this exercise, write a checkerboard applet
where the user can select a square by clicking on it. Hilite the selected square by drawing a
colored border around it. When the applet is first created, no square is selected. When the
user clicks on a square that is not currently selected, it becomes selected. If the user clicks
the square that is selected, it becomes unselected. Assume that the size of the applet is
exactly 160 by 160 pixels, so that each square on the checkerboard is 20 by 20 pixels.

For this exercise, you should modify the SubKiller game from Subsection 6.5.4. You can
start with the existing source code, from the file [Link]. Modify the game
so it keeps track of the number of hits and misses and displays these quantities. That
is, every time the depth charge blows up the sub, the number of hits goes up by one.
Every time the depth charge falls off the bottom of the screen without hitting the sub,
the number of misses goes up by one. There is room at the top of the panel to display
these numbers. To do this exercise, you only have to add a half-dozen lines to the
source code. But you have to figure out what they are and where to add them. To do
this, you’ll have to read the source code closely enough to understand how it works.

Exercise 5.2 involved a class, [Link], that could compute some statistics of a set of
numbers. Write a program that uses the StatCalc class to compute and display statistics of
numbers entered by the user. The panel will have an instance variable of type StatCalc that
does the computations. The panel should include a JTextField where the user enters a
number. It should have four labels that display four statistics for the numbers that have
been entered: the number of numbers, the sum, the mean, and the standard deviation.
Every time the user enters a new number, the statistics displayed on the labels should
change. The user enters a number by typing it into the JTextField and pressing return.
There should be a “Clear” button that clears out all the data. This means creating a new
StatCalc object and resetting the displays on the labels. My panel also has an “Enter”
button that does the same thing as pressing the return key in the JTextField. (Recall that a
JTextField generates an ActionEvent when the user presses return, so your panel should
register itself to listen for ActionEvents from the JTextField.) Write your program as a stand-
alone application. Here is a picture of my solution to this problem:
308 CHAPTER 6. INTRODUCTION TO GUI PROGRAMMING

Write a panel with a JTextArea where the user can enter some text. The panel should
have a button. When the user clicks on the button, the panel should count the number
of lines in the user’s input, the number of words in the user’s input, and the number of
characters in the user’s input. This information should be displayed on three labels in
the panel. Recall that if textInput is a JTextArea, then you can get the contents of
the JTextArea by calling the function [Link](). This function returns a
String containing all the text from the text area. The number of characters is just the
length of this String. Lines in the String are separated by the new line character, ’\n’,
so the number of lines is just the number of new line characters in the String, plus one.
Words are a little harder to count. Exercise 3.4 has some advice about finding the
words in a String. Essentially, you want to count the number of characters that are first
characters in words. Don’t forget to put your JTextArea in a JScrollPane, and add the
scroll pane to the container, not the text area. Scrollbars should appear when the user
types more text than will fit in the available area. Here is a picture of my solution:

Write a Blackjack program that lets the user play a game of Blackjack, with the
computer as the dealer. The applet should draw the user’s cards and the dealer’s
cards, just as was done for the graphical HighLow card game in Subsection 6.7.6.
You can use the source code for that game, [Link], for some ideas about
how to write your Blackjack game. The structures of the HighLow panel and the
Blackjack panel are very similar. You will certainly want to use the drawCard()
method from the HighLow program.
Exercises 309

You can find a description of the game of Blackjack in Exercise 5.5. Add the following
rule to that description: If a player takes five cards without going over 21, that player wins
immediately. This rule is used in some casinos. For your program, it means that you only
have to allow room for five cards. You should assume that the panel is just wide enough to
show five cards, and that it is tall enough show the user’s hand and the dealer’s hand.
Note that the design of a GUI Blackjack game is very di fferent from the design of
the text-oriented program that you wrote for Exercise 5.5. The user should play the
game by clicking on “Hit” and “Stand” buttons. There should be a “New Game” button
that can be used to start another game after one game ends. You have to decide what
happens when each of these buttons is pressed. You don’t have much chance of
getting this right unless you think in terms of the states that the game can be in and
how the state can change.
Your program will need the classes defined in [Link], [Link], [Link],
and [Link].

In the Blackjack game from Exercise 6.9, the user can click on the “Hit”, “Stand”, and “NewGame”
buttons even when it doesn’t make sense to do so. It would be better if the buttons were
disabled at the appropriate times. The “New Game” button should be dis-abled when there is a
game in progress. The “Hit” and “Stand” buttons should be disabled when there is not a game in
progress. The instance variable gameInProgress tells whether or not a game is in progress,
so you just have to make sure that the buttons are properly enabled and disabled whenever this
variable changes value. I strongly advise writing a sub-routine that can be called whenever it is
necessary to set the value of the gameInProgress variable. Then the subroutine can take
responsibility for enabling and disabling the but-tons. Recall that if bttn is a variable of type
JButton, then [Link](false) disables the button and
[Link](true) enables the button.
As a second (and more difficult) improvement, make it possible for the user to
place bets on the Blackjack game. When the applet starts, give the user $100. Add a
JTextField to the strip of controls along the bottom of the applet. The user can enter the
bet in this JTextField. When the game begins, check the amount of the bet. You should
do this when the game begins, not when it ends, because several errors can occur:
The contents of the JTextField might not be a legal number. The bet that the user
places might be more money than the user has, or it might be <= 0. You should detect
these errors and show an error message instead of starting the game. The user’s bet
should be an integral number of dollars.
It would be a good idea to make the JTextField uneditable while the game is in progress. If
betInput is the JTextField, you can make it editable and uneditable by the user with the
commands [Link](true) and [Link](false).
In the paintComponent() method, you should include commands to display the
amount of money that the user has left.
There is one other thing to think about: Ideally, the applet should not start a new
game when it is first created. The user should have a chance to set a bet amount
before the game starts. So, in the constructor for the drawing surface class, you should
not call doNewGame(). You might want to display a message such as “Welcome to
Blackjack” before the first game starts.
Here is a picture of my program:
310 CHAPTER 6. INTRODUCTION TO GUI PROGRAMMING
Quiz 311

Quiz on Chapter 6

Programs written for a graphical user interface have to deal with “events.” Explain what is
meant by the term event. Give at least two different examples of events, and discuss
how a program might respond to those events.

Explain carefully what the repaint() method does.

What is HTML?

Java has a standard class called JPanel. Discuss two ways in which JPanels can be used.

Draw the picture that will be produced by the following paintComponent() method:
public static void paintComponent(Graphics
g) { [Link](g);
for (int i=10; i <= 210; i = i + 50)
for (int j = 10; j <= 210; j = j + 50)
[Link](i,10,j,60);
}

Suppose you would like a panel that displays a green square inside a red circle, as illus-trated.
Write a paintComponent() method for the panel class that will draw the image.

Java has a standard class called MouseEvent. What is the purpose of this class? What
does an object of type MouseEvent do?

One of the main classes in Swing is the JComponent class. What is meant by a
component? What are some examples?

What is the function of a LayoutManager in Java?

What type of layout manager is being used for each of the three panels in the following
illustration from Section 6.7?
312 CHAPTER 6. INTRODUCTION TO GUI PROGRAMMING

Explain how Timers are used to do animation.

What is a JCheckBox and how is it used?

Chapter 7

Arrays

Computers get a lot of their power from working with data structures. A data structure is an
organized collection of related data. An object is a data structure, but this type of data structure
—consisting of a fairly small number of named instance variables—is just the beginning. In many
cases, programmers build complicated data structures by hand, by linking objects together. We’ll
look at these custom-built data structures in Chapter 9. But there is one type of data structure
that is so important and so basic that it is built into every programming language: the array.
An array is a data structure consisting of a numbered list of items, where all the items
are of the same type. In Java, the items in an array are always numbered from zero up to
some maximum value, which is set when the array is created. For example, an array might
contain 100 integers, numbered from zero to 99. The items in an array can belong to one of
Java’s primitive types. They can also be references to objects, so that you could, for
example, make an array containing all the buttons in a GUI program.
This chapter discusses how arrays are created and used in Java. It also covers the
standard class [Link]. An object of type ArrayList is very similar to an
array of Objects, but it can grow to hold any number of items.

7.1 Creating and Using Arrays

When a number of data items are chunked together into a unit, the result is a data structure.
Data structures can be very complex, but in many applications, the appropriate data structure
consists simply of a sequence of data items. Data structures of this simple variety can be either
arrays or records.
The term “record” is not used in Java. A record is essentially the same as a Java object
that has instance variables only, but no instance methods. Some other languages, which do
not support objects in general, nevertheless do support records. The C programming
language, for example, is not object-oriented, but it has records, which in C go by the name
“struct.” The data items in a record—in Java, an object’s instance variables—are called the
fields of the record. Each item is referred to using a field name. In Java, field names are
just the names of the instance variables. The distinguishing characteristics of a record are
that the data items in the record are referred to by name and that di fferent fields in a record
are allowed to be of different types. For example, if the class Person is defined as:
class Person {
String name;

313
314 CHAPTER 7. ARRAYS

int id number;
Date birthday;
int age;
}

then an object of class Person could be considered to be a record with four fields. The field
names are name, id number, birthday, and age. Note that the fields are of various
types: String, int, and Date.
Because records are just a special type of object, I will not discuss them further.

7.1.1 Arrays
Like a record, an array is a sequence of items. However, where items in a record are
referred to by name, the items in an array are numbered, and individual items are referred
to by their position number. Furthermore, all the items in an array must be of the same
type. The definition of an array is: a numbered sequence of items, which are all of the same
type. The number of items in an array is called the length of the array. The position number
of an item in an array is called the index of that item. The type of the individual items in an
array is called the base type of the array.
The base type of an array can be any Java type, that is, one of the primitive types, or a
class name, or an interface name. If the base type of an array is int, it is referred to as an
“array of ints.” An array with base type String is referred to as an “array of Strings.”
However, an array is not, properly speaking, a list of integers or strings or other values. It is
better thought of as a list of variables of type int, or of type String, or of some other type. As
always, there is some potential for confusion between the two uses of a variable: as a name
for a memory location and as a name for the value stored in that memory location. Each
position in an array acts as a variable. Each position can hold a value of a specified type
(the base type of the array). The value can be changed at any time. Values are stored in an
array. The array is the container, not the values.
The items in an array—really, the individual variables that make up the array—are more
often referred to as the elements of the array. In Java, the elements in an array are always
numbered starting from zero. That is, the index of the first element in the array is zero. If the
length of the array is N, then the index of the last element in the array is N-1. Once an
array has been created, its length cannot be changed.
Java arrays are objects. This has several consequences. Arrays are created using a form of
the new operator. No variable can ever hold an array; a variable can only refer to an array. Any
variable that can refer to an array can also hold the value null, meaning that it doesn’t at the
moment refer to anything. Like any object, an array belongs to a class, which like all classes is a
subclass of the class Object. The elements of the array are, essentially, instance variables in the
array object, except that they are referred to by number rather than by name.
Nevertheless, even though arrays are objects, there are differences between arrays and
other kinds of objects, and there are a number of special language features in Java for
creating and using arrays.

7.1.2 Using Arrays

Suppose that A is a variable that refers to an array. Then the element at index k in A is referred to as
A[k]. The first element is A[0], the second is A[1], and so forth. “A[k]” is really a variable, and it can be
used just like any other variable. You can assign values to it, you can
7.1. CREATING AND USING ARRAYS 315

use it in expressions, and you can pass it as a parameter to a subroutine. All of this will be
discussed in more detail below. For now, just keep in mind the syntax
array-variable [ integer-expression ]

for referring to an element of an array.

Although every array, as an object, belongs to some class, array classes never have to
be defined. Once a type exists, the corresponding array class exists automatically. If the
name of the type is BaseType, then the name of the associated array class is BaseType[ ].
That is to say, an object belonging to the class BaseType[ ] is an array of items, where each
item is a variable of type BaseType. The brackets, “[]”, are meant to recall the syntax for
referring to the individual items in the array. “BaseType[ ]” is read as “array of BaseType” or
“BaseType array.” It might be worth mentioning here that if ClassA is a subclass of ClassB,
then the class ClassA[ ] is automatically a subclass of ClassB[ ].
The base type of an array can be any legal Java type. From the primitive type int, the
array type int[ ] is derived. Each element in an array of type int[ ] is a variable of type int,
which holds a value of type int. From a class named Shape, the array type Shape[ ] is
derived. Each item in an array of type Shape[ ] is a variable of type Shape, which holds a
value of type Shape. This value can be either null or a reference to an object belonging to
the class Shape. (This includes objects belonging to subclasses of Shape.)
∗∗∗
Let’s try to get a little more concrete about all this, using arrays of integers as our first
example. Since int[ ] is a class, it can be used to declare variables. For example,
int[] list;

creates a variable named list of type int[ ]. This variable is capable of referring to an
array of ints, but initially its value is null (if list is a member variable in a class) or
undefined (if list is a local variable in a method). The new operator is used to create a
new array object, which can then be assigned to list. The syntax for using new with
arrays is different from the syntax you learned previously. As an example,
list = new int[5];

creates an array of five integers. More generally, the constructor “new BaseType[N]” is used
to create an array belonging to the class BaseType[ ]. The value N in brackets specifies the
length of the array, that is, the number of elements that it contains. Note that the array “knows”
how long it is. The length of the array is an instance variable in the array object. In fact, the
length of an array, list, can be referred to as [Link]. (However, you are not allowed
to change the value of [Link], so it’s really a “final” instance variable, that is, one
whose value cannot be changed after it has been initialized.)
The situation produced by the statement “list = new int[5];” can be pictured like this:
316 CHAPTER 7. ARRAYS

Note that the newly created array of integers is automatically filled with zeros. In Java, a
newly created array is always filled with a known, default value: zero for numbers, false
for boolean, the character with Unicode number zero for char, and null for objects.
The elements in the array, list, are referred to as list[0], list[1], list[2],
list[3], and list[4]. (Note again that the index for the last item is one less than
[Link].) However, array references can be much more general than this. The
brackets in an array reference can contain any expression whose value is an integer. For
example if indx is a variable of type int, then list[indx] and list[2*indx+7] are
syntactically correct references to elements of the array list. Thus, the following loop
would print all the integers in the array, list, to standard output:
for (int i = 0; i < [Link]; i++) {
[Link]( list[i] );
}

The first time through the loop, i is 0, and list[i] refers to list[0]. So, it is the value
stored in the variable list[0] that is printed. The second time through the loop, i is 1,
and the value stored in list[1] is printed. The loop ends after printing the value of
list[4], when i becomes equal to 5 and the continuation condition “i < [Link]”
is no longer true. This is a typical example of using a loop to process an array. I’ll discuss
more examples of array processing throughout this chapter.
Every use of a variable in a program specifies a memory location. Think for a moment about
what the computer does when it encounters a reference to an array element, list[k], while it
is executing a program. The computer must determine which memory location is being referred
to. To the computer, list[k] means something like this: “Get the pointer that is stored in the
variable, list. Follow this pointer to find an array object. Get the value of k. Go to the k-th
position in the array, and that’s the memory location you want.” There are two things that can go
wrong here. Suppose that the value of list is null. If that is the case, then list doesn’t
even refer to an array. The attempt to refer to an element of an array that doesn’t exist is an
error that will cause an exception of type NullPointerException to be thrown. The second
possible error occurs if list does refer to an array, but the value of k is outside the legal
range of indices for that array. This will happen if k < 0 or if k >= [Link]. This is
called an “array index out of bounds” error. When an error of this type occurs, an exception of
type ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException is thrown. When you use arrays in a program, you
should be mindful that both types of errors are possible. However, array index out of bounds
errors are by far the most common error when working with arrays.

7.1.3 Array Initialization

For an array variable, just as for any variable, you can declare the variable and initialize it in
a single step. For example,
int[] list = new int[5];

If list is a local variable in a subroutine, then this is exactly equivalent to the two statements:
int[] list;
list = new int[5];

(If list is an instance variable, then of course you can’t simply replace “int[] list = new int[5];”
with “int[] list; list = new int[5];” since the assignment statement “list = new int[5]; ” is only legal
inside a subroutine.)
7.1. CREATING AND USING ARRAYS 317

The new array is filled with the default value appropriate for the base type of the array—zero
for int and null for class types, for example. However, Java also provides a way to initialize an
array variable with a new array filled with a specified list of values. In a declaration statement
that creates a new array, this is done with an array initializer . For example,
int[] list = { 1, 4, 9, 16, 25, 36, 49 };

creates a new array containing the seven values 1, 4, 9, 16, 25, 36, and 49, and sets list
to refer to that new array. The value of list[0] will be 1, the value of list[1] will be 4,
and so forth. The length of list is seven, since seven values are provided in the initializer.
An array initializer takes the form of a list of values, separated by commas and enclosed
between braces. The length of the array does not have to be specified, because it is implicit
in the list of values. The items in an array initializer don’t have to be constants. They can be
variables or arbitrary expressions, provided that their values are of the appropriate type. For
example, the following declaration creates an array of eight Colors. Some of the colors are
given by expressions of the form “new Color(r,g,b)” instead of by constants:
Color[] palette = {
[Link],
[Link],
[Link],
new Color(0,180,0), // dark green
[Link],
[Link],
new Color(180,180,255), // light blue
[Link]
};

A list initializer of this form can be used only in a declaration statement, to give an initial
value to a newly declared array variable. It cannot be used in an assignment statement to assign
a value to a variable that has been previously declared. However, there is another, similar
notation for creating a new array that can be used in an assignment statement or passed as a
parameter to a subroutine. The notation uses another form of the new operator to both create
and initialize a new array object at the same time. (The rather odd syntax is similar to the syntax
for anonymous classes, which were discussed in Subsection 5.7.3.) For example to assign a
new value to an array variable, list, that was declared previously, you could use:
list = new int[] { 1, 8, 27, 64, 125, 216, 343 };
The general syntax for this form of the new operator is
new base-type [ ] { list-of-values }

This is actually an whose value is a reference to a newly created array object. This
expression means that it can any context where an object of type base-type [] is expected.
be used in For example, if is a method that takes an array of Strings as a parameter, you
makeButtons could say:
makeButtons( new String[] { "Stop", "Go", "Next", "Previous" } );

Being able to create and use an array “in place” in this way can be very convenient, in the
same way that anonymous nested classes are convenient.
By the way, it is perfectly legal to use the “new BaseType[] { ... }” syntax instead
of the array initializer syntax in the declaration of an array variable. For example, instead of
saying:
318 CHAPTER 7. ARRAYS

int[] primes = { 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, 17, 19 };

you can say, equivalently,

int[] primes = new int[] { 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 17, 19 };

In fact, rather than use a special notation that works only in the context of declaration state-
ments, I prefer to use the second form.
∗∗∗
One final note: For historical reasons, an array declaration such as
int[] list;

can also be written as

int list[];

which is a syntax used in the languages C and C++. However, this alternative syntax does
not really make much sense in the context of Java, and it is probably best avoided. After all,
the intent is to declare a variable of a certain type, and the name of that type is “int[ ]”. It
makes sense to follow the “ type-name variable-name ;” syntax for such declarations.

7.2 Programming With Arrays

Arrays are the most basic and the most important type of data structure, and tech-niques for
processing arrays are among the most important programming techniques you can learn. Two
fundamental array processing techniques—searching and sorting—will be covered in Section
7.4. This section introduces some of the basic ideas of array processing in general.

7.2.1 Arrays and for Loops

In many cases, processing an array means applying the same operation to each item in the
array. This is commonly done with a for loop. A loop for processing all the elements of an
array A has the form:
do any necessary initialization for
(int i = 0; i < [Link]; i++) {
. . . // process A[i]
}

Suppose, for example, that A is an array of type double[ ]. Suppose that the goal is to
add up all the numbers in the array. An informal algorithm for doing this would be:
Start with 0;
Add A[0]; (process the first item in A)
Add A[1]; (process the second item in A)
.
.
.
Add A[ [Link] - 1 ]; (process the last item in A)

Putting the obvious repetition into a loop and giving a name to the sum, this becomes:
7.2. PROGRAMMING WITH ARRAYS 319
double sum; // The sum of the numbers in A.

sum = 0; // Start with 0.

for (int i = 0; i < [Link]; i++)
sum += A[i]; // add A[i] to the sum, for
i = 0, 1, ..., [Link] - 1

Note that the continuation condition, “i < [Link]”, implies that the last value of i that
is actually processed is [Link]-1, which is the index of the final item in the array. It’s
important to use “<” here, not “<=”, since “<=” would give an array index out of bounds error.
There is no element at position [Link] in A.
Eventually, you should just about be able to write loops similar to this one in your sleep. I
will give a few more simple examples. Here is a loop that will count the number of items in
the array A which are less than zero:
int count; // For counting the items.
count = 0; // Start with 0 items counted.
for (int i = 0; i < [Link]; i++) {
if (A[i] < 0.0) // if this item is less than zero...
count++; // ...then count it
}
At this point, the value of count is the number
of items that have passed the test of being < 0

Replace the test “A[i] < 0.0”, if you want to count the number of items in an array
that satisfy some other property. Here is a variation on the same theme. Suppose you want
to count the number of times that an item in the array A is equal to the item that follows it.
The item that follows A[i] in the array is A[i+1], so the test in this case is “if (A[i]
== A[i+1])”. But there is a catch: This test cannot be applied when A[i] is the last item
in the array, since then there is no such item as A[i+1]. The result of trying to apply the
test in this case would be an ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException. This just means that we
have to stop one item short of the final item:
int count = 0;
for (int i = 0; i < [Link] - 1; i++) {
if (A[i] == A[i+1])
count++;
}

Another typical problem is to find the largest number in A. The strategy is to go through the
array, keeping track of the largest number found so far. We’ll store the largest number found so
far in a variable called max. As we look through the array, whenever we find a number larger
than the current value of max, we change the value of max to that larger value. After the whole
array has been processed, max is the largest item in the array overall. The only question is,
what should the original value of max be? One possibility is to start with max equal to A[0],
and then to look through the rest of the array, starting from A[1], for larger items:
double max = A[0];
for (int i = 1; i < [Link]; i++) {
if (A[i] > max)
max = A[i];
}
// at this point, max is the largest item in A
320 CHAPTER 7. ARRAYS

(There is one subtle problem here. It’s possible in Java for an array to have length zero. In
that case, A[0] doesn’t exist, and the reference to A[0] in the first line gives an array
index out of bounds error. However, zero-length arrays are normally something that you
want to avoid in real problems. Anyway, what would it mean to ask for the largest item in an
array that contains no items at all?)
As a final example of basic array operations, consider the problem of copying an array.
To make a copy of our sample array A, it is not sufficient to say
double[] B = A;

since this does not create a new array object. All it does is declare a new array variable and
make it refer to the same object to which A refers. (So that, for example, a change to A[i] will
automatically change B[i] as well.) To make a new array that is a copy of A, it is necessary to
make a new array object and to copy each of the individual items from A into the new array:
double[] B = new double[[Link]]; // Make a new array
object, // the same size as
A.
for (int i = 0; i < [Link]; i++)
B[i] = A[i]; // Copy each item from A to B.

Copying values from one array to another is such a common operation that Java has a
predefined subroutine to do it. The subroutine, [Link](), is a static member
subroutine in the standard System class. Its declaration has the form
public static void arraycopy(Object sourceArray, int sourceStartIndex,
Object destArray, int destStartIndex, int count)

where sourceArray and destArray can be arrays with any base type. Values are
copied from sourceArray to destArray. The count tells how many elements to copy.
Values are taken from sourceArray starting at position sourceStartIndex and are
stored in destArray starting at position destStartIndex. For example, to make a
copy of the array, A, using this subroutine, you would say:
double B = new double[[Link]];
[Link]( A, 0, B, 0, [Link] );

7.2.2 Arrays and for-each Loops

Java 5.0 introduced a new form of the for loop, the “for-each loop” that was introduced in
Subsection 3.4.4. The for-each loop is meant specifically for processing all the values in a
data structure. When used to process an array, a for-each loop can be used to perform the
same operation on each value that is stored in the array. If anArray is an array of type
BaseType[ ], then a for-each loop for anArray has the form:
for ( BaseType item : anArray ) {
.
// process the item

In this loop, item is the loop control variable. It is being declared as a variable of type
BaseType, where BaseType is the base type of the array. (In a for-each loop, the loop
control variable must be declared in the loop.) When this loop is executed, each value from
the array is assigned to item in turn and the body of the loop is executed for each value. Thus, the above
loop is exactly equivalent to:
7.2. PROGRAMMING WITH ARRAYS 321

for ( int index = 0; index < [Link];

index++ ) { BaseType item;
item = anArray[index]; // Get one of the values from the array
.
// process the item

For example, if A is an array of type int[ ], then we could print all the values from A with
the for-each loop:
for ( int item : A )
[Link]( item );

and we could add up all the positive integers in A with:

int sum = 0; // This will be the sum of all the positive
numbers in A for ( int item : A ) {
if (item > 0)
sum = sum + item;
}

The for-each loop is not always appropriate. For example, there is no simple way to use
it to process the items in just a part of an array. However, it does make it a little easier to
process all the values in an array, since it eliminates any need to use array indices.
It’s important to note that a for-each loop processes the values in the array, not the
elements (where an element means the actual memory location that is part of the array).
For example, consider the following incorrect attempt to fill an array of integers with 17’s:
int[] intList = new int[10];
for ( int item : intList ) { // INCORRECT! DOES NOT MODIFY THE ARRAY!
item = 17;
}

The assignment statement item = 17 assigns the value 17 to the loop control variable,
item. However, this has nothing to do with the array. When the body of the loop is
executed, the value from one of the elements of the array is copied into item. The
statement item = 17 replaces that copied value but has no effect on the array element
from which it was copied; the value in the array is not changed.

7.2.3 Array Types in Subroutines

Any array type, such as double[ ], is a full-fledged Java type, so it can be used in all the
ways that any other Java type can be used. In particular, it can be used as the type of a
formal parameter in a subroutine. It can even be the return type of a function. For example,
it might be useful to have a function that makes a copy of an array of double:
/**
Create a new array of doubles that is a copy of a given array.
@param source the array that is to be copied; the value can be null
@return a copy of source; if source is null, then the return value is also null
*/
public static double[] copy( double[]
source ) { if ( source == null )
322 CHAPTER 7. ARRAYS

return null;
double[] cpy; // A copy of the source array.
cpy = new double[[Link]];
[Link]( source, 0, cpy, 0,
[Link] ); return cpy;
}

The main() routine of a program has a parameter of type String[ ]. You’ve seen this
used since all the way back in Section 2.1, but I haven’t really been able to explain it until
now. The parameter to the main() routine is an array of String s. When the system calls
the main() routine, the strings in this array are the command-line arguments from the
command that was used to run the program. When using a command-line interface, the user
types a command to tell the system to execute a program. The user can include extra input
in this command, beyond the name of the program. This extra input becomes the command-
line arguments. For example, if the name of the class that contains the main() routine is
myProg, then the user can type “java myProg” to execute the program. In this case, there
are no command-line arguments. But if the user types the command
java myProg one two three

then the command-line arguments are the strings “one”, “two”, and “three”. The system puts
these strings into an array of String s and passes that array as a parameter to the main()
routine. Here, for example, is a short program that simply prints out any command line
arguments entered by the user:
public class CLDemo {
public static void main(String[] args)
{ [Link]("You entered " +
[Link]
+ " command-line arguments");
if ([Link] > 0) {
[Link]("They were:");
for (int i = 0; i < [Link]; i++)
[Link](" " + args[i]);
}
} // end main()
} // end class CLDemo

Note that the parameter, args, is never null when main() is called by the system, but it
might be an array of length zero.
In practice, command-line arguments are often the names of files to be processed by the
program. I will give some examples of this in Chapter 11, when I discuss file processing.

7.2.4 Random Access

So far, all my examples of array processing have used sequential access. That is, the
elements of the array were processed one after the other in the sequence in which they
occur in the array. But one of the big advantages of arrays is that they allow random
access. That is, every element of the array is equally accessible at any given time.
As an example, let’s look at a well-known problem called the birthday problem: Suppose that
there are N people in a room. What’s the chance that there are two people in the room who have the
same birthday? (That is, they were born on the same day in the same month, but not necessarily in the same
year.) Most people severely underestimate the probability. We
7.2. PROGRAMMING WITH ARRAYS 323

will actually look at a different version of the question: Suppose you choose people at random and
check their birthdays. How many people will you check before you find one who has the same
birthday as someone you’ve already checked? Of course, the answer in a particular case depends on
random factors, but we can simulate the experiment with a computer program and run the program
several times to get an idea of how many people need to be checked on average.
To simulate the experiment, we need to keep track of each birthday that we find. There
are 365 different possible birthdays. (We’ll ignore leap years.) For each possible birthday,
we need to keep track of whether or not we have already found a person who has that
birthday. The answer to this question is a boolean value, true or false. To hold the data for
all 365 possible birthdays, we can use an array of 365 boolean values:
boolean[] used;
used = new boolean[365];

The days of the year are numbered from 0 to 364. The value of used[i] is true if
someone has been selected whose birthday is day number i. Initially, all the values in the
array, used, are false. When we select someone whose birthday is day number i, we first
check whether used[i] is true. If so, then this is the second person with that birthday. We
are done. If used[i] is false, we set used[i] to be true to record the fact that we’ve
encountered someone with that birthday, and we go on to the next person. Here is a
subroutine that carries out the simulated experiment (of course, in the subroutine, there are
no simulated people, only simulated birthdays):
/**
Simulate choosing people at random and checking the day of the year they
were born on. If the birthday is the same as one that was seen previously,
stop, and output the number of people who were checked.
*/
private static void birthdayProblem() {
boolean[] used; // For recording the possible birthdays
that have been seen so far. A value
of true in used[i] means that a person
whose birthday is the i-th day of the
year has been found.
int count; // The number of people who have been checked.

used = new boolean[365]; // Initially, all entries are false.

count = 0;
while (true) {
Select a birthday at random, from 0 to 364.
If the birthday has already been used, quit.
Otherwise, record the birthday as used.
int birthday; // The selected birthday.
birthday = (int)([Link]()*365);
count++;
if ( used[birthday] ) // This day was found before; It’s a duplicate.
break;
used[birthday] = true;
}
[Link]("A duplicate birthday was found after "
324 CHAPTER 7. ARRAYS

+ count + " tries.");

} // end birthdayProblem()

This subroutine makes essential use of the fact that every element in a newly created array
of boolean is set to be false. If we wanted to reuse the same array in a second simulation,
we would have to reset all the elements in it to be false with a for loop:
for (int i = 0; i < 365; i++)
used[i] = false;

The program that uses this subroutine is [Link]. An applet

version of the program can be found in the online version of this section.

7.2.5 Arrays of Objects

One of the examples in Subsection 6.4.2 was an applet that shows multiple copies of a
message in random positions, colors, and fonts. When the user clicks on the applet, the
positions, colors, and fonts are changed to new random values. Like several other examples
from that chapter, the applet had a flaw: It didn’t have any way of storing the data that would
be necessary to redraw itself. Arrays provide us with one possible solution to this problem.
We can write a new version of the RandomStrings applet that uses an array to store the
position, font, and color of each string. When the content pane of the applet is painted, this
information is used to draw the strings, so the applet will paint itself correctly whenever it
has to be redrawn. When the user clicks on the applet, the array is filled with new random
values and the applet is repainted using the new data. So, the only time that the picture will
change is in response to a mouse click.
In this applet, the number of copies of the message is given by a named constant,
MESSAGE COUNT. One way to store the position, color, and font of MESSAGE COUNT
strings would be to use four arrays:
int[] x = new int[MESSAGE COUNT];
int[] y = new int[MESSAGE COUNT];
Color[] color = new Color[MESSAGE COUNT];
Font[] font = new Font[MESSAGE COUNT];

These arrays would be filled with random values. In the paintComponent() method, the
i-th copy of the string would be drawn at the point (x[i],y[i]). Its color would be given
by color[i]. And it would be drawn in the font font[i]. This would be accomplished by
the paintComponent() method
public void paintComponent(Graphics g)
{ [Link](); // (Fill with background
color.) for (int i = 0; i < MESSAGE COUNT; i++) {
[Link]( color[i] );
[Link]( font[i] );
[Link]( message, x[i], y[i] );
}
}

This approach is said to use parallel arrays. The data for a given copy of the message is spread
out across several arrays. If you think of the arrays as laid out in parallel columns— array x in
the first column, array y in the second, array color in the third, and array font in the fourth—then
the data for the i-th string can be found along the the i-th row. There
7.2. PROGRAMMING WITH ARRAYS 325

is nothing wrong with using parallel arrays in this simple example, but it does go against the
object-oriented philosophy of keeping related data in one object. If we follow this rule, then
we don’t have to imagine the relationship among the data, because all the data for one
copy of the message is physically in one place. So, when I wrote the applet, I made a simple
class to represent all the data that is needed for one copy of the message:
/**
An object of this type holds the position, color, and font
of one copy of the string.
*/
private static class StringData {
int x, y; // The coordinates of the left end of baseline of string.
Color color; // The color in which the string is drawn.
Font font; // The font that is used to draw the string.
}

(This class is actually defined as a static nested class in the main applet class.) To store the
data for multiple copies of the message, I use an array of type StringData[ ]. The array is
declared as an instance variable, with the name stringData:
StringData[] stringData;

Of course, the value of stringData is null until an actual array is created and assigned
to it. This is done in the init() method of the applet with the statement
stringData = new StringData[MESSAGE COUNT];

The base type of this array is StringData, which is a class. We say that stringData is an
array of objects. This means that the elements of the array are variables of type StringData.
Like any object variable, each element of the array can either be null or can hold a reference
to an object. (Note that the term “array of objects” is a little misleading, since the objects are not
in the array; the array can only contain references to objects). When the stringData array is
first created, the value of each element in the array is null.
The data needed by the RandomStrings program will be stored in objects of type
StringData, but no such objects exist yet. All we have so far is an array of variables that are
capable of referring to such objects. I decided to create the StringData objects in the
applet’s init method. (It could be done in other places—just so long as we avoid trying to
use an object that doesn’t exist. This is important: Remember that a newly created array
whose base type is an object type is always filled with null elements. There are no objects
in the array until you put them there.) The objects are created with the for loop
for (int i = 0; i < MESSAGE COUNT; i++)
stringData[i] = new StringData();

For the RandomStrings applet, the idea is to store data for the i-th copy of the message
in the variables stringData[i].x, stringData[i].y, stringData[i].color, and
stringData[i].font. Make sure that you understand the notation here:
stringData[i] refers to an object. That object contains instance variables. The notation
stringData[i].x tells the computer: “Find your way to the object that is referred to by
stringData[i]. Then go to the instance variable named x in that object.” Variable names
can get even more com-plicated than this, so it is important to learn how to read them. Using
the array, stringData, the paintComponent() method for the applet could be written
326 CHAPTER 7. ARRAYS

public void paintComponent(Graphics g)

{ [Link](g); // (Fill with
background color.) for (int i = 0; i < MESSAGE
COUNT; i++) {
[Link]( stringData[i].color );
[Link]( stringData[i].font );
[Link]( message, stringData[i].x, stringData[i].y );
}
}

However, since the for loop is processing every value in the array, an alternative would be
to use a for-each loop:
public void paintComponent(Graphics g) {
[Link](g);
for ( StringData data : stringData) {
Draw a copy of the message in the position, color,
and font stored in data.
[Link]( [Link] );
[Link]( [Link] );
[Link]( message, data.x, data.y );
}
}

In the loop, the loop control variable, data, holds a copy of one of the values from the
array. That value is a reference to an object of type StringData, which has instance variables
named color, font, x, and y. Once again, the use of a for-each loop has eliminated the
need to work with array indices.
There is still the matter of filling the array, data, with random values. If you are
interested, you can look at the source code for the applet, [Link].
∗∗∗
The RandomStrings applet uses one other array of objects. The font for a given copy of
the message is chosen at random from a set of five possible fonts. In the original version of
the applet, there were five variables of type Font to represent the fonts. The variables were
named font1, font2, font3, font4, and font5. To select one of these fonts at
random, a switch statement could be used:
Font randomFont; // One of the 5 fonts, chosen at random.
int rand; // A random integer in the range 0 to 4.

rand = (int)([Link]() * 5);

switch (rand) {
case 0:
randomFont = font1;
break;
case 1:
randomFont = font2;
break;
case 2:
randomFont = font3;
break;
case 3:
randomFont = font4;
break;
case 4:
7.2. PROGRAMMING WITH ARRAYS 327

randomFont = font5;
break;
}

In the new version of the applet, the five fonts are stored in an array, which is named
fonts. This array is declared as an instance variable of type Font[ ]
Font[] fonts;

The array is created in the init() method of the applet, and each element of the array is
set to refer to a new Font object:
fonts = new Font[5]; // Create the array to hold the five fonts.
fonts[0] = new Font("Serif", [Link], 14);
fonts[1] = new Font("SansSerif", [Link] + [Link],
24); fonts[2] = new Font("Monospaced", [Link], 20);
fonts[3] = new Font("Dialog", [Link], 30);
fonts[4] = new Font("Serif", [Link], 36);

This makes it much easier to select one of the fonts at random. It can be done with the
statements
Font randomFont; // One of the 5 fonts, chosen at random.
int fontIndex; // A random number in the range 0 to 4.
fontIndex = (int)([Link]() * 5);
randomFont = fonts[ fontIndex ];

The switch statement has been replaced by a single line of code. In fact, the preceding
four lines could be replaced by the single line:
Font randomFont = fonts[ (int)([Link]() * 5) ];

This is a very typical application of arrays. Note that this example uses the random
access property of arrays: We can pick an array index at random and go directly to the array
element at that index.
Here is another example of the same sort of thing. Months are often stored as numbers
1, 2, 3, . . . , 12. Sometimes, however, these numbers have to be translated into the names
January, February, . . . , December. The translation can be done with an array. The array
can be declared and initialized as
static String[] monthName = { "January", "February", "March",
"April", "May", "June",
"July", "August", "September",
"October", "November", "December" };

If mnth is a variable that holds one of the integers 1 through 12, then monthName[mnth-
1] is the name of the corresponding month. We need the “-1” because months are
numbered starting from 1, while array elements are numbered starting from 0. Simple array
indexing does the translation for us!

7.2.6 Variable Arity Methods

Arrays are used in the implementation of one of the new features in Java 5.0. Before version 5.0,
every method in Java had a fixed arity. (The arity of a subroutine is defined as the number of
parameters in a call to the method.) In a fixed arity method, the number of parameters must be
the same in every call to the method. Java 5.0 introduced variable arity methods. In a
328 CHAPTER 7. ARRAYS

variable arity method, different calls to the method can have di fferent numbers of parameters.
For example, the formatted output method [Link], which was introduced in
Sub-section 2.4.4, is a variable arity method. The first parameter of [Link] must
be a String, but it can have any number of additional parameters, of any types.
Calling a variable arity method is no different from calling any other sort of method, but
writing one requires some new syntax. As an example, consider a method that can compute
the average of any number of values of type double. The definition of such a method could
begin with:
public static double average( double... numbers ) {

Here, the ... after the type name, double, indicates that any number of values of type
double can be provided when the subroutine is called, so that for example
average(1,2,3), average(3.14,2.17), average(0.375), and even average()
are all legal calls to this method. Note that actual parameters of type int can be passed to
average. The integers will, as usual, be automatically converted to real numbers.
When the method is called, the values of all the actual parameters that correspond to the
variable arity parameter are placed into an array, and it is this array that is actually passed to the
method. That is, in the body of a method, a variable arity parameter of type T actually looks like
an ordinary parameter of type T[ ]. The length of the array tells you how many actual parameters
were provided in the method call. In the average example, the body of the method would see
an array named numbers of type double[ ]. The number of actual parameters in the method call
would be [Link], and the values of the actual parameters would be numbers[0],
numbers[1], and so on. A complete definition of the method would be:
public static double average( double... numbers ) {
double sum; // The sum of all the actual parameters.
double average; // The average of all the actual parameters.
sum = 0;
for (int i = 0; i < [Link]; i++) {
sum = sum + numbers[i]; // Add one of the actual parameters to the sum.
}
average = sum / [Link];
return average;
}

Note that the “...” can be applied only to the last formal parameter in a method definition.
Note also that it is possible to pass an actual array to the method, instead of a list of individual
values. For example, if salesData is a variable of type double[ ], then it would be legal to call
average(salesData), and this would compute the average of all the numbers in the array.
As another example, consider a method that can draw a polygon through any number of
points. The points are given as values of type Point, where an object of type Point has two
instance variables, x and y, of type int. In this case, the method has one ordinary
parameter— the graphics context that will be used to draw the polygon—in addition to the
variable arity parameter:
public static void drawPolygon(Graphics g, Point... points) {
if ([Link] > 1) { // (Need at least 2 points to draw anything.)
for (int i = 0; i < [Link] - 1; i++) {
// Draw a line from i-th point to (i+1)-th point
[Link]( points[i].x, points[i].y, points[i+1].x, points[i+1].y );
}
7.3. DYNAMIC ARRAYS AND ARRAYLISTS 329

// Now, draw a line back to the starting point.

[Link]( points[[Link]-1].x, points[[Link]-
1].y, points[0].x, points[0].y );
}
}

Because of automatic type conversion, a variable arity parameter of type “Object...”

can take actual parameters of any type whatsoever. Even primitive type values are allowed,
because of autoboxing. (A primitive type value belonging to a type such as int is converted
to an object belonging to a “wrapper” class such as Integer. See Subsection 5.3.2.) For
example, the method definition for [Link] could begin:
public void printf(String format, Object... values) {

This allows the printf method to output values of any type. Similarly, we could write a method
that strings together the string representations of all its parameters into one long string:
public static String concat( Object... values )
{ String str = ""; // Start with an empty string.
for ( Object obj : values ) { // A "for each" loop for processing the
values. if (obj == null )

str = str + "null"; // Represent null values by "null".

else
str = str + [Link]();
}
}

7.3 Dynamic Arrays and ArrayLists

The size of an array is fixed when it is created. In many cases, however, the number of data
items that are actually stored in the array varies with time. Consider the following examples: An
array that stores the lines of text in a word-processing program. An array that holds the list of
computers that are currently downloading a page from a Web site. An array that contains the
shapes that have been added to the screen by the user of a drawing program. Clearly, we need
some way to deal with cases where the number of data items in an array is not fixed.

7.3.1 Partially Full Arrays

Consider an application where the number of items that we want to store in an array
changes as the program runs. Since the size of the array can’t actually be changed, a
separate counter variable must be used to keep track of how many spaces in the array are
in use. (Of course, every space in the array has to contain something; the question is, how
many spaces contain useful or valid items?)
Consider, for example, a program that reads positive integers entered by the user and stores
them for later processing. The program stops reading when the user inputs a number that is less
than or equal to zero. The input numbers can be kept in an array, numbers, of type int[ ]. Let’s
say that no more than 100 numbers will be input. Then the size of the array can be fixed at 100.
But the program must keep track of how many numbers have actually been read and stored in
the array. For this, it can use an integer variable, numCount. Each time a number is stored in
the array, numCount must be incremented by one. As a rather silly example, let’s write a
program that will read the numbers input by the user and then print them in reverse
330 CHAPTER 7. ARRAYS

order. (This is, at least, a processing task that requires that the numbers be saved in an
array. Remember that many types of processing, such as finding the sum or average or
maximum of the numbers, can be done without saving the individual numbers.)
public class ReverseInputNumbers {
public static void main(String[] args) {
int[] numbers; // An array for storing the input values.
int numCount; // The number of numbers saved in the array.
int num; // One of the numbers input by the user.
numbers = new int[100]; // Space for 100 ints.
numCount = 0; // No numbers have been saved yet.

[Link]("Enter up to 100 positive integers; enter 0 to end.");

while (true) { // Get the numbers and put them in the array.
[Link]("? ");
num = [Link]();
if (num <= 0)
break;
numbers[numCount] = num;
numCount++;
}
[Link]("\nYour numbers in reverse order are:\n");
for (int i = numCount - 1; i >= 0; i--) {
[Link]( numbers[i] );
}
} // end main();
} // end class ReverseInputNumbers

It is especially important to note that the variable numCount plays a dual role. It is the number of
items that have been entered into the array. But it is also the index of the next available spot in the
array. For example, if 4 numbers have been stored in the array, they occupy locations number 0, 1, 2,
and 3. The next available spot is location 4. When the time comes to print out the numbers in the
array, the last occupied spot in the array is location numCount - 1, so the for loop prints out
values starting from location numCount - 1 and going down to 0.
Let’s look at another, more realistic example. Suppose that you write a game program, and
that players can join the game and leave the game as it progresses. As a good object-oriented
programmer, you probably have a class named Player to represent the individual players in the
game. A list of all players who are currently in the game could be stored in an array,
playerList, of type Player[ ]. Since the number of players can change, you will also need a
variable, playerCt, to record the number of players currently in the game. Assuming that there
will never be more than 10 players in the game, you could declare the variables as:
Player[] playerList = new Player[10]; // Up to 10 players.
int playerCt = 0; // At the start, there are no players.

After some players have joined the game, playerCt will be greater than 0, and the player
objects representing the players will be stored in the array elements playerList[0],
playerList[1], . . . , playerList[playerCt-1]. Note that the array element
7.3. DYNAMIC ARRAYS AND ARRAYLISTS 331

playerList[playerCt] is not in use. The procedure for adding a new player,

newPlayer, to the game is simple:
playerList[playerCt] = newPlayer; // Put new player in next
available spot.
playerCt++; // And increment playerCt to count the new player.

Deleting a player from the game is a little harder, since you don’t want to leave a “hole”
in the array. Suppose you want to delete the player at index k in playerList. If you are
not worried about keeping the players in any particular order, then one way to do this is to
move the player from the last occupied position in the array into position k and then to
decrement the value of playerCt:
playerList[k] = playerList[playerCt - 1];
playerCt--;

The player previously in position k is no longer in the array. The player previously in
position playerCt - 1 is now in the array twice. But it’s only in the occupied or valid part
of the array once, since playerCt has decreased by one. Remember that every element
of the array has to hold some value, but only the values in positions 0 through playerCt -
1 will be looked at or processed in any way. (By the way, you should think about what
happens if the player that is being deleted is in the last position in the list. The code does
still work in this case. What exactly happens?)
Suppose that when deleting the player in position k, you’d like to keep the remaining
players in the same order. (Maybe because they take turns in the order in which they are
stored in the array.) To do this, all the players in positions k+1 and above must move down
one position in the array. Player k+1 replaces player k, who is out of the game. Player
k+2 fills the spot left open when player k+1 is moved. And so on. The code for this is
for (int i = k+1; i < playerCt; i++) {
playerList[i-1] = playerList[i];
}
playerCt--;

∗∗∗
It’s worth emphasizing that the Player example deals with an array whose base type is a
class. An item in the array is either null or is a reference to an object belonging to the
class, Player. The Player objects themselves are not really stored in the array, only
references to them. Note that because of the rules for assignment in Java, the objects can
actually belong to subclasses of Player. Thus there could be di fferent classes of players
such as computer players, regular human players, players who are wizards, . . . , all
represented by different subclasses of Player.
As another example, suppose that a class Shape represents the general idea of a shape
drawn on a screen, and that it has subclasses to represent specific types of shapes such as
lines, rectangles, rounded rectangles, ovals, filled-in ovals, and so forth. (Shape itself would
be an abstract class, as discussed in Subsection 5.5.5.) Then an array of type Shape[ ] can
hold references to objects belonging to the subclasses of Shape. For example, the situation
created by the statements
Shape[] shapes = new Shape[100]; // Array to hold up to 100 shapes.
shapes[0] = new Rect(); // Put some objects in the array.
shapes[1] = new Line();
shapes[2] = new FilledOval();
int shapeCt = 3; // Keep track of number of objects in array.
332 CHAPTER 7. ARRAYS

could be illustrated as:

e

p s
a
s p
e

s
e n g
t

.l
h

[ 4 3210 ]

ha s h

a p
es
Such an array would be useful in a drawing program. The array could be used to hold a
list of shapes to be displayed. If the Shape class includes a method, “void
redraw(Graphics g)”, for drawing the shape in a graphics context g, then all the
shapes in the array could be redrawn with a simple for loop:
for (int i = 0; i < shapeCt; i++)
shapes[i].redraw(g);

The statement “shapes[i].redraw(g);” calls the redraw() method belonging to the

partic-ular shape at index i in the array. Each object knows how to redraw itself, so that
repeated executions of the statement can produce a variety of different shapes on the
screen. This is nice example both of polymorphism and of array processing.

7.3.2 Dynamic Arrays

In each of the above examples, an arbitrary limit was set on the number of items—100 ints,
10 Players, 100 Shapes. Since the size of an array is fixed, a given array can only hold a
certain maximum number of items. In many cases, such an arbitrary limit is undesirable.
Why should a program work for 100 data values, but not for 101? The obvious alternative of
making an array that’s so big that it will work in any practical case is not usually a good
solution to the problem. It means that in most cases, a lot of computer memory will be
wasted on unused space in the array. That memory might be better used for something
else. And what if someone is using a computer that could handle as many data values as
the user actually wants to process, but doesn’t have enough memory to accommodate all
the extra space that you’ve allocated for your huge array?
Clearly, it would be nice if we could increase the size of an array at will. This is not
possible, but what is possible is almost as good. Remember that an array variable does not
actually hold an array. It just holds a reference to an array object. We can’t make the array
bigger, but we can make a new, bigger array object and change the value of the array
variable so that it refers to the bigger array. Of course, we also have to copy the contents of
the old array into the new array. The array variable then refers to an array object that
contains all the data of the old array, with room for additional data. The old array will be
garbage collected, since it is no longer in use.
Let’s look back at the game example, in which playerList is an array of type Player[ ] and
playerCt is the number of spaces that have been used in the array. Suppose that we don’t want
to put a pre-set limit on the number of players. If a new player joins the game and the
7.3. DYNAMIC ARRAYS AND ARRAYLISTS 333

current array is full, we just make a new, bigger one. The same variable, playerList, will
refer to the new array. Note that after this is done, playerList[0] will refer to a different
memory location, but the value stored in playerList[0] will still be the same as it was
before. Here is some code that will do this:
// Add a new player, even if the current array is full.
if (playerCt == [Link]) {
Array is full. Make a new, bigger array,
copy the contents of the old array into it,
and set playerList to refer to the new array.
int newSize = 2 * [Link]; // Size of new array.
Player[] temp = new Player[newSize]; // The new array.
[Link](playerList, 0, temp, 0, [Link]);
playerList = temp; // Set playerList to refer to new array.
}
// At this point, we KNOW there is room in the array.
playerList[playerCt] = newPlayer; // Add the new player...
playerCt++; // ...and count it.

If we are going to be doing things like this regularly, it would be nice to define a reusable
class to handle the details. An array-like object that changes size to accommodate the
amount of data that it actually contains is called a dynamic array . A dynamic array
supports the same operations as an array: putting a value at a given position and getting the
value that is stored at a given position. But there is no upper limit on the positions that can
be used (except those imposed by the size of the computer’s memory). In a dynamic array
class, the put and get operations must be implemented as instance methods. Here, for
example, is a class that implements a dynamic array of ints:
/**
An object of type DynamicArrayOfInt acts like an array of int
of unlimited size. The notation [Link](i) must be used instead
of A[i], and [Link](i,v) must be used instead of A[i] = v.
*/
public class DynamicArrayOfInt {
private int[] data; // An array to hold the data.

/**
Constructor creates an array with an initial size of 1,
but the array size will be increased whenever a reference
is made to an array position that does not yet exist.
*/
public DynamicArrayOfInt() {
data = new int[1];
}
/**
Get the value from the specified position in the array.
Since all array elements are initialized to zero, when the
specified position lies outside the actual physical size
of the data array, a value of 0 is returned. Note that
a negative value of position will still produce an
ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException.
334 CHAPTER 7. ARRAYS

*/
public int get(int position) {
if (position >= [Link])
return 0;
else
return data[position];
}
/**
Store the value in the specified position in the array.
The data array will increase in size to include this
position, if necessary.
*/
public void put(int position, int value) {
if (position >= [Link]) {
The specified position is outside the actual size of
the data array. Double the size, or if that still does
not include the specified position, set the new size
to 2*position.
int newSize = 2 * [Link];
if (position >= newSize)
newSize = 2 * position;
int[] newData = new int[newSize];
[Link](data, 0, newData, 0, [Link]);
data = newData;
The following line is for demonstration purposes only !!
[Link]("Size of dynamic array increased to " + newSize);
}
data[position] = value;
}
} // end class DynamicArrayOfInt

The data in a DynamicArrayOfInt object is actually stored in a regular array, but that
array is discarded and replaced by a bigger array whenever necessary. If numbers is a
variable of type DynamicArrayOfInt, then the command [Link](pos,val) stores
the value val at position number pos in the dynamic array. The function
[Link](pos) returns the value stored at position number pos.
The first example in this section used an array to store positive integers input by the
user. We can rewrite that example to use a DynamicArrayOfInt. A reference to
numbers[i] is replaced by [Link](i). The statement “numbers[numCount] =
num;” is replaced by “[Link](numCount,num);”. Here’s the program:
public class ReverseWithDynamicArray {
public static void main(String[] args) {
DynamicArrayOfInt numbers; // To hold the input numbers.
int numCount; // The number of numbers stored in the array.
int num; // One of the numbers input by the user.
numbers = new DynamicArrayOfInt();
numCount = 0;

[Link]("Enter some positive integers; Enter 0 to end"); while (true) { // Get

numbers and put them in the dynamic array.
7.3. DYNAMIC ARRAYS AND ARRAYLISTS 335

[Link]("? ");
num = [Link]();
if (num <= 0)
break;
[Link](numCount, num); // Store num in the dynamic array.
numCount++;
}

[Link]("\nYour numbers in reverse order are:\n");

for (int i = numCount - 1; i >= 0; i--) {

[Link]( [Link](i) ); // Print the i-th number.
}

} // end main();

} // end class ReverseWithDynamicArray

7.3.3 ArrrayLists
The DynamicArrayOfInt class could be used in any situation where an array of int with no preset
limit on the size is needed. However, if we want to store Shapes instead of ints, we would have
to define a new class to do it. That class, probably named “DynamicArrayOfShape”, would look
exactly the same as the DynamicArrayOfInt class except that everywhere the type “int” appears,
it would be replaced by the type “Shape”. Similarly, we could define a DynamicArrayOfDouble
class, a DynamicArrayOfPlayer class, and so on. But there is something a little silly about this,
since all these classes are close to being identical. It would be nice to be able to write some kind
of source code, once and for all, that could be used to generate any of these classes on
demand, given the type of value that we want to store. This would be an example of generic
programming . Some programming languages, including C++, have had support for generic
programming for some time. With version 5.0, Java introduced true generic programming, but
even before that it had something that was very similar: One can come close to generic
programming in Java by working with data structures that contain elements of type Object. We
will first consider the almost-generic programming that has been available in Java from the
beginning, and then we will look at the change that was introduced in Java 5.0. A full discussion
of generic programming will be given in Chapter 10.
In Java, every class is a subclass of the class named Object. This means that every object can be
assigned to a variable of type Object. Any object can be put into an array of type Object[ ]. If we
defined a DynamicArrayOfObject class, then we could store objects of any type. This is not true
generic programming, and it doesn’t apply to the primitive types such as int and double. But it does
come close. In fact, there is no need for us to define a DynamicArrayOfObject class. Java already has
a standard class named ArrayList that serves much the same purpose. The ArrayList class is in the
package [Link], so if you want to use it in a program, you should put the directive “import
[Link];” at the beginning of your source code file.
The ArrayList class differs from my DynamicArrayOfInt class in that an ArrayList object
always has a definite size, and it is illegal to refer to a position in the ArrayList that lies outside its
size. In this, an ArrayList is more like a regular array. However, the size of an ArrayList can be
increased at will. The ArrayList class defines many instance methods. I’ll describe some of the
most useful. Suppose that list is a variable of type ArrayList. Then we have:
336 CHAPTER 7. ARRAYS

[Link]() — This function returns the current size of the ArrayList. The only valid
positions in the list are numbers in the range 0 to [Link]()-1. Note that the
size can be zero. A call to the default constructor new ArrayList() creates an
ArrayList of size zero.
[Link](obj) — Adds an object onto the end of the list, increasing the size by 1. The
parameter, obj, can refer to an object of any type, or it can be null.
[Link](N) — This function returns the value stored at position N in the ArrayList. N
must be an integer in the range 0 to [Link]()-1. If N is outside this range, an
error of type IndexOutOfBoundsException occurs. Calling this function is similar to
referring to A[N] for an array, A, except that you can’t use [Link](N) on the left
side of an assignment statement.
[Link](N, obj) — Assigns the object, obj, to position N in the ArrayList,
replacing the item previously stored at position N. The integer N must be in the range
from 0 to [Link]()-1. A call to this function is equivalent to the command
A[N] = obj for an array A.
[Link](obj) — If the specified object occurs somewhere in the ArrayList, it is
removed from the list. Any items in the list that come after the removed item are moved
down one position. The size of the ArrayList decreases by 1. If obj occurs more than
once in the list, only the first copy is removed.
[Link](N) — For an integer, N, this removes the N-th item in the ArrayList. N
must be in the range 0 to [Link]()-1. Any items in the list that come after the
removed item are moved down one position. The size of the ArrayList decreases by 1.
[Link](obj) — A function that searches for the object, obj, in the ArrayList.
If the object is found in the list, then the position number where it is found is returned. If
the object is not found, then -1 is returned.
For example, suppose again that players in a game are represented by objects of type
Player. The players currently in the game could be stored in an ArrayList named players.
This variable would be declared as
ArrayList players;
and initialized to refer to a new, empty ArrayList object with
players = new ArrayList();

If newPlayer is a variable that refers to a Player object, the new player would be added to
the ArrayList and to the game by saying
[Link](newPlayer);
and if player number i leaves the game, it is only necessary to say
[Link](i);
Or, if player is a variable that refers to the Player that is to be removed, you could say
[Link](player);

All this works very nicely. The only slight difficulty arises when you use the function
[Link](i) to get the value stored at position i in the ArrayList. The return type of this
function is Object. In this case the object that is returned by the function is actually of type
Player. In order to do anything useful with the returned value, it’s usually necessary to type-
cast it to type Player :
7.3. DYNAMIC ARRAYS AND ARRAYLISTS 337

Player plr = (Player)[Link](i);

For example, if the Player class includes an instance method makeMove() that is called to allow a
player to make a move in the game, then the code for letting every player make a move is
for (int i = 0; i < [Link](); i++) {
Player plr = (Player)[Link](i);
[Link]();
}
The two lines inside the for loop can be combined to a single line:
((Player)[Link](i)).makeMove();

This gets an item from the list, type-casts it, and then calls the makeMove() method on the
resulting Player. The parentheses around “(Player)[Link](i)” are required
because of Java’s precedence rules. The parentheses force the type-cast to be performed
before the makeMove() method is called.
For-each loops work for ArrayLists just as they do for arrays. But note that since the
items in an ArrayList are only known to be Objects, the type of the loop control variable must
be Object. For example, the for loop used above to let each Player make a move could be
written as the for-each loop
for ( Object plrObj : players ) {
Player plr = (Player)plrObj;
[Link]();
}

In the body of the loop, the value of the loop control variable, plrObj, is one of the objects
from the list, players. This object must be type-cast to type Player before it can be used.
∗∗∗
In Subsection 5.5.5, I discussed a program, ShapeDraw, that uses ArrayLists. Here is
another version of the same idea, simplified to make it easier to see how ArrayList is being
used. The program supports the following operations: Click the large white drawing area to
add a colored rectangle. (The color of the rectangle is given by a “rainbow palette” along the
bottom of the applet; click the palette to select a new color.) Drag rectangles using the right
mouse button. Hold down the Alt key and click on a rectangle to delete it. Shift-click a
rectangle to move it out in front of all the other rectangles. You can try an applet version of
the program in the on-line version of this section.
Source code for the main panel for this program can be found in [Link].
You should be able to follow the source code in its entirety. (You can also take a look at the file
[Link], which defines the color palette shown at the bottom of the applet, if you
like.) Here, I just want to look at the parts of the program that use an ArrayList.
The applet uses a variable named rects, of type ArrayList, to hold information about
the rectangles that have been added to the drawing area. The objects that are stored in the
list belong to a static nested class, ColoredRect, that is defined as
/**
An object of type ColoredRect holds the data for one colored
rectangle. */
private static class ColoredRect {
int x,y; // Upper left corner of the rectangle.
int width,height; // Size of the rectangle.
Color color; // Color of the rectangle.
}
338 CHAPTER 7. ARRAYS

If g is a variable of type Graphics, then the following code draws all the rectangles
that are stored in the list rects (with a black outline around each rectangle):
for (int i = 0; i < [Link](); i++)
{ ColoredRect rect =
(ColoredRect)[Link](i);
[Link]( [Link] );
[Link]( rect.x, rect.y, [Link],
[Link]); [Link]( [Link] );
[Link]( rect.x, rect.y, [Link] - 1, [Link] - 1);
}

The i-th rectangle in the list is obtained by calling [Link](i). Since this method
returns a value of type Object, the return value must be typecast to its actual type,
ColoredRect, to get access to the data that it contains.
To implement the mouse operations, it must be possible to find the rectangle, if any, that
contains the point where the user clicked the mouse. To do this, I wrote the function
/**
Find the topmost rect that contains the point (x,y). Return null
if no rect contains that point. The rects in the ArrayList are
considered in reverse order so that if one lies on top of another,
the one on top is seen first and is returned.
*/
ColoredRect findRect(int x, int y) {

for (int i = [Link]() - 1; i >= 0;

i--) { ColoredRect rect =
(ColoredRect)[Link](i); if ( x >=
rect.x && x < rect.x + [Link]
y >= rect.y && y < rect.y + [Link] )
return rect; // (x,y) is inside this rect.
}
return null; // No rect containing (x,y) was found.

The code for removing a ColoredRect, rect, from the drawing area is simply
[Link](rect) (followed by a repaint()). Bringing a given rectangle out in front
of all the other rectangles is just a little harder. Since the rectangles are drawn in the order
in which they occur in the ArrayList, the rectangle that is in the last position in the list is in
front of all the other rectangles on the screen. So we need to move the selected rectangle to
the last position in the list. This can most easily be done in a slightly tricky way using built-in
ArrayList operations: The rectangle is simply removed from its current position in the list and
then adding back at the end of the list:
void bringToFront(ColoredRect rect) {
if (rect != null) {
[Link](rect); // Remove rect from the list.
[Link](rect); // Add it back; it will be placed in the last
position.
repaint();
}
}

This should be enough to give you the basic idea. You can look in the source code for more details.
7.3. DYNAMIC ARRAYS AND ARRAYLISTS 339

7.3.4 Parameterized Types

The main difference between true generic programming and the ArrayList examples in the
previous subsection is the use of the type Object as the basic type for objects that are stored in a
list. This has at least two unfortunate consequences: First, it makes it necessary to use type-
casting in almost every case when an element is retrieved from that list. Second, since any type
of object can legally be added to the list, there is no way for the compiler to detect an attempt to
add the wrong type of object to the list; the error will be detected only at run time when the object
is retrieved from the list and the attempt to type-cast the object fails. Compare this to arrays. An
array of type BaseType[ ] can only hold objects of type BaseType. An attempt to store an object
of the wrong type in the array will be detected by the compiler, and there is no need to type-cast
items that are retrieved from the array back to type BaseType.
To address this problem, Java 5.0 introduced parameterized types. ArrayList is an ex-
ample: Instead of using the plain “ArrayList” type, it is possible to use ArrayList<BaseType>,
where BaseType is any object type, that is, the name of a class or of an interface.
(BaseType cannot be one of the primitive types.) ArrayList<BaseType> can be used to
create lists that can hold only objects of type BaseType. For example,
ArrayList<ColoredRect> rects;

declares a variable named rects of type ArrayList<ColoredRect>, and

rects = new ArrayList<ColoredRect>();

sets rects to refer to a newly created list that can only hold objects belonging to the class
ColoredRect (or to a subclass). The funny-looking name “ArrayList<ColoredRect>” is being
used here in exactly the same way as an ordinary class name—don’t let the
“<ColoredRect>” confuse you; it’s just part of the name of the type. When a statement such
as [Link](x); occurs in the program, the compiler can check whether x is in fact of
type ColoredRect. If not, the compiler will report a syntax error. When an object is retrieve
from the list, the compiler knows that the object must be of type ColoredRect, so no type-
cast is necessary. You can say simply:
ColoredRect rect = [Link](i)

You can even refer directly to an instance variable in the object, such as [Link](i).color.
This makes using ArrayList<ColoredRect> very similar to using ColoredRect[ ] with the added
advantage that the list can grow to any size. Note that if a for-each loop is used to process the items
in rects, the type of the loop control variable can be ColoredRect, and no type-cast is necessary.
For example, when using ArrayList<ColoredRect> as the type for the list rects, the code for
drawing all the rectangles in the list could be rewritten as:
for ( ColoredRect rect : rects ) {
[Link]( [Link] );
[Link]( rect.x, rect.y, [Link],
[Link]); [Link]( [Link] );
[Link]( rect.x, rect.y, [Link] - 1, [Link] - 1);
}

You can use ArrayList<ColoredRect> anyplace where you could use a normal type: to declare
variables, as the type of a formal parameter in a subroutine, or as the return type of a subroutine. You
can even create a subclass of ArrayList<ColoredRect>! (Nevertheless, technically speaking,
ArrayList<ColoredRect> is not considered to be a separate class from ArrayList. An object of
340 CHAPTER 7. ARRAYS

type ArrayList<ColoredRect> actually belongs to the class ArrayList, but the compiler
restricts the type of objects that can be added to the list.)
The only drawback to using parameterized types is that the base type cannot be a primitive
type. For example, there is no such thing as “ArrayList<int>”. However, this is not such a
big drawback as it might seem at first, because of the “wrapper types” and “autoboxing” that
were introduced in Subsection 5.3.2. A wrapper type such as Double or Integer can be used as a
base type for a parameterized type. An object of type ArrayList<Double> can hold objects of type
Double. Since each object of type Double holds a value of type double, it’s almost like having a
list of doubles. If numlist is declared to be of type ArrayList<Double> and if x is of type
double, then the value of x can be added to the list by saying:
[Link]( new Double(x) );

Furthermore, because of autoboxing, the compiler will automatically do double-to-Double

and Double-to-double type conversions when necessary. This means that the compiler will
treat “[Link](x)” as begin equivalent to “[Link]( new Double(x) )”.
So, behind the scenes, “[Link](x)” is actually adding an object to the list, but it
looks a lot as if you are working with a list of doubles.
∗∗∗
The sample program [Link] demonstrates the use of parameterized types.
In this program, the user can sketch curves in a drawing area by clicking and dragging with
the mouse. The curves can be of any color, and the user can select the drawing color using
a menu. The background color of the drawing area can also be selected using a menu. And
there is a “Control” menu that contains several commands: An “Undo” command, which
removes the most recently drawn curve from the screen, a “Clear” command that removes
all the curves, and a “Use Symmetry” command that turns a symmetry feature on and o ff.
Curves that are drawn by the user when the symmetry option is on are reflected horizontally
and vertically to produce a symmetric pattern. You can try an applet version of the program
in the on-line version of this section.
Unlike the original SimplePaint program in Subsection 6.4.4, this new version uses a
data structure to store information about the picture that has been drawn by the user. This
data is used in the paintComponent() method to redraw the picture whenever
necessary. Thus, the picture doesn’t disappear when, for example, the picture is covered
and then uncovered. The data structure is implemented using ArrayLists.
The main data for a curve consists of a list of the points on the curve. This data can be
stored in an object of type ArrayList<Point>, where [Link] is one of Java’s standard
classes. (A Point object contains two public integer variables x and y that represent the
coordinates of a point.) However, to redraw the curve, we also need to know its color, and we
need to know whether the symmetry option should be applied to the curve. All the data that is
needed to redraw the curve can be grouped into an object of type CurveData that is defined as
private static class CurveData {
Color color; // The color of the curve.
boolean symmetric; // Are horizontal and vertical reflections
also drawn? ArrayList<Point> points; // The points on the curve.
}

However, a picture can contain many curves, not just one, so to store all the data necessary
to redraw the entire picture, we need a list of objects of type CurveData. For this list, we can
use a variable curves declared as
7.3. DYNAMIC ARRAYS AND ARRAYLISTS 341

ArrayList<CurveData> curves = new ArrayList<CurveData>();

Here we have a list of objects, where each object contains a list of points as part of its data! Let’s
look at a few examples of processing this data structure. When the user clicks the mouse on the
drawing surface, it’s the start of a new curve, and a new CurveData object must be created and
added to the list of curves. The instance variables in the new CurveData object must also be
initialized. Here is the code from the mousePressed() routine that does this:
currentCurve = new CurveData(); // Create a new CurveData object.

[Link] = currentColor; // The color of the curve is taken from

an // instance variable that represents
the // currently selected drawing color.

[Link] = useSymmetry; // The "symmetric" property of the

curve // is also copied from the current
value // of an instance variable,
useSymmetry.

[Link] = new ArrayList<Point>(); // Create a new point list

object.

[Link]( new Point([Link](), [Link]()) );

The point where the user pressed the mouse is the first point on
the curve. A new Point object is created to hold the coordinates
of that point and is added to the list of points for the curve.

[Link](currentCurve); // Add the CurveData object to the list of curves.

As the user drags the mouse, new points are added to currentCurve, and repaint() is called.
When the picture is redrawn, the new point will be part of the picture.
The paintComponent() method has to use the data in curves to draw all the
curves. The basic structure is a for-each loop that processes the data for each individual
curve in turn. This has the form:
for ( CurveData curve : curves ) {
.
// Draw the curve represented by the object, curve, of type CurveData.

In the body of this loop, [Link] is a variable of type ArrayList<Point> that holds
the list of points on the curve. The i-th point on the curve can be obtained by calling the
get() method of this list: [Link](i). This returns a value of type Point
which contains instance variables named x and y. We can refer directly to the x-coordinate
of the i-th point as:
[Link](i).x

This might seem rather complicated, but it’s a nice example of a complex name that
specifies a path to a desired piece of data: Go to the object, curve. Inside curve, go to
points. Inside points, get the i-th item. And from that item, get the instance variable
named x. Here is the complete definition of the paintCompontent() method:
public void paintComponent(Graphics g) {
[Link](g);
for ( CurveData curve : curves) {
[Link]([Link]);
for (int i = 1; i < [Link](); i++) {
342 CHAPTER 7. ARRAYS

Draw a line segment from point number i-1 to point

number i. int x1 = [Link](i-1).x;
int y1 = [Link](i-1).y;
int x2 = [Link](i).x;
int y2 = [Link](i).y;
[Link](x1,y1,x2,y2);
if ([Link]) {
Also draw the horizontal and vertical reflections
of the line segment.
int w = getWidth();
int h = getHeight();
[Link](w-x1,y1,w-x2,y2);
[Link](x1,h-y1,x2,h-y2);
[Link](w-x1,h-y1,w-x2,h-y2);
}
}
}
} // end paintComponent()

I encourage you to read the full source code, [Link]. In addition to serving
as an example of using parameterized types, it also serves an another example of creating
and using menus.

7.3.5 Vectors
The ArrayList class was introduced in Java version 1.2, as one of a group of classes designed
for working with collections of objects. We’ll look at these “collection classes” in Chapter 10.
Early versions of Java did not include ArrayList, but they did have a very similar class named
[Link]. You can still see Vectors used in older code and in many of Java’s
standard classes, so it’s worth knowing about them. Using a Vector is similar to using an
ArrayList, except that different names are used for some commonly used instance methods, and
some instance methods in one class don’t correspond to any instance method in the other class.
Like an ArrayList, a Vector is similar to an array of Objects that can grow to be as large
as necessary. The default constructor, new Vector(), creates a vector with no elements.
Suppose that vec is a Vector. Then we have:
[Link]() — a function that returns the number of elements currently in the vector.
[Link](N) — returns the N-th element of the vector, for an integer N. N must
be in the range 0 to [Link]()-1. This is the same as get(N) for an ArrayList.
[Link](obj,N) — sets the N-th in element in the vector to be obj. N must be
the range 0 to [Link]()-1. This is the same as set(N,obj) for an ArrayList.
[Link](obj) — adds the Object, obj, to the end of the vector. This is the
same as the add() method of an ArrayList.
[Link](obj) — removes obj from the vector, if it occurs. Only the first
occurrence is removed. This is the same as remove(obj) for an ArrayList.
[Link](N) — removes the N-th element, for an integer N. N must be in
the range 0 to [Link]()-1. This is the same as remove(N) for an ArrayList.
[Link](N) — sets the size of the vector to N. If there were more than N elements in vec, the
extra elements are removed. If there were fewer than N elements, extra spaces are filled with
null. The ArrayList class, unfortunately, does not have a setSize() method.
7.4. SEARCHING AND SORTING 343

The Vector class includes many more methods, but these are probably the most
commonly used. Note that in Java 5.0, Vector can be used as a paramaterized type in
exactly the same way as ArrayList. That is, if BaseType is any class or interface name, then
Vector<BaseType> represents vectors that can hold only objects of type BaseType.

7.4 Searching and Sorting

Two array processing techniques that are particularly common are searching and sort-ing .
Searching here refers to finding an item in the array that meets some specified criterion. Sorting
refers to rearranging all the items in the array into increasing or decreasing order (where the
meaning of increasing and decreasing can depend on the context).
Sorting and searching are often discussed, in a theoretical sort of way, using an array of
numbers as an example. In practical situations, though, more interesting types of data are
usually involved. For example, the array might be a mailing list, and each element of the array
might be an object containing a name and address. Given the name of a person, you might want
to look up that person’s address. This is an example of searching, since you want to find the
object in the array that contains the given name. It would also be useful to be able to sort the
array according to various criteria. One example of sorting would be ordering the elements of the
array so that the names are in alphabetical order. Another example would be to order the
elements of the array according to zip code before printing a set of mailing labels. (This kind of
sorting can get you a cheaper postage rate on a large mailing.)
This example can be generalized to a more abstract situation in which we have an array
that contains objects, and we want to search or sort the array based on the value of one of
the instance variables in that array. We can use some terminology here that originated in
work with “databases,” which are just large, organized collections of data. We refer to each
of the objects in the array as a record . The instance variables in an object are then called
fields of the record. In the mailing list example, each record would contain a name and
address. The fields of the record might be the first name, last name, street address, state,
city and zip code. For the purpose of searching or sorting, one of the fields is designated to
be the key field. Searching then means finding a record in the array that has a specified
value in its key field. Sorting means moving the records around in the array so that the key
fields of the record are in increasing (or decreasing) order.
In this section, most of my examples follow the tradition of using arrays of numbers. But
I’ll also give a few examples using records and keys, to remind you of the more practical
applications.

7.4.1 Searching
There is an obvious algorithm for searching for a particular item in an array: Look at each
item in the array in turn, and check whether that item is the one you are looking for. If so, the
search is finished. If you look at every item without finding the one you want, then you can
be sure that the item is not in the array. It’s easy to write a subroutine to implement this
algorithm. Let’s say the array that you want to search is an array of ints. Here is a method
that will search the array for a specified integer. If the integer is found, the method returns
the index of the location in the array where it is found. If the integer is not in the array, the
method returns the value -1 as a signal that the integer could not be found:
/**
344 CHAPTER 7. ARRAYS

Searches the array A for the integer N. If N is not in the array,

then -1 is returned. If N is in the array, then return value is
the first integer i that satisfies A[i] == N.
*/
static int find(int[] A, int N) {
for (int index = 0; index < [Link]; index++) {
if ( A[index] == N )
return index; // N has been found at this index!
}
If we get this far, then N has not been found
anywhere in the array. Return a value of -1.
return -1;
}

This method of searching an array by looking at each item in turn is called linear search . If
nothing is known about the order of the items in the array, then there is really no better
alternative algorithm. But if the elements in the array are known to be in increasing or decreas-
ing order, then a much faster search algorithm can be used. An array in which the elements are
in order is said to be sorted . Of course, it takes some work to sort an array, but if the array is to
be searched many times, then the work done in sorting it can really pay off.
Binary search is a method for searching for a given item in a sorted array. Although the
implementation is not trivial, the basic idea is simple: If you are searching for an item in a
sorted list, then it is possible to eliminate half of the items in the list by inspecting a single
item. For example, suppose that you are looking for the number 42 in a sorted array of 1000
integers. Let’s assume that the array is sorted into increasing order. Suppose you check
item number 500 in the array, and find that the item is 93. Since 42 is less than 93, and
since the elements in the array are in increasing order, we can conclude that if 42 occurs in
the array at all, then it must occur somewhere before location 500. All the locations
numbered 500 or above contain values that are greater than or equal to 93. These locations
can be eliminated as possible locations of the number 42.
The next obvious step is to check location 250. If the number at that location is, say, -21,
then you can eliminate locations before 250 and limit further search to locations between
251 and 499. The next test will limit the search to about 125 locations, and the one after that
to about 62. After just 10 steps, there is only one location left. This is a whole lot better than
looking through every element in the array. If there were a million items, it would still take
only 20 steps for binary search to search the array! (Mathematically, the number of steps is
approximately equal to the logarithm, in the base 2, of the number of items in the array.)
In order to make binary search into a Java subroutine that searches an array A for an
item N, we just have to keep track of the range of locations that could possibly contain N. At
each step, as we eliminate possibilities, we reduce the size of this range. The basic
operation is to look at the item in the middle of the range. If this item is greater than N, then
the second half of the range can be eliminated. If it is less than N, then the first half of the
range can be eliminated. If the number in the middle just happens to be N exactly, then the
search is finished. If the size of the range decreases to zero, then the number N does not
occur in the array. Here is a subroutine that returns the location of N in a sorted array A. If
N cannot be found in the array, then a value of -1 is returned instead:
/**
7.4. SEARCHING AND SORTING 345

Searches the array A for the integer N.

Precondition: A must be sorted into increasing order.
Postcondition: If N is in the array, then the return value, i,
satisfies A[i] == N. If N is not in the array, then the
return value is -1.
*/
static int binarySearch(int[] A, int N) {
int lowestPossibleLoc = 0;
int highestPossibleLoc = [Link] - 1;
while (highestPossibleLoc >= lowestPossibleLoc) {
int middle = (lowestPossibleLoc +
highestPossibleLoc) / 2; if (A[middle] == N) {
N has been found at this
index! return middle;
}
else if (A[middle] > N) {
eliminate locations >= middle
highestPossibleLoc = middle - 1;
}
else {
eliminate locations <= middle
lowestPossibleLoc = middle + 1;
}
}
At this point, highestPossibleLoc < LowestPossibleLoc,
which means that N is known to be not in the array. Return
a -1 to indicate that N could not be found in the array.
return -1;
}

7.4.2 Association Lists

One particularly common application of searching is with association lists. The standard
example of an association list is a dictionary. A dictionary associates definitions with words.
Given a word, you can use the dictionary to look up its definition. We can think of the
dictionary as being a list of pairs of the form (w,d), where w is a word and d is its
definition. A general association list is a list of pairs (k,v), where k is some “key” value,
and v is a value associated to that key. In general, we want to assume that no two pairs in
the list have the same key. There are two basic operations on association lists: Given a key,
k, find the value v associated with k, if any. And given a key, k, and a value v, add the
pair (k,v) to the association list (replacing the pair, if any, that had the same key value).
The two operations are usually called get and put .
Association lists are very widely used in computer science. For example, a compiler has to
keep track of the location in memory associated with each variable. It can do this with an
association list in which each key is a variable name and the associated value is the address of
that variable in memory. Another example would be a mailing list, if we think of it as associating
an address to each name on the list. As a related example, consider a phone directory that
346 CHAPTER 7. ARRAYS

associates a phone number to each name. The items in the list could be objects belonging
to the class:
class PhoneEntry {
String name;
String phoneNum;
}

The data for a phone directory consists of an array of type PhoneEntry[ ] and an integer
variable to keep track of how many entries are actually stored in the directory. The
technique of “dynamic arrays” (Subsection 7.3.2) can be used in order to avoid putting an
arbitrary limit on the number of entries that the phone directory can hold. Using an ArrayList
would be another possibility. A PhoneDirectory class should include instance methods that
implement the “get” and “put” operations. Here is one possible simple definition of the class:
/**
A PhoneDirectory holds a list of names with a phone number for
each name. It is possible to find the number associated with
a given name, and to specify the phone number for a
given name. */
public class PhoneDirectory {
/**
An object of type PhoneEntry holds one name/number
pair. */
private static class PhoneEntry {
String name; // The name.
String number; // The associated phone number.
}

private PhoneEntry[] data; // Array that holds the name/number pairs.

private int dataCount; // The number of pairs stored in the array.
/**
Constructor creates an initially empty
directory. */
public PhoneDirectory() {
data = new PhoneEntry[1];
dataCount = 0;
}
/**
Looks for a name/number pair with a given name. If found, the index
of the pair in the data array is returned. If no pair contains the
given name, then the return value is -1.
*/
private int find( String name ) {
for (int i = 0; i < dataCount; i++) {
if (data[i].[Link](name))
return i; // The name has been found in position i.
}
return -1; // The name does not exist in the array.
}
/**
* Finds the phone number, if any, for a given name.
7.4. SEARCHING AND SORTING 347

@return The phone number associated with the name; if the name does
not occur in the phone directory, then the return value is null.
*/
public String getNumber( String name ) {
int position = find(name);
if (position == -1)
return null; // There is no phone entry for the given name.
else
return data[position].number;
}
/**
Associates a given name with a given phone number. If the name
already exists in the phone directory, then the new number replaces
the old one. Otherwise, a new name/number pair is added. The
name and number should both be non-null. An IllegalArgumentException
is thrown if this is not the case.
*/
public void putNumber( String name, String number )
{ if (name == null || number == null)
throw new IllegalArgumentException("name and number cannot be null");
int i = find(name);
if (i >= 0) {
The name already exists, in position i in the array.
Just replace the old number at that position with the
new. data[i].number = number;
}
else {
Add a new name/number pair to the array. If the array is
already full, first create a new, larger array.
if (dataCount == [Link]) {
PhoneEntry[] newData = new PhoneEntry[ 2*[Link] ];
[Link](newData,0,data,0,dataCount); data =
newData;
}
PhoneEntry newEntry = new PhoneEntry(); // Create a new pair.
[Link] = name;
[Link] = number;
data[dataCount] = newEntry; // Add the new pair to the array.
dataCount++;
}
}
} // end class PhoneDirectory

The class defines a private instance method, find(), that uses linear search to find the
position of a given name in the array of name/number pairs. The find() method is used
both in the getNumber() method and in the putNumber() method. Note in particular
that putNumber(name,number) has to check whether the name is in the phone directory.
If so, it just changes the number in the existing entry; if not, it has to create a new phone
entry and add it to the array.
This class could use a lot of improvement. For one thing, it would be nice to use binary
search instead of simple linear search in the getNumber method. However, we could only do
that if the list of PhoneEntries were sorted into alphabetical order according to name. In fact,
348 CHAPTER 7. ARRAYS

it’s really not all that hard to keep the list of entries in sorted order, as you’ll see in the next
subsection.

7.4.3 Insertion Sort

We’ve seen that there are good reasons for sorting arrays. There are many algorithms
available for doing so. One of the easiest to understand is the insertion sort algorithm. This
method is also applicable to the problem of keeping a list in sorted order as you add new
items to the list. Let’s consider that case first:
Suppose you have a sorted list and you want to add an item to that list. If you want to
make sure that the modified list is still sorted, then the item must be inserted into the right
location, with all the smaller items coming before it and all the bigger items after it. This will
mean moving each of the bigger items up one space to make room for the new item.
/*
Precondition: itemsInArray is the number of items that are
stored in A. These items must be in increasing order
(A[0] <= A[1] <= ... <= A[itemsInArray-1]).
The array size is at least one greater than itemsInArray.
Postcondition: The number of items has increased by one,
newItem has been added to the array, and all the items
in the array are still in increasing order.
Note: To complete the process of inserting an item in the
array, the variable that counts the number of items
in the array must be incremented, after calling this
subroutine.
*/
static void insert(int[] A, int itemsInArray, int newItem) {
int loc = itemsInArray - 1; // Start at the end of the array.
/* Move items bigger than newItem up one space;
Stop when a smaller item is encountered or when the
beginning of the array (loc == 0) is reached. */

while (loc >= 0 && A[loc] > newItem) {

A[loc + 1] = A[loc]; // Bump item from A[loc] up to loc+1.
loc = loc - 1; // Go on to next location.
}
A[loc + 1] = newItem; // Put newItem in last vacated space.
}

Conceptually, this could be extended to a sorting method if we were to take all the items
out of an unsorted array, and then insert them back into the array one-by-one, keeping the
list in sorted order as we do so. Each insertion can be done using the insert routine given
above. In the actual algorithm, we don’t really take all the items from the array; we just
remember what part of the array has been sorted:
static void insertionSort(int[] A) {
// Sort the array A into increasing order.
int itemsSorted; // Number of items that have been sorted so far.

for (itemsSorted = 1; itemsSorted < [Link]; itemsSorted++) {

7.4. SEARCHING AND SORTING 349

Assume that items A[0], A[1], ... A[itemsSorted-1]

have already been sorted. Insert A[itemsSorted]
into the sorted part of the list.
int temp = A[itemsSorted]; // The item to be inserted.
int loc = itemsSorted - 1; // Start at end of list.

while (loc >= 0 && A[loc] > temp) {

A[loc + 1] = A[loc]; // Bump item from A[loc] up to loc+1.
loc = loc - 1; // Go on to next location.
}
A[loc + 1] = temp; // Put temp in last vacated space.
}
}

The following is an illustration of one stage in insertion sort. It shows what happens
during one execution of the for loop in the above method, when itemsSorted is 5:

7.4.4 Selection Sort

Another typical sorting method uses the idea of finding the biggest item in the list and
moving it to the end—which is where it belongs if the list is to be in increasing order. Once
the biggest item is in its correct location, you can then apply the same idea to the remaining
items. That is, find the next-biggest item, and move it into the next-to-last space, and so
forth. This algorithm is called selection sort . It’s easy to write:
350 CHAPTER 7. ARRAYS

static void selectionSort(int[] A) {

// Sort A into increasing order, using selection sort
for (int lastPlace = [Link]-1; lastPlace > 0; lastPlace--) {
Find the largest item among A[0], A[1], ...,
A[lastPlace], and move it into position lastPlace
by swapping it with the number that is currently
in position lastPlace.
int maxLoc = 0; // Location of largest item seen so far.

for (int j = 1; j <= lastPlace; j++) {

if (A[j] > A[maxLoc]) {
Since A[j] is bigger than the maximum we’ve seen
so far, j is the new location of the maximum value
we’ve seen so far.
maxLoc = j;
}
}
int temp = A[maxLoc]; // Swap largest item with A[lastPlace].
A[maxLoc] = A[lastPlace];
A[lastPlace] = temp;
} // end of for loop
}

Insertion sort and selection sort are suitable for sorting fairly small arrays (up to a few hun-
dred elements, say). There are more complicated sorting algorithms that are much faster than
insertion sort and selection sort for large arrays. I’ll discuss one such algorithm in Chapter 9.
∗∗∗
A variation of selection sort is used in the Hand class that was introduced in Subsection 5.4.1. (By
the way, you are finally in a position to fully understand the source code for both the Hand class and
the Deck class from that section. See the source files [Link] and [Link].)
In the Hand class, a hand of playing cards is represented by a Vector. This is older code,
which used Vector instead of ArrayList, and I have chosen not to modify it so that you would see
at least one example of using Vectors. See Subsection 7.3.5 for a discussion of Vectors.
The objects stored in the Vector are of type Card. A Card object contains instance
methods getSuit() and getValue() that can be used to determine the suit and value of
the card. In my sorting method, I actually create a new vector and move the cards one-by-
one from the old vector to the new vector. The cards are selected from the old vector in
increasing order. In the end, the new vector becomes the hand and the old vector is
discarded. This is certainly not the most efficient procedure! But hands of cards are so small
that the inefficiency is negligible. Here is the code for sorting cards by suit:
/**
Sorts the cards in the hand so that cards of the same suit are
grouped together, and within a suit the cards are sorted by value.
Note that aces are considered to have the lowest value, 1.
*/
public void sortBySuit() {
Vector newHand = new Vector();
while ([Link]() > 0) {
7.4. SEARCHING AND SORTING 351

int pos = 0; // Position of minimal card found so far.

Card c = (Card)[Link](0); // The minimal card.
for (int i = 1; i < [Link](); i++) {
Card c1 = (Card)[Link](i);
if ( [Link]() < [Link]() ||
([Link]() == [Link]() && [Link]() < [Link]()) ) {
pos = i;
c = c1;
}
}
[Link](pos);
[Link](c);
}
hand = newHand;
}

This example illustrates the fact that comparing items in a list is not usually as simple as
using the operator “<”. In this case, we consider one card to be less than another if the suit
of the first card is less than the suit of the second, and also if the suits are the same and the
value of the second card is less than the value of the first. The second part of this test
ensures that cards with the same suit will end up sorted by value.
Sorting a list of Strings raises a similar problem: the “<” operator is not defined for
strings. However, the String class does define a compareTo method. If str1 and str2
are of type String, then
[Link](str2)

returns an int that is 0 when str1 is equal to str2, is less than 0 when str1 preceeds
str2, and is greater than 0 when str1 follows str2. The definition of “succeeds” and
“follows” for strings uses what is called lexicographic ordering , which is based on the
Unicode values of the characters in the strings. Lexicographic ordering is not the same as
alphabetical ordering, even for strings that consist entirely of letters (because in
lexicographic ordering, all the upper case letters come before all the lower case letters).
However, for words consisting strictly of the 26 lower case letters in the English alphabet,
lexicographic and alphabetic ordering are the same. Thus, if str1 and str2 are strings
containing only letters from the English alphabet, then the test
[Link]().compareTo([Link]()) < 0
is true if and only if str1 comes before str2 in alphabetical order.

7.4.5 Unsorting
I can’t resist ending this section on sorting with a related problem that is much less common,
but is a bit more fun. That is the problem of putting the elements of an array into a random
order. The typical case of this problem is shuffling a deck of cards. A good algorithm for
shuffling is similar to selection sort, except that instead of moving the biggest item to the
end of the list, an item is selected at random and moved to the end of the list. Here is a
subroutine to shuffle an array of ints:
/**
Postcondition: The items in A have been rearranged into a random
order. */
static void shuffle(int[] A) {
352 CHAPTER 7. ARRAYS

for (int lastPlace = [Link]-1; lastPlace > 0; lastPlace--) {

Choose a random location from among 0,1,...,lastPlace. int
randLoc = (int)([Link]()*(lastPlace+1));
Swap items in locations randLoc and lastPlace.
int temp = A[randLoc];
A[randLoc] = A[lastPlace];
A[lastPlace] = temp;
}
}

7.5 Multi-dimensional Arrays

Any type can be used as the base type of an array. You can have an array of ints, an array of
Strings, an array of Objects, and so on. In particular, since an array type is a first-class Java
type, you can have an array of arrays. For example, an array of ints has type int[ ]. This means
that there is automatically another type, int[ ][ ], which represents an “array of arrays of ints”.
Such an array is said to be a two-dimensional array . Of course once you have the type int[ ][ ],
there is nothing to stop you from forming the type int[ ][ ][ ], which represents a three-
dimensional array —and so on. There is no limit on the number of dimensions that an array
type can have. However, arrays of dimension three or higher are fairly uncommon, and I
concentrate here mainly on two-dimensional arrays. The type BaseType[ ][ ] is usually read “two-
dimensional array of BaseType” or “BaseType array array”.

7.5.1 Creating Two-dimensional Arrays

The declaration statement “int[][] A;” declares a variable named A of type int[ ][ ]. This
variable can hold a reference to an object of type int[ ][ ]. The assignment statement “A =
new int[3][4];” creates a new two-dimensional array object and sets A to point to the newly
cre-ated object. As usual, the declaration and assignment could be combined in a single
declaration statement “int[][] A = new int[3][4];”. The newly created object is an array of
arrays-of-ints. The notation int[3][4] indicates that there are 3 arrays-of-ints in the array A,
and that there are 4 ints in each array-of-ints. However, trying to think in such terms can get
a bit confusing—as you might have already noticed. So it is customary to think of a two-
dimensional array of items as a rectangular grid or matrix of items. The notation “new int[3]
[4]” can then be taken to describe a grid of ints with 3 rows and 4 columns. The following picture
might help:
7.5. MULTI-DIMENSIONAL ARRAYS 353

71 0
2
5 9
1
1

5 2 3

For the most part, you can ignore the reality and keep the picture of a grid in mind.
Sometimes, though, you will need to remember that each row in the grid is really an array in
itself. These arrays can be referred to as A[0], A[1], and A[2]. Each row is in fact a
value of type int[ ]. It could, for example, be passed to a subroutine that asks for a parameter
of type int[ ].
The notation A[1] refers to one of the rows of the array A. Since A[1] is itself an
array of ints, you can use another subscript to refer to one of the positions in that row. For
example, A[1][3] refers to item number 3 in row number 1. Keep in mind, of course, that
both rows and columns are numbered starting from zero. So, in the above example, A[1]
[3] is 5. More generally, A[i][j] refers to the grid position in row number i and column
number j. The 12 items in A are named as follows:
A[0][0] A[0][1] A[0][2] A[0][3]
A[1][0] A[1][1] A[1][2] A[1][3]
A[2][0] A[2][1] A[2][2] A[2][3]

A[i][j] is actually a variable of type int. You can assign integer values to it or use it in any
other context where an integer variable is allowed.
It might be worth noting that [Link] gives the number of rows of A. To get the number of
columns in A, you have to ask how many ints there are in a row; this number would be given by
A[0].length, or equivalently by A[1].length or A[2].length. (There is actually no rule that
says that all the rows of an array must have the same length, and some advanced applications of
arrays use varying-sized rows. But if you use the new operator to create an array in the manner
described above, you’ll always get an array with equal-sized rows.)
Three-dimensional arrays are treated similarly. For example, a three-dimensional array of ints
could be created with the declaration statement “int[][][] B = new int[7][5][11];”. It’s
possible to visualize the value of B as a solid 7-by-5-by-11 block of cells. Each cell holds an int and
represents one position in the three-dimensional array. Individual positions in the array can be
referred to with variable names of the form B[i][j][k]. Higher-dimensional arrays
354 CHAPTER 7. ARRAYS

follow the same pattern, although for dimensions greater than three, there is no easy way to
visualize the structure of the array.
It’s possible to fill a multi-dimensional array with specified items at the time it is declared.
Recall that when an ordinary one-dimensional array variable is declared, it can be assigned
an “array initializer,” which is just a list of values enclosed between braces, { and }. Array
initializers can also be used when a multi-dimensional array is declared. An initializer for a
two-dimensional array consists of a list of one-dimensional array initializers, one for each
row in the two-dimensional array. For example, the array A shown in the picture above
could be created with:
int[][] A = { { 1, 0, 12, -1 },
{ 7, -3, 2, 5 },
{ -5, -2, 2, -9 }
};

If no initializer is provided for an array, then when the array is created it is automatically filled
with the appropriate value: zero for numbers, false for boolean, and null for objects.

7.5.2 Using Two-dimensional Arrays

Just as in the case of one-dimensional arrays, two-dimensional arrays are often processed
using for statements. To process all the items in a two-dimensional array, you have to use
one for statement nested inside another. If the array A is declared as
int[][] A = new int[3][4];

then you could store a zero into each location in A with:

for (int row = 0; row < 3; row++) {
for (int column = 0; column < 4; column+
+) { A[row][column] = 0;
}
}

The first time the outer for loop executes (with row = 0), the inner for loop fills in the four values in
the first row of A, namely A[0][0] = 0, A[0][1] = 0, A[0][2] = 0, and A[0][3]
0. The next execution of the outer for loop fills in the second row of A. And the third and
final execution of the outer loop fills in the final row of A.
Similarly, you could add up all the items in A with:
int sum = 0;
for (int i = 0; i < 3; i++)
for (int j = 0; j < 4; j++)
sum = sum + A[i][j];

This could even be done with nested for-each loops. Keep in mind that the elements in A
are objects of type int[ ], while the elements in each row of A are of type int:
int sum = 0;
for ( int[] row : A ) { // For each row in A...
for ( int item : row ) // For each item in that row...
sum = sum + item; // Add item to the sum.
}
7.5. MULTI-DIMENSIONAL ARRAYS 355

To process a three-dimensional array, you would, of course, use triply nested for loops.
∗∗∗
A two-dimensional array can be used whenever the data that is being represented can
be arranged into rows and columns in a natural way. Often, the grid is built into the problem.
For example, a chess board is a grid with 8 rows and 8 columns. If a class named
ChessPiece is available to represent individual chess pieces, then the contents of a chess
board could be represented by a two-dimensional array:
ChessPiece[][] board = new ChessPiece[8][8];

Or consider the “mosaic” of colored rectangles used in an example in Subsection 4.6.2.

The mosaic is implemented by a class named [Link]. The data about the
color of each of the rectangles in the mosaic is stored in an instance variable named grid
of type Color[ ][ ]. Each position in this grid is occupied by a value of type Color. There is
one position in the grid for each colored rectangle in the mosaic. The actual two-dimensional
array is created by the statement:
grid = new Color[ROWS][COLUMNS];

where ROWS is the number of rows of rectangles in the mosaic and COLUMNS is the number of
columns. The value of the Color variable grid[i][j] is the color of the rectangle in row number
i and column number j. When the color of that rectangle is changed to some color, c, the value
stored in grid[i][j] is changed with a statement of the form “grid[i][j] = c;”. When the
mosaic is redrawn, the values stored in the two-dimensional array are used to decide what color to
make each rectangle. Here is a simplified version of the code from the MosaicCanvas class that
draws all the colored rectangles in the grid. You can see how it uses the array:
int rowHeight = getHeight() / ROWS;
int colWidth = getWidth() / COLUMNS;
for (int row = 0; row < ROWS; row++) {
for (int col = 0; col < COLUMNS; col++) {
[Link]( grid[row][col] ); // Get color from array.
[Link]( col*colWidth, row*rowHeight,
colWidth, rowHeight );
}
}

Sometimes two-dimensional arrays are used in problems in which the grid is not so visually
obvious. Consider a company that owns 25 stores. Suppose that the company has data about
the profit earned at each store for each month in the year 2006. If the stores are numbered from
0 to 24, and if the twelve months from January ’06 through December ’06 are numbered from 0
to 11, then the profit data could be stored in an array, profit, constructed as follows:
double[][] profit = new double[25][12];

profit[3][2] would be the amount of profit earned at store number 3 in March, and more
generally, profit[storeNum][monthNum] would be the amount of profit earned in store
number storeNum in month number monthNum. In this example, the one-dimensional
array profit[storeNum] has a very useful meaning: It is just the profit data for one
particular store for the whole year.
Let’s assume that the profit array has already been filled with data. This data can be
processed in a lot of interesting ways. For example, the total profit for the company—for the
whole year from all its stores—can be calculated by adding up all the entries in the array:
356 CHAPTER 7. ARRAYS

double totalProfit; // Company’s total profit in 2006.

totalProfit = 0;
for (int store = 0; store < 25; store++) {
for (int month = 0; month < 12; month++)
totalProfit += profit[store][month];
}

Sometimes it is necessary to process a single row or a single column of an array, not the
entire array. For example, to compute the total profit earned by the company in December,
that is, in month number 11, you could use the loop:
double decemberProfit = 0.0;
for (storeNum = 0; storeNum < 25; storeNum++)
decemberProfit += profit[storeNum][11];

Let’s extend this idea to create a one-dimensional array that contains the total profit for each
month of the year:
double[] monthlyProfit; // Holds profit for each month.
monthlyProfit = new double[12];
for (int month = 0; month < 12; month++) {
compute the total profit from all stores in this
month. monthlyProfit[month] = 0.0;
for (int store = 0; store < 25; store++) {
Add the profit from this store in this month
into the total profit figure for the month.
monthlyProfit[month] += profit[store][month];
}
}

As a final example of processing the profit array, suppose that we wanted to know which
store generated the most profit over the course of the year. To do this, we have to add up the
monthly profits for each store. In array terms, this means that we want to find the sum of each
row in the array. As we do this, we need to keep track of which row produces the largest total.
double maxProfit; // Maximum profit earned by a store.
int bestStore; // The number of the store with the
// maximum profit.
double total = 0.0; // Total profit for one store.
// First compute the profit from store number 0.

for (int month = 0; month < 12; month++)

total += profit[0][month];
bestStore = 0; // Start by assuming that the
maxProfit = total; best // store is store number 0.
Now, go through the other stores, and whenever we
find one with a bigger profit than maxProfit, revise
the assumptions about bestStore and maxProfit.
for (store = 1; store < 25; store++) {

Compute this store’s profit for the

year. total = 0.0;
7.5. MULTI-DIMENSIONAL ARRAYS 357

for (month = 0; month < 12; month++)

total += profit[store][month];
Compare this store’s profits with the highest
profit we have seen among the preceding stores.

if (total > maxProfit)

{ maxProfit = total; // Best profit seen so far!
bestStore = store; // It came from this store.
}
} // end for

At this point, maxProfit is the best profit of any

of the 25 stores, and bestStore is a store that
generated that profit. (Note that there could also be
other stores that generated exactly the same profit.)

7.5.3 Example: Checkers

For the rest of this section, we’ll look at a more substantial example. We look at a program
that lets two users play checkers against each other. A player moves by clicking on the
piece to be moved and then on the empty square to which it is to be moved. The squares
that the current player can legally click are hilited. The square containing a piece that has
been selected to be moved is surrounded by a white border. Other pieces that can legally be
moved are surrounded by a cyan-colored border. If a piece has been selected, each empty
square that it can legally move to is hilited with a green border. The game enforces the rule
that if the current player can jump one of the opponent’s pieces, then the player must jump.
When a player’s piece becomes a king, by reaching the opposite end of the board, a big
white “K” is drawn on the piece. You can try an applet version of the program in the on-line
version of this section. Here is what it looks like:

I will only cover a part of the programming of this applet. I encourage you to read the
complete source code, [Link]. At over 750 lines, this is a more substantial example
than anything you’ve seen before in this course, but it’s an excellent example of state-
based, event-driven programming.
The data about the pieces on the board are stored in a two-dimensional array. Because
of the complexity of the program, I wanted to divide it into several classes. In addition to the
358 CHAPTER 7. ARRAYS

main class, there are several nested classes. One of these classes is CheckersData, which
handles the data for the board. It is mainly this class that I want to talk about.
The CheckersData class has an instance variable named board of type int[][]. The
value of board is set to “new int[8][8]”, an 8-by-8 grid of integers. The values stored in the
grid are defined as constants representing the possible contents of a square on a checkerboard:
static final int
EMPTY = 0, // Value representing an empty square.
RED = 1, // A regular red piece.
RED KING = 2, // A red king.
BLACK = 3, // A regular black piece.
BLACK KING = 4; // A black king.

The constants RED and BLACK are also used in my program (or, perhaps, misused) to
represent the two players in the game. When a game is started, the values in the variable,
board, are set to represent the initial state of the board. The grid of values looks like

A black piece can only move “down” the grid. That is, the row number of the square it
moves to must be greater than the row number of the square it comes from. A red piece can
only move up the grid. Kings of either color, of course, can move in both directions.
One function of the CheckersData class is to take care of all the details of making moves
on the board. An instance method named makeMove() is provided to do this. When a
player moves a piece from one square to another, the values stored at two positions in the
array are changed. But that’s not all. If the move is a jump, then the piece that was jumped
is removed from the board. (The method checks whether the move is a jump by checking if
the square to which the piece is moving is two rows away from the square where it starts.)
Furthermore, a RED piece that moves to row 0 or a BLACK piece that moves to row 7
becomes a king. This is good programming: the rest of the program doesn’t have to worry
about any of these details. It just calls this makeMove() method:
/**
Make the move from (fromRow,fromCol) to (toRow,toCol). It is
ASSUMED that this move is legal! If the move is a jump, the
jumped piece is removed from the board. If a piece moves
to the last row on the opponent’s side of the board, the
piece becomes a king.
*/
void makeMove(int fromRow, int fromCol, int toRow, int toCol) {
7.5. MULTI-DIMENSIONAL ARRAYS 359

board[toRow][toCol] = board[fromRow][fromCol]; // Move the piece.

board[fromRow][fromCol] = EMPTY;

if (fromRow - toRow == 2 || fromRow - toRow == -2) {

The move is a jump. Remove the jumped piece from the
board. int jumpRow = (fromRow + toRow) / 2; // Row of the
jumped piece. int jumpCol = (fromCol + toCol) / 2; // Column
of the jumped piece. board[jumpRow][jumpCol] = EMPTY;
}

if (toRow == 0 && board[toRow][toCol] == RED) board[toRow][toCol]

= RED KING; // Red piece becomes a king.
if (toRow == 7 && board[toRow][toCol] == BLACK)
board[toRow][toCol] = BLACK KING; // Black piece becomes a king.

} // end makeMove()

An even more important function of the CheckersData class is to find legal moves on the
board. In my program, a move in a Checkers game is represented by an object belonging to
the following class:
/**
A CheckersMove object represents a move in the game of
Checkers. It holds the row and column of the piece that is
to be moved and the row and column of the square to which
it is to be moved. (This class makes no guarantee that
the move is legal.)
*/
private static class CheckersMove {

int fromRow, fromCol; // Position of piece to be moved.

int toRow, toCol; // Square it is to move to.
CheckersMove(int r1, int c1, int r2, int c2) {
Constructor. Set the values of the instance
variables. fromRow = r1;
fromCol = c1;
toRow = r2;
toCol = c2;
}
boolean isJump() {
Test whether this move is a jump. It is assumed that
the move is legal. In a jump, the piece moves two
rows. (In a regular move, it only moves one row.)
return (fromRow - toRow == 2 || fromRow - toRow == -2);
}
} // end class CheckersMove.

The CheckersData class has an instance method which finds all the legal moves that are
currently available for a specified player. This method is a function that returns an array of
type CheckersMove[ ]. The array contains all the legal moves, represented as
CheckersMove objects. The specification for this method reads
360 CHAPTER 7. ARRAYS

/**
Return an array containing all the legal CheckersMoves
for the specified player on the current board. If the player
has no legal moves, null is returned. The value of player
should be one of the constants RED or BLACK; if not, null
is returned. If the returned value is non-null, it consists
entirely of jump moves or entirely of regular moves, since
if the player can jump, only jumps are legal moves.
*/
CheckersMove[] getLegalMoves(int player)

A brief pseudocode algorithm for the method is

Start with an empty list of moves
Find any legal jumps and add them to
the list if there are no jumps:
Find any other legal moves and add them to
the list if the list is empty:
return null
else:
return the list

Now, what is this “list”? We have to return the legal moves in an array. But since an array
has a fixed size, we can’t create the array until we know how many moves there are, and we
don’t know that until near the end of the method, after we’ve already made the list! A neat
solution is to use an ArrayList instead of an array to hold the moves as we find them. In fact,
I use an object defined by the parameterized type ArrayList<CheckersMove> so that the list
is restricted to holding objects of type CheckersMove. As we add moves to the list, it will
grow just as large as necessary. At the end of the method, we can create the array that we
really want and copy the data into it:
Let "moves" be an empty
ArrayList<CheckerMove> Find any legal jumps
and add them to moves if [Link]() is 0:
Find any other legal moves and add them
to moves if [Link]() is 0:
return null
else:
Let moveArray be an array of CheckersMoves of length [Link]()
Copy the contents of moves into moveArray
return moveArray

Now, how do we find the legal jumps or the legal moves? The information we need is in
the board array, but it takes some work to extract it. We have to look through all the
positions in the array and find the pieces that belong to the current player. For each piece,
we have to check each square that it could conceivably move to, and check whether that
would be a legal move. There are four squares to consider. For a jump, we want to look at
squares that are two rows and two columns away from the piece. Thus, the line in the
algorithm that says “Find any legal jumps and add them to moves” expands to:
For each row of the board:
For each column of the board:
if one of the player’s pieces is at this location:
if it is legal to jump to row + 2, column + 2
add this move to moves
7.5. MULTI-DIMENSIONAL ARRAYS 361

if it is legal to jump to row - 2,

column + 2 add this move to moves
if it is legal to jump to row + 2,
column - 2 add this move to moves
if it is legal to jump to row - 2,
column - 2 add this move to moves

The line that says “Find any other legal moves and add them to moves” expands to
some-thing similar, except that we have to look at the four squares that are one column and
one row away from the piece. Testing whether a player can legally move from one given
square to another given square is itself non-trivial. The square the player is moving to must
actually be on the board, and it must be empty. Furthermore, regular red and black pieces
can only move in one direction. I wrote the following utility method to check whether a player
can make a given non-jump move:
/**
This is called by the getLegalMoves() method to determine
whether the player can legally move from (r1,c1) to (r2,c2).
It is ASSUMED that (r1,c1) contains one of the player’s
pieces and that (r2,c2) is a neighboring square.
*/
private boolean canMove(int player, int r1, int c1, int r2, int c2) {
if (r2 < 0 || r2 >= 8 || c2 < 0 || c2 >= 8)
return false; // (r2,c2) is off the board.

if (board[r2][c2] != EMPTY)
return false; // (r2,c2) already contains a piece.

if (player == RED) {
if (board[r1][c1] == RED && r2 > r1)
return false; // Regular red piece can only move down.
return true; // The move is legal.
}
else {
if (board[r1][c1] == BLACK && r2 < r1)
return false; // Regular black piece can only move up.
return true; // The move is legal.
}
} // end canMove()

This method is called by my getLegalMoves() method to check whether one of the

possible moves that it has found is actually legal. I have a similar method that is called to
check whether a jump is legal. In this case, I pass to the method the square containing the
player’s piece, the square that the player might move to, and the square between those two,
which the player would be jumping over. The square that is being jumped must contain one
of the opponent’s pieces. This method has the specification:
/**
This is called by other methods to check whether
the player can legally jump from (r1,c1) to (r3,c3).
It is assumed that the player has a piece at (r1,c1), that
(r3,c3) is a position that is 2 rows and 2 columns distant
from (r1,c1) and that (r2,c2) is the square between (r1,c1)
and (r3,c3).
362 CHAPTER 7. ARRAYS

*/
private boolean canJump(int player, int r1, int c1,
int r2, int c2, int r3, int c3) { . . .

Given all this, you should be in a position to understand the complete getLegalMoves()
method. It’s a nice way to finish off this chapter, since it combines several topics that we’ve
looked at: one-dimensional arrays, ArrayLists, and two-dimensional arrays:
CheckersMove[] getLegalMoves(int player) {
if (player != RED && player != BLACK)
return null;
int playerKing; // The constant for a King belonging to the player.
if (player == RED)
playerKing = RED KING;
else
playerKing = BLACK KING;
ArrayList<ChecherMove> moves = new ArrayList<CheckerMove>();
// Moves will be stored in this list.

/* First, check for any possible jumps. Look at each

square on the board. If that square contains one of the
player’s pieces, look at a possible jump in each of the
four directions from that square. If there is a legal
jump in that direction, put it in the moves ArrayList.
*/
for (int row = 0; row < 8; row++) {
for (int col = 0; col < 8; col++) {
if (board[row][col] == player || board[row][col] ==
playerKing) { if (canJump(player, row, col, row+1, col+1,
row+2, col+2)) [Link](new CheckersMove(row, col, row+2,
col+2));
if (canJump(player, row, col, row-1, col+1, row-2, col+2))
[Link](new CheckersMove(row, col, row-2, col+2)); if
(canJump(player, row, col, row+1, col-1, row+2, col-2))
[Link](new CheckersMove(row, col, row+2, col-2)); if
(canJump(player, row, col, row-1, col-1, row-2, col-2))
[Link](new CheckersMove(row, col, row-2, col-2));
}
}
}

/* If any jump moves were found, then the user must jump, so we
don’t add any regular moves. However, if no jumps were found,
check for any legal regular moves. Look at each square on
the board. If that square contains one of the player’s
pieces, look at a possible move in each of the four
directions from that square. If there is a legal move
in that direction, put it in the moves ArrayList.
*/
if ([Link]() == 0) {
for (int row = 0; row < 8; row++) {
for (int col = 0; col < 8; col++) {
if (board[row][col] == player || board[row][col] == playerKing) {
7.5. MULTI-DIMENSIONAL ARRAYS 363

if (canMove(player,row,col,row+1,col+1))
[Link](new CheckersMove(row,col,row+1,col+1));
if (canMove(player,row,col,row-1,col+1))
[Link](new CheckersMove(row,col,row-1,col+1));
if (canMove(player,row,col,row+1,col-1))
[Link](new CheckersMove(row,col,row+1,col-1));
if (canMove(player,row,col,row-1,col-1))
[Link](new CheckersMove(row,col,row-1,col-1));
}
}
}
}

/* If no legal moves have been found, return null. Otherwise,

create an array just big enough to hold all the legal
moves, copy the legal moves from the ArrayList into the
array, and return the array.
*/
if ([Link]() == 0)
return null;
else {
CheckersMove[] moveArray = new CheckersMove[[Link]()];
for (int i = 0; i < [Link](); i++)
moveArray[i] = [Link](i);
return moveArray;
}
} // end getLegalMoves
364 CHAPTER 7. ARRAYS

Exercises for Chapter 7

An example in Subsection 7.2.4 tried to answer the question, How many random people do
you have to select before you find a duplicate birthday? The source code for that program
can be found in the file [Link]. Here are some related questions:

How many random people do you have to select before you find three people who
share the same birthday? (That is, all three people were born on the same day in
the same month, but not necessarily in the same year.)
Suppose you choose 365 people at random. How many different birthdays will they
have? (The number could theoretically be anywhere from 1 to 365).
How many different people do you have to check before you’ve found at least one
person with a birthday on each of the 365 days of the year?

Write three programs to answer these questions. Each of your programs should
sim-ulate choosing people at random and checking their birthdays. (In each case,
ignore the possibility of leap years.)

Write a program that will read a sequence of positive real numbers entered by the user
and will print the same numbers in sorted order from smallest to largest. The user will
input a zero to mark the end of the input. Assume that at most 100 positive numbers
will be entered.

A polygon is a geometric figure made up of a sequence of connected line segments. The

points where the line segments meet are called the vertices of the polygon. The
Graph-ics class includes commands for drawing and filling polygons. For these
commands, the coordinates of the vertices of the polygon are stored in arrays. If g is a
variable of type Graphics then
[Link](xCoords, yCoords, pointCt) will draw the outline of the polygon with
vertices at the points (xCoords[0],yCoords[0]), (xCoords[1],yCoords[1]),
. . . , (xCoords[pointCt-1],yCoords[pointCt-1]). The third parameter,
pointCt, is an int that specifies the number of vertices of the polygon. Its value
should be 3 or greater. The first two parameters are arrays of type int[]. Note
that the polygon automatically includes a line from the last point,
(xCoords[pointCt-1],yCoords[pointCt-1]), back to the starting point
(xCoords[0],yCoords[0]).
[Link](xCoords, yCoords, pointCt) fills the interior of the
polygon with the current drawing color. The parameters have the same meaning
as in the drawPolygon() method. Note that it is OK for the sides of the polygon
to cross each other, but the interior of a polygon with self-intersections might not
be exactly what you expect.
Write a panel class that lets the user draw polygons, and use your panel as the content pane in an
applet (or standalone application). As the user clicks a sequence of points, count them and store their x-
and y-coordinates in two arrays. These points will be the vertices of the polygon. Also, draw a line
between each consecutive pair of points to give the user some visual feedback. When the user clicks
near the starting point, draw the
Exercises 365

complete polygon. Draw it with a red interior and a black border. The user should then be
able to start drawing a new polygon. When the user shift-clicks on the applet, clear it.
For this exercise, there is no need to store information about the contents of the applet.
Do the drawing directly in the mouseDragged() routine, and use the getGraphics()
method to get a Graphics object that you can use to draw the line. (Remember, though,
that this is considered to be bad style.) You will not need a paintComponent() method,
since the default action of filling the panel with its background color is good enough.
Here is a picture of my solution after the user has drawn a few polygons:

For this problem, you will need to use an array of objects. The objects belong to the class
MovingBall, which I have already written. You can find the source code for this class in
the file [Link]. A MovingBall represents a circle that has an associated color,
radius, direction, and speed. It is restricted to moving in a rectangle in the (x,y)
plane. It will “bounce back” when it hits one of the sides of this rectangle. A MovingBall
does not actually move by itself. It’s just a collection of data. You have to call instance
methods to tell it to update its position and to draw itself. The constructor for the
MovingBall class takes the form
new MovingBall(xmin, xmax, ymin, ymax)

where the parameters are integers that specify the limits on the x and y coordinates
of the ball. In this exercise, you will want balls to bounce o ff the sides of the applet, so
you will create them with the constructor call
new MovingBall(0, getWidth(), 0, getHeight())

The constructor creates a ball that initially is colored red, has a radius of 5 pixels, is located
at the center of its range, has a random speed between 4 and 12, and is headed in a
random direction. There is one problem here: You can’t use this constructor until the width
and height of the component are known. It would be OK to use it in the init() method of
an applet, but not in the constructor of an applet or panel class. If you are using a panel
class to display the ball, one slightly messy solution is to create the MovingBall objects in
the panel’s paintComponent() method the first time that method is called. You can be
sure that the size of the panel has been determined before paintComponent() is called.
This is what I did in my own solution to this exercise.
366 CHAPTER 7. ARRAYS

If ball is a variable of type MovingBall, then the following methods are available:
[Link](g) — draw the ball in a graphics context. The parameter, g, must be of
type Graphics. (The drawing color in g will be changed to the color of the ball.)
[Link]() — change the (x,y)-coordinates of the ball by an amount
equal to its speed. The ball has a certain direction of motion, and the ball is
moved in that direction. Ordinarily, you will call this once for each frame of an
animation, so the speed is given in terms of “pixels per frame”. Calling this routine
does not move the ball on the screen. It just changes the values of some instance
variables in the object. The next time the object’s draw() method is called, the
ball will be drawn in the new position.
[Link](x,y) — change the direction of motion of the ball so that it
is headed towards the point (x,y). This does not affect the speed.
These are the methods that you will need for this exercise. There are also methods for
setting various properties of the ball, such as [Link](color) for changing
the color and [Link](radius) for changing its size. See the source code
for more information.
For this exercise, you should create an applet that shows an animation of balls
bouncing around on a black background. Use a Timer to drive the animation. (See
Subsection 6.5.1.) Use an array of type MovingBall[] to hold the data for the balls.
In addition, your program should listen for mouse and mouse motion events. When the
user presses the mouse or drags the mouse, call each of the ball’s headTowards()
methods to make the balls head towards the mouse’s location. My solution uses 50
balls and a time delay of 50 milliseconds for the timer.

The sample program [Link] from Subsection 6.5.1 shows a different ran-
dom “artwork” every four seconds. There are three types of “art”, one made from lines, one
from circles, and one from filled squares. However, the program does not save the data for
the picture that is shown on the screen. As a result, the picture cannot be redrawn when
necessary. In fact, every time paintComponent() is called, a new picture is drawn.
Write a new version of [Link] that saves the data needed to
redraw its pictures. The paintComponent() method should simply use the data to
draw the picture. New data should be recomputed only every four seconds, in response
to an event from the timer that drives the program.
To make this interesting, write a separate class for each of the three di fferent types of
art. Also write an abstract class to serve as the common base class for the three classes.
Since all three types of art use a random gray background, the background color can be
defined in their superclass. The superclass also contains a draw() method that draws the
picture; this is an abstract method because its implementation depends on the particular
type of art that is being drawn. The abstract class can be defined as:
private abstract class ArtData {
Color backgroundColor; // The background color for the art.
ArtData() { // Constructor sets background color to be a random gray.
int x = (int)(256*[Link]());
backgroundColor = new Color( x, x, x, );
}
abstract void draw(Graphics g); // Draws this artwork.
}
Exercises 367

Each of the three subclasses of ArtData must define its own draw() method. It
must also define instance variables to hold the data necessary to draw the picture. I
suggest that you should create random data for the picture in the constructor of the
class, so that constructing the object will automatically create the data for a random
artwork. (One problem with this is that you can’t create the data until you know the size
of the panel, so you can’t create an artdata object in the constructor of the panel. One
solution is to create an artdata object at the beginning of the paintComponent()
method, if the object has not already been created.) In all three subclasses, you will
need to use several arrays to store the data.
The file [Link] only defines a panel class. A main program that
uses this panel can be found in [Link], and an applet that uses it can be
found in [Link].

Write a program that will read a text file selected by the user, and will make an
alphabetical list of all the different words in that file. All words should be converted to
lower case, and duplicates should be eliminated from the list. The list should be written
to an output file selected by the user. As discussed in Subsection 2.4.5, you can use
TextIO to read and write files. Use a variable of type ArrayList<String> to store the
words. (See Subsection 7.3.4.) It is not easy to separate a file into words as you are
reading it. You can use the following method:
/**
Read the next word from TextIO, if there is one. First, skip past
any non-letters in the input. If an end-of-file is encountered before
a word is found, return null. Otherwise, read and return the word.
A word is defined as a sequence of letters. Also, a word can include
an apostrophe if the apostrophe is surrounded by letters on each side.
@return the next word from TextIO, or null if an end-of-file is
encountered
*/
private static String readNextWord() {
char ch = [Link](); // Look at next character in input.
while (ch != [Link] && ! [Link](ch)) {
[Link](); // Read the character.
ch = [Link](); // Look at the next character.
}
if (ch == [Link]) // Encountered end-
of-file return null;
At this point, we know the next character is a letter, so read a
word. String word = ""; // This will be the word that is read.
while (true) {
word += [Link](); // Append the letter onto
word. ch = [Link](); // Look at next character.
if ( ch == ’\’’ ) {
The next character is an apostrophe. Read it, and
if the following character is a letter, add both the
apostrophe and the letter onto the word and continue
reading the word. If the character after the apostrophe
is not a letter, the word is done, so break out of the loop.
[Link](); // Read the apostrophe.
ch = [Link](); // Look at char that follows apostrophe.
if ([Link](ch)) {
368 CHAPTER 7. ARRAYS

word += "\’" + [Link]();

ch = [Link](); // Look at next char.
}
else
break;
}
if ( ! [Link](ch) ) {
If the next character is not a letter, the word is
finished, so break out of the loop.
break;
}
// If we haven’t broken out of the loop, next char is a letter.
}
return word; // Return the word that has been read.
}

Note that this method will return null when the file has been entirely read. You can
use this as a signal to stop processing the input file.

The game of Go Moku (also known as Pente or Five Stones) is similar to Tic-Tac-Toe, except
that it played on a much larger board and the object is to get five squares in a row rather
than three. Players take turns placing pieces on a board. A piece can be placed in any
empty square. The first player to get five pieces in a row—horizontally, vertically, or
diagonally—wins. If all squares are filled before either player wins, then the game is a draw.
Write a program that lets two players play Go Moku against each other.
Your program will be simpler than the Checkers program from Subsection 7.5.3.
Play alternates strictly between the two players, and there is no need to hilite the legal
moves. You will only need two classes, a short panel class to set up the interface and a
Board class to draw the board and do all the work of the game. Nevertheless, you will
probably want to look at the source code for the checkers program, [Link], for
ideas about the general outline of the program.
The hardest part of the program is checking whether the move that a player makes
is a winning move. To do this, you have to look in each of the four possible directions
from the square where the user has placed a piece. You have to count how many
pieces that player has in a row in that direction. If the number is five or more in any
direction, then that player wins. As a hint, here is part of the code from my applet. This
code counts the number of pieces that the user has in a row in a specified direction.
The direction is specified by two integers, dirX and dirY. The values of these
variables are 0, 1, or -1, and at least one of them is non-zero. For example, to look in
the horizontal direction, dirX is 1 and dirY is 0.
int ct = 1; // Number of pieces in a row belonging to the player.
int r, c; // A row and column to be examined

r = row + dirX; // Look at square in specified direction.

c = col + dirY;
while ( r >= 0 && r < 13 && c >= 0 && c < 13
&& board[r][c] == player ) {
Square is on the board, and it
contains one of the players’s pieces.
ct++;
Exercises 369

r += dirX; // Go on to next square in this direction.

c += dirY;
}
r = row - dirX; // Now, look in the opposite direction.
c = col - dirY;
while ( r >= 0 && r < 13 && c >= 0 && c < 13
&& board[r][c] == player ) {
ct++;
r -= dirX; // Go on to next square in this direction.
c -= dirY;
}

Here is a picture of my program It uses a 13-by-13 board. You can do the same or
use a normal 8-by-8 checkerboard.
370 CHAPTER 7. ARRAYS

Quiz on Chapter 7

What does the computer do when it executes the following statement? Try to give as
complete an answer as possible.
Color[] palette = new Color[12];

What is meant by the basetype of an array?

What does it mean to sort an array?

What is the main advantage of binary search over linear search? What is the main
disadvantage?

What is meant by a dynamic array? What is the advantage of a dynamic array over a
regular array?

Suppose that a variable strlst has been declared as

ArrayList<String> strlst = new ArrayList<String>();

Assume that the list is not empty and that all the items in the list are non-null. Write a
code segment that will find and print the string in the list that comes first in
lexicographic order. How would your answer change if strlst were declared to be of
type ArrayList instead of ArrayList<String>?

What is the purpose of the following subroutine? What is the meaning of the value that it
returns, in terms of the value of its parameter?
static String concat( String[] str ) {
if (str == null)
return "";
String ans = "";
for (int i = 0; i < [Link]; i++) {
ans = ans + str[i];
return ans;
}

Show the exact output produced by the following code segment.

char[][] pic = new char[6][6];
for (int i = 0; i < 6; i++)
for (int j = 0; j < 6; j++) {
if ( i == j|| i == 0 || i == 5 )
pic[i][j] = ’*’;
else
pic[i][j] = ’.’;
}
for (int i = 0; i < 6; i++) {
for (int j = 0; j < 6; j++)
[Link](pic[i][j]);
[Link]();
}
Quiz 371

Write a complete subroutine that finds the largest value in an array of ints. The subrou-
tine should have one parameter, which is an array of type int[]. The largest number
in the array should be returned as the value of the subroutine.

Suppose that temperature measurements were made on each day of 1999 in each of 100
cities. The measurements have been stored in an array
int[][] temps = new int[100][365];
th
where temps[c][d] holds the measurement for city number c on the d day of the
year. Write a code segment that will print out the average temperature, over the course
of the whole year, for each city. The average temperature for a city can be obtained by
adding up all 365 measurements for that city and dividing the answer by 365.0.

Suppose that a class, Employee, is defined as follows:

class Employee {
String lastName;
String firstName;
double hourlyWage;
int yearsWithCompany;
}

Suppose that data about 100 employees is already stored in an array:

Employee[] employeeData = new Employee[100];

Write a code segment that will output the first name, last name, and hourly wage of
each employee who has been with the company for 20 years or more.

Suppose that A has been declared and initialized with the statement
double[] A = new double[20];

and suppose that A has already been filled with 20 values. Write a program segment
that will find the average of all the non-zero numbers in the array. (The average is the
sum of the numbers, divided by the number of numbers. Note that you will have to
count the number of non-zero entries in the array.) Declare any variables that you use.
372 CHAPTER 7. ARRAYS
Chapter 8

Correctness and Robustness

In previous chapters, we have covered the fundamentals of programming. The chapters that
follow will cover more advanced aspects of programming. The ideas that are presented will be a
little more complex and the programs that use them a little more complicated. This chapter is a
kind of turning point in which we look at the problem of getting such complex programs right.

Computer programs that fail are much too common. Programs are fragile. A tiny error
can cause a program to misbehave or crash. Most of us are familiar with this from our own
experience with computers. And we’ve all heard stories about software glitches that cause
spacecraft to crash, telephone service to fail, and, in a few cases, people to die.
Programs don’t have to be as bad as they are. It might well be impossible to guarantee
that programs are problem-free, but careful programming and well-designed programming
tools can help keep the problems to a minimum. This chapter will look at issues of
correctness and robustness of programs. It also looks more closely at exceptions and the
try..catch statement, and it introduces assertions, another of the tools that Java
provides as an aid in writing correct programs.
This chapter also includes sections on two topics that are only indirectly related to
correct-ness and robustness. Section 8.5 will introduce threads while Section 8.6 looks
briefly at the Analysis of Algorithms. Both of these topics do fit into this chapter in its role
as a turning point, since they are part of the foundation for more advanced programming.

8.1 Introduction to Correctness and Robustness

A program is correct if it accomplishes the task that it was designed to perform. It is robust if it
can handle illegal inputs and other unexpected situations in a reasonable way. For example,
consider a program that is designed to read some numbers from the user and then print the
same numbers in sorted order. The program is correct if it works for any set of input numbers. It
is robust if it can also deal with non-numeric input by, for example, printing an error message
and ignoring the bad input. A non-robust program might crash or give nonsensical output in the
same circumstance.
Every program should be correct. (A sorting program that doesn’t sort correctly is pretty
useless.) It’s not the case that every program needs to be completely robust. It depends on
who will use it and how it will be used. For example, a small utility program that you write for
your own use doesn’t have to be particularly robust.
The question of correctness is actually more subtle than it might appear. A programmer

373
374 CHAPTER 8. CORRECTNESS AND ROBUSTNESS

works from a specification of what the program is supposed to do. The programmer’s work is
correct if the program meets its specification. But does that mean that the program itself is
correct? What if the specification is incorrect or incomplete? A correct program should be a
correct implementation of a complete and correct specification. The question is whether the
specification correctly expresses the intention and desires of the people for whom the program is
being written. This is a question that lies largely outside the domain of computer science.

8.1.1 Horror Stories

Most computer users have personal experience with programs that don’t work or that crash. In
many cases, such problems are just annoyances, but even on a personal computer there can be
more serious consequences, such as lost work or lost money. When computers are given more
important tasks, the consequences of failure can be proportionately more serious.
Just a few years ago, the failure of two multi-million space missions to Mars was prominent in
the news. Both failures were probably due to software problems, but in both cases the problem
was not with an incorrect program as such. In September 1999, the Mars Climate Orbiter burned
up in the Martian atmosphere because data that was expressed in English units of measurement
(such as feet and pounds) was entered into a computer program that was designed to use metric
units (such as centimeters and grams). A few months later, the Mars Polar Lander probably
crashed because its software turned off its landing engines too soon. The program was
supposed to detect the bump when the spacecraft landed and turn o ff the engines then. It has
been determined that deployment of the landing gear might have jarred the spacecraft enough to
activate the program, causing it to turn off the engines when the spacecraft was still in the air.
The unpowered spacecraft would then have fallen to the Martian surface. A more robust system
would have checked the altitude before turning off the engines!
There are many equally dramatic stories of problems caused by incorrect or poorly
written software. Let’s look at a few incidents recounted in the book Computer Ethics by
Tom Forester and Perry Morrison. (This book covers various ethical issues in computing. It,
or something like it, is essential reading for any student of computer science.)
In 1985 and 1986, one person was killed and several were injured by excess radiation, while
undergoing radiation treatments by a mis-programmed computerized radiation machine. In
another case, over a ten-year period ending in 1992, almost 1,000 cancer patients received
radiation dosages that were 30% less than prescribed because of a programming error.
In 1985, a computer at the Bank of New York started destroying records of on-going
security transactions because of an error in a program. It took less than 24 hours to fix the
program, but by that time, the bank was out $5,000,000 in overnight interest payments on
funds that it had to borrow to cover the problem.
The programming of the inertial guidance system of the F-16 fighter plane would have
turned the plane upside-down when it crossed the equator, if the problem had not been
discovered in simulation. The Mariner 18 space probe was lost because of an error in one
line of a program. The Gemini V space capsule missed its scheduled landing target by a
hundred miles, because a programmer forgot to take into account the rotation of the Earth.
In 1990, AT&T’s long-distance telephone service was disrupted throughout the United
States when a newly loaded computer program proved to contain a bug.
These are just a few examples. Software problems are all too common. As programmers, we need to
understand why that is true and what can be done about it.
8.1. INTRODUCTION TO CORRECTNESS AND ROBUSTNESS 375

8.1.2 Java to the Rescue

Part of the problem, according to the inventors of Java, can be traced to programming
languages themselves. Java was designed to provide some protection against certain types
of errors. How can a language feature help prevent errors? Let’s look at a few examples.
Early programming languages did not require variables to be declared. In such languages,
when a variable name is used in a program, the variable is created automatically. You might
consider this more convenient than having to declare every variable explicitly. But there is an
unfortunate consequence: An inadvertent spelling error might introduce an extra variable that
you had no intention of creating. This type of error was responsible, according to one famous
story, for yet another lost spacecraft. In the FORTRAN programming language, the command “DO
I = 1,5” is the first statement of a counting loop. Now, spaces are insignificant in FORTRAN,
so this is equivalent to “DO20I=1,5”. On the other hand, the command “DO20I=1.5”, with a
period instead of a comma, is an assignment statement that assigns the value 1.5 to the
variable DO20I. Supposedly, the inadvertent substitution of a period for a comma in a statement
of this type caused a rocket to blow up on take-o ff. Because FORTRAN doesn’t require variables
to be declared, the compiler would be happy to accept the statement “DO20I=1.5.” It would just
create a new variable named DO20I. If FORTRAN required variables to be declared, the
compiler would have complained that the variable DO20I was undeclared.
While most programming languages today do require variables to be declared, there are
other features in common programming languages that can cause problems. Java has
eliminated some of these features. Some people complain that this makes Java less e fficient
and less powerful. While there is some justice in this criticism, the increase in security and
robustness is probably worth the cost in most circumstances. The best defense against some
types of errors is to design a programming language in which the errors are impossible. In other
cases, where the error can’t be completely eliminated, the language can be designed so that
when the error does occur, it will automatically be detected. This will at least prevent the error
from causing further harm, and it will alert the programmer that there is a bug that needs fixing.
Let’s look at a few cases where the designers of Java have taken these approaches.
An array is created with a certain number of locations, numbered from zero up to some
specified maximum index. It is an error to try to use an array location that is outside of the
specified range. In Java, any attempt to do so is detected automatically by the system. In
some other languages, such as C and C++, it’s up to the programmer to make sure that the
index is within the legal range. Suppose that an array, A, has three locations, A[0], A[1],
and A[2]. Then A[3], A[4], and so on refer to memory locations beyond the end of the
array. In Java, an attempt to store data in A[3] will be detected. The program will be
terminated (unless the error is “caught”, as discussed in Section 3.7). In C or C++, the
computer will just go ahead and store the data in memory that is not part of the array. Since
there is no telling what that memory location is being used for, the result will be
unpredictable. The consequences could be much more serious than a terminated program.
(See, for example, the discussion of buffer overflow errors later in this section.)
Pointers are a notorious source of programming errors. In Java, a variable of object type holds
either a pointer to an object or the special value null. Any attempt to use a null value as if it were
a pointer to an actual object will be detected by the system. In some other languages, again, it’s up to
the programmer to avoid such null pointer errors. In my old Macintosh computer, a null pointer was
actually implemented as if it were a pointer to memory location zero. A program could use a null
pointer to change values stored in memory near location zero. Unfortunately, the Macintosh stored
important system data in those locations. Changing that
376 CHAPTER 8. CORRECTNESS AND ROBUSTNESS

data could cause the whole system to crash, a consequence more severe than a single
failed program.

Another type of pointer error occurs when a pointer value is pointing to an object of the
wrong type or to a segment of memory that does not even hold a valid object at all. These types
of errors are impossible in Java, which does not allow programmers to manipulate pointers
directly. In other languages, it is possible to set a pointer to point, essentially, to any location in
memory. If this is done incorrectly, then using the pointer can have unpredictable results.

Another type of error that cannot occur in Java is a memory leak. In Java, once there are no
longer any pointers that refer to an object, that object is “garbage collected” so that the memory
that it occupied can be reused. In other languages, it is the programmer’s responsibility to return
unused memory to the system. If the programmer fails to do this, unused memory can build up,
leaving less memory for programs and data. There is a story that many common programs for
older Windows computers had so many memory leaks that the computer would run out of
memory after a few days of use and would have to be restarted.

Many programs have been found to suffer from buffer overflow errors. Buffer overflow
errors often make the news because they are responsible for many network security problems.
When one computer receives data from another computer over a network, that data is stored in
a buffer. The buffer is just a segment of memory that has been allocated by a program to hold
data that it expects to receive. A buffer overflow occurs when more data is received than will fit
in the buffer. The question is, what happens then? If the error is detected by the program or by
the networking software, then the only thing that has happened is a failed network data
transmission. The real problem occurs when the software does not properly detect bu ffer
overflows. In that case, the software continues to store data in memory even after the bu ffer is
filled, and the extra data goes into some part of memory that was not allocated by the program
as part of the buffer. That memory might be in use for some other purpose. It might contain
important data. It might even contain part of the program itself. This is where the real security
issues come in. Suppose that a buffer overflow causes part of a program to be replaced with
extra data received over a network. When the computer goes to execute the part of the program
that was replaced, it’s actually executing data that was received from another computer. That
data could be anything. It could be a program that crashes the computer or takes it over. A
malicious programmer who finds a convenient buffer overflow error in networking software can
try to exploit that error to trick other computers into executing his programs.

For software written completely in Java, buffer overflow errors are impossible. The
language simply does not provide any way to store data into memory that has not been
properly allocated. To do that, you would need a pointer that points to unallocated memory
or you would have to refer to an array location that lies outside the range allocated for the
array. As explained above, neither of these is possible in Java. (However, there could
conceivably still be errors in Java’s standard classes, since some of the methods in these
classes are actually written in the C programming language rather than in Java.)

It’s clear that language design can help prevent errors or detect them when they occur.
Doing so involves restricting what a programmer is allowed to do. Or it requires tests, such
as checking whether a pointer is null, that take some extra processing time. Some programmers feel
that the sacrifice of power and efficiency is too high a price to pay for the extra security. In some applications,
this is true. However, there are many situations where safety and security are primary considerations. Java is
designed for such situations.
8.1. INTRODUCTION TO CORRECTNESS AND ROBUSTNESS 377

8.1.3 Problems Remain in Java

There is one area where the designers of Java chose not to detect errors automatically:
numerical computations. In Java, a value of type int is represented as a 32-bit binary
number. With 32 bits, it’s possible to represent a little over four billion di fferent values. The
values of type int range from -2147483648 to 2147483647. What happens when the result
of a computation lies outside this range? For example, what is 2147483647 + 1? And
what is 2000000000 * 2? The mathematically correct result in each case cannot be
represented as a value of type int. These are examples of integer overflow . In most cases,
integer overflow should be considered an error. However, Java does not automatically
detect such errors. For example, it will compute the value of 2147483647 + 1 to be the
negative number, -2147483648. (What happens is that any extra bits beyond the 32-nd bit
in the correct answer are discarded. Values greater than 2147483647 will “wrap around” to
32
negative values. Mathematically speaking, the result is always “correct modulo 2 ”.)
For example, consider the 3N+1 program, which was discussed in Subsection 3.2.2.
Starting from a positive integer N, the program computes a certain sequence of integers:
while ( N != 1 ) {
if ( N % 2 == 0 ) // If N is even...
N=N/2;
else
N=3*N+1;
[Link](N);
}

But there is a problem here: If N is too large, then the value of 3*N+1 will not be
mathematically correct because of integer overflow. The problem arises whenever 3*N+1
> 2147483647, that is when N > 2147483646/3. For a completely correct program, we
should check for this possibility before computing 3*N+1:
while ( N!=1) {
if ( N%2== 0 ) // If N is even...
N =N/2;
else {
if (N > 2147483646/3) {
[Link]("Sorry, but the value of N has
become"); [Link]("too large for your
computer!"); break;
}
N=3*N+1;
}
[Link](N);
}

The problem here is not that the original algorithm for computing 3N+1 sequences was
wrong. The problem is that it just can’t be correctly implemented using 32-bit integers. Many
programs ignore this type of problem. But integer overflow errors have been responsible for their
share of serious computer failures, and a completely robust program should take the possibility
of integer overflow into account. (The infamous “Y2K” bug was, in fact, just this sort of error.)
For numbers of type double, there are even more problems. There are still overflow er-
rors, which occur when the result of a computation is outside the range of values that can be
represented as a value of type double. This range extends up to about 1.7 times 10 to the
378 CHAPTER 8. CORRECTNESS AND ROBUSTNESS

power 308. Numbers beyond this range do not “wrap around” to negative values. Instead, they are
represented by special values that have no real numerical equivalent. The special values
[Link] INFINITY and [Link] INFINITY represent numbers outside
the range of legal values. For example, 20 * 1e308 is computed to be [Link]
INFINITY. Another special value of type double, [Link], represents an illegal or undefined
result. (“NaN” stands for “Not a Number”.) For example, the result of dividing by zero or taking the
square root of a negative number is [Link]. You can test whether a number x is this special
non-a-number value by calling the boolean-valued function [Link](x).
For real numbers, there is the added complication that most real numbers can only be
represented approximately on a computer. A real number can have an infinite number of digits
after the decimal point. A value of type double is only accurate to about 15 digits. The real
number 1/3, for example, is the repeating decimal 0.333333333333..., and there is no way
to represent it exactly using a finite number of digits. Computations with real numbers generally
involve a loss of accuracy. In fact, if care is not exercised, the result of a large number of such
computations might be completely wrong! There is a whole field of computer science, known as
numerical analysis, which is devoted to studying algorithms that manipulate real numbers.
So you see that not all possible errors are avoided or detected automatically in Java.
Fur-thermore, even when an error is detected automatically, the system’s default response
is to report the error and terminate the program. This is hardly robust behavior! So, a Java
pro-grammer still needs to learn techniques for avoiding and dealing with errors. These are
the main topics of the rest of this chapter.

8.2 Writing Correct Programs

Correct programs don’t just happen. It takes planning and attention to detail to avoid errors in
programs. There are some techniques that programmers can use to increase the likelihood that
their programs are correct.

8.2.1 Provably Correct Programs

In some cases, it is possible to prove that a program is correct. That is, it is possible to
demonstrate mathematically that the sequence of computations represented by the program
will always produce the correct result. Rigorous proof is difficult enough that in practice it
can only be applied to fairly small programs. Furthermore, it depends on the fact that the
“correct result” has been specified correctly and completely. As I’ve already pointed out, a
program that correctly meets its specification is not useful if its specification was wrong.
Nevertheless, even in everyday programming, we can apply some of the ideas and
techniques that are used in proving that programs are correct.
The fundamental ideas are process and state. A state consists of all the information
relevant to the execution of a program at a given moment during its execution. The state
includes, for example, the values of all the variables in the program, the output that has been
produced, any input that is waiting to be read, and a record of the position in the program where
the computer is working. A process is the sequence of states that the computer goes through as
it executes the program. From this point of view, the meaning of a statement in a program can
be expressed in terms of the effect that the execution of that statement has on the computer’s
state. As a simple example, the meaning of the assignment statement “x = 7;” is that after this
statement is executed, the value of the variable x will be 7. We can be absolutely
8.2. WRITING CORRECT PROGRAMS 379

sure of this fact, so it is something upon which we can build part of a mathematical proof.
In fact, it is often possible to look at a program and deduce that some fact must be true
at a given point during the execution of a program. For example, consider the do loop:
do {
[Link]("Enter a positive integer: ");
N = [Link]();
} while (N <= 0);

After this loop ends, we can be absolutely sure that the value of the variable N is greater than
zero. The loop cannot end until this condition is satisfied. This fact is part of the meaning of the
while loop. More generally, if a while loop uses the test “while ( condition )”, then
after the loop ends, we can be sure that the condition is false. We can then use this fact to
draw further deductions about what happens as the execution of the program continues. (With a
loop, by the way, we also have to worry about the question of whether the loop will ever end.
This is something that has to be verified separately.)
A fact that can be proven to be true after a given program segment has been executed is
called a postcondition of that program segment. Postconditions are known facts upon
which we can build further deductions about the behavior of the program. A postcondition of
a program as a whole is simply a fact that can be proven to be true after the program has
finished executing. A program can be proven to be correct by showing that the
postconditions of the program meet the program’s specification.
Consider the following program segment, where all the variables are of type double:
disc = B*B - 4*A*C;
x = (-B + [Link](disc)) / (2*A);

The quadratic formula (from high-school mathematics) assures us that the value assigned to
2
x is a solution of the equation A*x + B*x + C = 0, provided that the value of disc is
greater than or equal to zero and the value of A is not zero. If we can assume or guarantee
that B*B-4*A*C >= 0 and that A != 0, then the fact that x is a solution of the equation
becomes a postcondition of the program segment. We say that the condition, B*B-4*A*C
>= 0 is a precondition of the program segment. The condition that A != 0 is another
precondition. A precondition is defined to be condition that must be true at a given point in
the execution of a program in order for the program to continue correctly. A precondition is
something that you want to be true. It’s something that you have to check or force to be true,
if you want your program to be correct.
We’ve encountered preconditions and postconditions once before, in Subsection 4.6.1.
That section introduced preconditions and postconditions as a way of specifying the contract
of a subroutine. As the terms are being used here, a precondition of a subroutine is just a
precondition of the code that makes up the definition of the subroutine, and the
postcondition of a subroutine is a postcondition of the same code. In this section, we have
generalized these terms to make them more useful in talking about program correctness.
Let’s see how this works by considering a longer program segment:
do {
[Link]("Enter A, B, and C. B*B-4*A*C must be
>= 0."); [Link]("A = ");
A = [Link]();
[Link]("B = ");
B = [Link]();
[Link]("C = ");
 380 CHAPTER 8. CORRECTNESS AND ROBUSTNESS
C = [Link]();

if (A == 0 || B*B - 4*A*C < 0)

[Link]("Your input is illegal. Try again.");
} while (A == 0 || B*B - 4*A*C < 0);

disc = B*B - 4*A*C;

x = (-B + [Link](disc)) / (2*A);

After the loop ends, we can be sure that B*B-4*A*C >= 0 and that A != 0. The preconditions for
2
the last two lines are fulfilled, so the postcondition that x is a solution of the equation A*x
B*x + C = 0 is also valid. This program segment correctly and provably computes a
solution to the equation. (Actually, because of problems with representing numbers on
computers, this is not 100% true. The algorithm is correct, but the program is not a perfect
implementation of the algorithm. See the discussion in Subsection 8.1.3.)
Here is another variation, in which the precondition is checked by an if statement. In
the first part of the if statement, where a solution is computed and printed, we know that
the preconditions are fulfilled. In the other parts, we know that one of the preconditions fails
to hold. In any case, the program is correct.
[Link]("Enter your values for A, B, and C.");
[Link]("A = ");
A = [Link]();
[Link]("B = ");
B = [Link]();
[Link]("C = ");
C = [Link]();

if (A != 0 && B*B - 4*A*C >= 0) {

disc = B*B - 4*A*C;
x = (-B + [Link](disc)) / (2*A);
[Link]("A solution of A*X*X + B*X + C = 0 is " + x);
}
else if (A == 0) {
[Link]("The value of A cannot be zero.");
}
else {
[Link]("Since B*B - 4*A*C is less than zero, the");
[Link]("equation A*X*X + B*X + C = 0 has no solution.");
}

Whenever you write a program, it’s a good idea to watch out for preconditions and think
about how your program handles them. Often, a precondition can offer a clue about how to
write the program.
For example, every array reference, such as A[i], has a precondition: The index must
be within the range of legal indices for the array. For A[i], the precondition is that 0 <= i
[Link]. The computer will check this condition when it evaluates
A[i], and if the condition is not satisfied, the program will be
terminated. In order to avoid this, you need to make sure that the
index has a legal value. (There is actually another precondition,
namely that A is not null, but let’s leave that aside for the
moment.) Consider the following code, which searches for the number
x in the array A and sets the value of i to be the index of the
array element that contains x:
8.2. WRITING CORRECT PROGRAMS 381

i = 0;
while (A[i] != x) {
i++;
}

As this program segment stands, it has a precondition, namely that x is actually in the
array. If this precondition is satisfied, then the loop will end when A[i] == x. That is, the
value of i when the loop ends will be the position of x in the array. However, if x is not in
the array, then the value of i will just keep increasing until it is equal to [Link]. At that
time, the reference to A[i] is illegal and the program will be terminated. To avoid this, we
can add a test to make sure that the precondition for referring to A[i] is satisfied:
i = 0;
while (i < [Link] && A[i] != x) {
i++;
}

Now, the loop will definitely end. After it ends, i will satisfy either i == [Link] or
A[i] == x. An if statement can be used after the loop to test which of these conditions
caused the loop to end:
i = 0;
while (i < [Link] && A[i] != x) {
i++;
}
if (i == [Link])
[Link]("x is not in the
array"); else
[Link]("x is in position " + i);

8.2.2 Robust Handling of Input

One place where correctness and robustness are important—and especially di fficult—is in
the processing of input data, whether that data is typed in by the user, read from a file, or
received over a network. Files and networking will be covered in Chapter 11, which will
make essential use of material that will be covered in the next two sections of this chapter.
For now, let’s look at an example of processing user input.
Examples in this textbook use my TextIO class for reading input from the user. This class
has built-in error handling. For example, the function [Link]() is guaranteed
to return a legal value of type double. If the user types an illegal value, then TextIO will ask
the user to re-enter their response; your program never sees the illegal value. However, this
approach can be clumsy and unsatisfactory, especially when the user is entering complex
data. In the following example, I’ll do my own error-checking.
Sometimes, it’s useful to be able to look ahead at what’s coming up in the input without
actually reading it. For example, a program might need to know whether the next item in the
input is a number or a word. For this purpose, the TextIO class includes the function
[Link](). This function returns a char which is the next character in the user’s
input, but it does not actually read that character. If the next thing in the input is an end-of-
line, then [Link]() returns the new-line character, ’\n’.
Often, what we really need to know is the next non-blank character in the user’s input.
Before we can test this, we need to skip past any spaces (and tabs). Here is a function that does
382 CHAPTER 8. CORRECTNESS AND ROBUSTNESS

this. It uses [Link]() to look ahead, and it reads characters until the next character in the
input is either an end-of-line or some non-blank character. (The function [Link]()
reads and returns the next character in the user’s input, even if that character is a space. By contrast,
the more common [Link]() would skip any blanks and then read and return the next
non-blank character. We can’t use [Link]() here since the object is to skip the blanks
without reading the next non-blank character.)
/**
Reads past any blanks and tabs in the input.
Postcondition: The next character in the input is an
* end-of-line or a non-blank character.
*/
static void skipBlanks() {
char ch;
ch = [Link]();
while (ch == ’ ’ || ch == ’\t’) {
Next character is a space or tab; read it
and look at the character that follows
it. ch = [Link]();
ch = [Link]();
}
} // end skipBlanks()

(In fact, this operation is so common that it is built into the most recent version of TextIO.
The method [Link]() does essentially the same thing as the
skipBlanks() method presented here.)
An example in Subsection 3.5.3 allowed the user to enter length measurements such as
“3 miles” or “1 foot”. It would then convert the measurement into inches, feet, yards, and
miles. But people commonly use combined measurements such as “3 feet 7 inches”. Let’s
improve the program so that it allows inputs of this form.
More specifically, the user will input lines containing one or more measurements such as
“1 foot” or “3 miles 20 yards 2 feet”. The legal units of measure are inch, foot, yard, and mile.
The program will also recognize plurals (inches, feet, yards, miles) and abbreviations (in, ft,
yd, mi). Let’s write a subroutine that will read one line of input of this form and compute the
equivalent number of inches. The main program uses the number of inches to compute the
equivalent number of feet, yards, and miles. If there is any error in the input, the subroutine
will print an error message and return the value -1. The subroutine assumes that the input
line is not empty. The main program tests for this before calling the subroutine and uses an
empty line as a signal for ending the program.
Ignoring the possibility of illegal inputs, a pseudocode algorithm for the subroutine is
inches = 0 // This will be the total number of
inches while there is more input on the line:
read the numerical measurement
read the units of measure
add the measurement to inches
return inches

We can test whether there is more input on the line by checking whether the next non-blank character is the
end-of-line character. But this test has a precondition: Before we can test the next non-blank character, we
have to skip over any blanks. So, the algorithm becomes
8.2. WRITING CORRECT PROGRAMS 383

inches = 0
skipBlanks()
while [Link]() is not ’\n’:
read the numerical measurement
read the unit of measure
add the measurement to inches
skipBlanks()
return inches

Note the call to skipBlanks() at the end of the while loop. This subroutine must be
executed before the computer returns to the test at the beginning of the loop. More generally, if
the test in a while loop has a precondition, then you have to make sure that this precondition
holds at the end of the while loop, before the computer jumps back to re-evaluate the test.
What about error checking? Before reading the numerical measurement, we have to
make sure that there is really a number there to read. Before reading the unit of measure,
we have to test that there is something there to read. (The number might have been the last
thing on the line. An input such as “3”, without a unit of measure, is illegal.) Also, we have to
check that the unit of measure is one of the valid units: inches, feet, yards, or miles. Here is
an algorithm that includes error-checking:
inches = 0
skipBlanks()
while [Link]() is not ’\n’:
if the next character is not a digit:
report an error and return -1
Let measurement = [Link]();
skipBlanks() // Precondition for the next test!!
if the next character is end-of-line:
report an error and return -1
Let units = [Link]()
if the units are inches:
add measurement to inches
else if the units are feet:
add 12*measurement to inches
else if the units are yards:
add 36*measurement to inches
else if the units are miles:
add 12*5280*measurement to inches
else
report an error and return -1
skipBlanks()
return inches

As you can see, error-testing adds significantly to the complexity of the algorithm. Yet this is
still a fairly simple example, and it doesn’t even handle all the possible errors. For example, if the
user enters a numerical measurement such as 1e400 that is outside the legal range of values
of type double, then the program will fall back on the default error-handling in TextIO. Something
even more interesting happens if the measurement is “1e308 miles”. The number 1e308 is
legal, but the corresponding number of inches is outside the legal range of
384 CHAPTER 8. CORRECTNESS AND ROBUSTNESS

values for type double. As mentioned in the previous section, the computer will get the value
[Link] INFINITY when it does the computation.
Here is the subroutine written out in Java:
/**
Reads the user’s input measurement from one line of input.
Precondition: The input line is not empty.
Postcondition: If the user’s input is legal, the measurement

* is converted to inches and returned. If the * input

is not legal, the value -1 is returned. * The end-of-
line is NOT read by this routine. */

static double readMeasurement() {

double inches; // Total number of inches in user’s measurement.
double measurement; // One measurement,
such as the 12 in "12 miles"

such as "miles"
char ch; // Used to peek at next character in the user’s input.
inches = 0; // No inches have yet been read.
skipBlanks();
ch = [Link]();

/* As long as there is more input on the line, read a

measurement and add the equivalent number of inches to the
variable, inches. If an error is detected during the loop,
end the subroutine immediately by returning -1. */
while (ch != ’\n’) {

/* Get the next measurement and the units. Before

reading anything, make sure that a legal value is
there to read. */
if ( ! [Link](ch) ) {
[Link](
"Error: Expected to find a number, but found "
+ ch); return -1;
}
measurement = [Link]();
skipBlanks();
if ([Link]() == ’\n’) {
[Link](
"Error: Missing unit of measure at end of
line."); return -1;
}
units = [Link]();
units = [Link]();
/* Convert the measurement to inches and add it to the total. */
if ([Link]("inch")
[Link]("inches") ||
[Link]("in")) { inches += measurement;
8.3. EXCEPTIONS AND TRY..CATCH 385

}
else if ([Link]("foot")
[Link]("feet") || [Link]("ft"))
{ inches += measurement * 12;
}
else if ([Link]("yard")
[Link]("yards") || [Link]("yd"))
{ inches += measurement * 36;
}
else if ([Link]("mile")
[Link]("miles") || [Link]("mi"))
{ inches += measurement * 12 * 5280;
}
else {
[Link]("Error: \"" + units
+ "\" is not a legal unit of measure.");
return -1;
}

/* Look ahead to see whether the next thing on the

line is the end-of-line. */

skipBlanks();
ch = [Link]();

} // end while

return inches;

} // end readMeasurement()

The source code for the complete program can be found in the file [Link].

8.3 Exceptions and try..catch

Getting a program to work under ideal circumstances is usually a lot easier than making the
program robust . A robust program can survive unusual or “exceptional” circumstances without
crashing. One approach to writing robust programs is to anticipate the problems that might arise
and to include tests in the program for each possible problem. For example, a program will crash
if it tries to use an array element A[i], when i is not within the declared range of indices for
the array A. A robust program must anticipate the possibility of a bad index and guard against it.
One way to do this is to write the program in a way that ensures that the index is in the legal
range. Another way is to test whether the index value is legal before using it in the array. This
could be done with an if statement:
if (i < 0 || i >= [Link]) {
... // Do something to handle the out-of-range index, i
}
else {
... // Process the array element, A[i]
}
386 CHAPTER 8. CORRECTNESS AND ROBUSTNESS

There are some problems with this approach. It is difficult and sometimes impossible to an-
ticipate all the possible things that might go wrong. It’s not always clear what to do when an
error is detected. Furthermore, trying to anticipate all the possible problems can turn what
would otherwise be a straightforward program into a messy tangle of if statements.

8.3.1 Exceptions and Exception Classes

We have already seen that Java (like its cousin, C++) provides a neater, more structured
alternative method for dealing with errors that can occur while a program is running. The
method is referred to as exception handling . The word “exception” is meant to be more
general than “error.” It includes any circumstance that arises as the program is executed
which is meant to be treated as an exception to the normal flow of control of the program.
An exception might be an error, or it might just be a special case that you would rather not
have clutter up your elegant algorithm.
When an exception occurs during the execution of a program, we say that the exception is
thrown . When this happens, the normal flow of the program is thrown o ff-track, and the
program is in danger of crashing. However, the crash can be avoided if the exception is caught
and handled in some way. An exception can be thrown in one part of a program and caught in a
different part. An exception that is not caught will generally cause the program to crash. (More
exactly, the thread that throws the exception will crash. In a multithreaded program, it is possible
for other threads to continue even after one crashes. We will cover threads in Section 8.5. In
particular, GUI programs are multithreaded, and parts of the program might continue to function
even while other parts are non-functional because of exceptions.)
By the way, since Java programs are executed by a Java interpreter, having a program
crash simply means that it terminates abnormally and prematurely. It doesn’t mean that the
Java interpreter will crash. In effect, the interpreter catches any exceptions that are not
caught by the program. The interpreter responds by terminating the program. In many other
programming languages, a crashed program will sometimes crash the entire system and
freeze the computer until it is restarted. With Java, such system crashes should be
impossible—which means that when they happen, you have the satisfaction of blaming the
system rather than your own program.
Exceptions were introduced in Section 3.7, along with the try..catch statement,
which is used to catch and handle exceptions. However, that section did not cover the
complete syntax of try..catch or the full complexity of exceptions. In this section, we
cover these topics in full detail.
∗∗∗
When an exception occurs, the thing that is actually “thrown” is an object. This object can
carry information (in its instance variables) from the point where the exception occurs to the point
where it is caught and handled. This information always includes the subroutine call stack ,
which is a list of the subroutines that were being executed when the exception was thrown.
(Since one subroutine can call another, several subroutines can be active at the same time.)
Typically, an exception object also includes an error message describing what happened to
cause the exception, and it can contain other data as well. All exception objects must belong to a
subclass of the standard class [Link]. In general, each di fferent type of exception
is represented by its own subclass of Throwable, and these subclasses are arranged in a fairly
complex class hierarchy that shows the relationship among various types of exception.
Throwable has two direct subclasses, Error and Exception. These two subclasses in turn have
8.3. EXCEPTIONS AND TRY..CATCH 387

many other predefined subclasses. In addition, a programmer can create new exception
classes to represent new types of exception.
Most of the subclasses of the class Error represent serious errors within the Java virtual
machine that should ordinarily cause program termination because there is no reasonable way
to handle them. In general, you should not try to catch and handle such errors. An example is a
ClassFormatError, which occurs when the Java virtual machine finds some kind of illegal data in
a file that is supposed to contain a compiled Java class. If that class was being loaded as part of
the program, then there is really no way for the program to proceed.
On the other hand, subclasses of the class Exception represent exceptions that are
meant to be caught. In many cases, these are exceptions that might naturally be called
“errors,” but they are errors in the program or in input data that a programmer can anticipate
and possibly respond to in some reasonable way. (However, you should avoid the
temptation of saying, “Well, I’ll just put a thing here to catch all the errors that might occur,
so my program won’t crash.” If you don’t have a reasonable way to respond to the error, it’s
best just to let the program crash, because trying to go on will probably only lead to worse
things down the road—in the worst case, a program that gives an incorrect answer without
giving you any indication that the answer might be wrong!)
The class Exception has its own subclass, RuntimeException. This class groups together many
common exceptions, including all those that have been covered in previous sections. For example,
IllegalArgumentException and NullPointerException are subclasses of RuntimeException. A
RuntimeException generally indicates a bug in the program, which the programmer should fix.
RuntimeExceptions and Errors share the property that a program can simply ignore the possibility
that they might occur. (“Ignoring” here means that you are content to let your program crash if the
exception occurs.) For example, a program does this every time it uses an array reference like A[i]
without making arrangements to catch a possible ArrayIndexOut-OfBoundsException. For all other
exception classes besides Error, RuntimeException, and their subclasses, exception-handling is
“mandatory” in a sense that I’ll discuss below.
The following diagram is a class hierarchy showing the class Throwable and just a few
of its subclasses. Classes that require mandatory exception-handling are shown in italic:

The class Throwable includes several instance methods that can be used with any exception
object. If e is of type Throwable (or one of its subclasses), then [Link]() is a function
388 CHAPTER 8. CORRECTNESS AND ROBUSTNESS

that returns a String that describes the exception. The function [Link](), which is
used by the system whenever it needs a string representation of the object, returns a String
that contains the name of the class to which the exception belongs as well as the same
string that would be returned by [Link](). And [Link]() writes
a stack trace to standard output that tells which subroutines were active when the exception
occurred. A stack trace can be very useful when you are trying to determine the cause of the
problem. (Note that if an exception is not caught by the program, then the system
automatically prints the stack trace to standard output.)

8.3.2 The try Statement

To catch exceptions in a Java program, you need a try statement. We have been using
such statements since Section 3.7, but the full syntax of the try statement is more
complicated than what was presented there. The try statements that we have used so far
had a syntax similar to the following example:
try {
double determinant = M[0][0]*M[1][1] - M[0][1]*M[1][0];
[Link]("The determinant of M is " + determinant);
}
catch ( ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException e ) {
[Link]("M is the wrong size to have a determinant.");
[Link]();
}

Here, the computer tries to execute the block of statements following the word “try”. If no
exception occurs during the execution of this block, then the “catch” part of the statement is
simply ignored. However, if an exception of type ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException occurs, then
the computer jumps immediately to the catch clause of the try statement. This block of
statements is said to be an exception handler for ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException. By
handling the exception in this way, you prevent it from crashing the program. Before the body of
the catch clause is executed, the object that represents the exception is assigned to the
variable e, which is used in this example to print a stack trace.
However, the full syntax of the try statement allows more than one catch clause.
This makes it possible to catch several different types of exception with one try statement.
In the above example, in addition to the possible ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException, there is
a possible NullPointerException which will occur if the value of M is null. We can handle
both possible exceptions by adding a second catch clause to the try statement:
try {
double determinant = M[0][0]*M[1][1] - M[0][1]*M[1][0];
[Link]("The determinant of M is " + determinant);
}
catch ( ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException e ) {
[Link]("M is the wrong size to have a determinant.");
}
catch ( NullPointerException e ) { [Link]("Programming
error! M doesn’t exist." + );
}

Here, the computer tries to execute the statements in the try clause. If no error occurs, both of the
catch clauses are skipped. If an ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException occurs, the computer
8.3. EXCEPTIONS AND TRY..CATCH 389

executes the body of the first catch clause and skips the second one. If a
NullPointerException occurs, it jumps to the second catch clause and executes that.
Note that both ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException and NullPointerException are
subclasses of RuntimeException. It’s possible to catch all RuntimeExceptions with a single
catch clause. For example:
try {
double determinant = M[0][0]*M[1][1] - M[0][1]*M[1][0];
[Link]("The determinant of M is " + determinant);
}
catch ( RuntimeException err )
{ [Link]("Sorry, an error has
occurred."); [Link]("The error was: " +
err);
}

The catch clause in this try statement will catch any exception belonging to class
RuntimeEx-ception or to any of its subclasses. This shows why exception classes are
organized into a class hierarchy. It allows you the option of casting your net narrowly to
catch only a specific type of exception. Or you can cast your net widely to catch a wide class
of exceptions. Because of subclassing, when there are multiple catch clauses in a try
statement, it is possible that a given exception might match several of those catch
clauses. For example, an exception of type NullPointerException would match catch
clauses for NullPointerException, RuntimeException, Exception, or Throwable. In this case,
only the first catch clause that matches the exception is executed.
The example I’ve given here is not particularly realistic. You are not very likely to use
exception-handling to guard against null pointers and bad array indices. This is a case
where careful programming is better than exception handling: Just be sure that your
program assigns a reasonable, non-null value to the array M. You would certainly resent it
if the designers of Java forced you to set up a try..catch statement every time you
wanted to use an array! This is why handling of potential RuntimeExceptions is not
mandatory. There are just too many things that might go wrong! (This also shows that
exception-handling does not solve the problem of program robustness. It just gives you a
tool that will in many cases let you approach the problem in a more organized way.)
∗∗∗
I have still not completely specified the syntax of the try statement. There is one
additional element: the possibility of a finally clause at the end of a try statement. The
complete syntax of the try statement can be described as:
try {
statements
}
optional-catch-clauses
optional-finally-clause

Note that the catch clauses are also listed as optional. The try statement can include
zero or more catch clauses and, optionally, a finally clause. The try statement must
include one or the other. That is, a try statement can have either a finally clause, or
one or more catch clauses, or both. The syntax for a catch clause is
catch ( exception-class-name variable-
name ) { statements
}
390 CHAPTER 8. CORRECTNESS AND ROBUSTNESS

and the syntax for a finally clause is

finally {
statements
}

The semantics of the finally clause is that the block of statements in the finally
clause is guaranteed to be executed as the last step in the execution of the try statement,
whether or not any exception occurs and whether or not any exception that does occur is
caught and handled. The finally clause is meant for doing essential cleanup that under
no circumstances should be omitted. One example of this type of cleanup is closing a
network connection. Although you don’t yet know enough about networking to look at the
actual programming in this case, we can consider some pseudocode:
try {
open a network connection
}
catch ( IOException e ) {
report the error
return // Don’t continue if connection can’t be opened!
}

// At this point, we KNOW that the connection is open.

try {
communicate over the connection
}
catch ( IOException e ) {
handle the error
}
finally {
close the connection
}

The finally clause in the second try statement ensures that the network connection
will definitely be closed, whether or not an error occurs during the communication. The first
try statement is there to make sure that we don’t even try to communicate over the network
unless we have successfully opened a connection. The pseudocode in this example follows
a general pattern that can be used to robustly obtain a resource, use the resource, and then
release the resource.

8.3.3 Throwing Exceptions

There are times when it makes sense for a program to deliberately throw an exception. This
is the case when the program discovers some sort of exceptional or error condition, but
there is no reasonable way to handle the error at the point where the problem is discovered.
The program can throw an exception in the hope that some other part of the program will
catch and handle the exception. This can be done with a throw statement . You have
already seen an example of this in Subsection 4.3.5. In this section, we cover the throw
statement more fully. The syntax of the throw statement is:
throw exception-object ;
8.3. EXCEPTIONS AND TRY..CATCH 391

The exception-object must be an object belonging to one of the subclasses of

Throwable. Usually, it will in fact belong to one of the subclasses of Exception. In most
cases, it will be a newly constructed object created with the new operator. For example:
throw new ArithmeticException("Division by zero");

The parameter in the constructor becomes the error message in the exception object; if e refers
to the object, the error message can be retrieved by calling [Link](). (You might find
this example a bit odd, because you might expect the system itself to throw an
ArithmeticException when an attempt is made to divide by zero. So why should a programmer
bother to throw the exception? Recall that if the numbers that are being divided are of type int,
then division by zero will indeed throw an ArithmeticException. However, no arithmetic
operations with floating-point numbers will ever produce an exception. Instead, the special value
[Link] is used to represent the result of an illegal operation. In some situations, you might
prefer to throw an ArithmeticException when a real number is divided by zero.)
An exception can be thrown either by the system or by a throw statement. The
exception is processed in exactly the same way in either case. Suppose that the exception
is thrown inside a try statement. If that try statement has a catch clause that handles
that type of exception, then the computer jumps to the catch clause and executes it. The
exception has been handled . After handling the exception, the computer executes the
finally clause of the try statement, if there is one. It then continues normally with the
rest of the program, which follows the try statement. If the exception is not immediately
caught and handled, the processing of the exception will continue.
When an exception is thrown during the execution of a subroutine and the exception is
not handled in the same subroutine, then that subroutine is terminated (after the execution
of any pending finally clauses). Then the routine that called that subroutine gets a
chance to handle the exception. That is, if the subroutine was called inside a try statement
that has an appropriate catch clause, then that catch clause will be executed and the
program will continue on normally from there. Again, if the second routine does not handle
the exception, then it also is terminated and the routine that called it (if any) gets the next
shot at the exception. The exception will crash the program only if it passes up through the
entire chain of subroutine calls without being handled. (In fact, even this is not quite true: In
a multithreaded program, only the thread in which the exception occurred is terminated.)
A subroutine that might generate an exception can announce this fact by adding a clause
“throws exception-class-name ” to the header of the routine. For example:
/**
Returns the larger of the two roots of the quadratic equation
A*x*x + B*x + C = 0, provided it has any roots. If A == 0 or
if the discriminant, B*B - 4*A*C, is negative, then an exception
of type IllegalArgumentException is thrown.
*/
static public double root( double A, double B, double C ) throws
IllegalArgumentException {
if (A == 0) {
throw new IllegalArgumentException("A can’t be zero.");
}
else {
double disc = B*B - 4*A*C;
if (disc < 0)
throw new IllegalArgumentException("Discriminant < zero.");
392 CHAPTER 8. CORRECTNESS AND ROBUSTNESS

return (-B + [Link](disc)) / (2*A);

}
}

As discussed in the previous section, the computation in this subroutine has the precon-
ditions that A != 0 and B*B-4*A*C >= 0. The subroutine throws an exception of type
Ille-galArgumentException when either of these preconditions is violated. When an illegal
condition is found in a subroutine, throwing an exception is often a reasonable response. If
the program that called the subroutine knows some good way to handle the error, it can
catch the exception. If not, the program will crash—and the programmer will know that the
program needs to be fixed.
A throws clause in a subroutine heading can declare several different types of
exception, separated by commas. For example:
void processArray(int[] A) throws NullPointerException,
ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException { ...

8.3.4 Mandatory Exception Handling

In the preceding example, declaring that the subroutine root() can throw an
IllegalArgumentEx-ception is just a courtesy to potential readers of this routine. This is
because handling of Il-legalArgumentExceptions is not “mandatory.” A routine can throw an
IllegalArgumentException without announcing the possibility. And a program that calls that
routine is free either to catch or to ignore the exception, just as a programmer can choose
either to catch or to ignore an exception of type NullPointerException.
For those exception classes that require mandatory handling, the situation is di fferent. If a
subroutine can throw such an exception, that fact must be announced in a throws clause in
the routine definition. Failing to do so is a syntax error that will be reported by the compiler.
On the other hand, suppose that some statement in the body of a subroutine can generate
an exception of a type that requires mandatory handling. The statement could be a throw
statement, which throws the exception directly, or it could be a call to a subroutine that can throw
the exception. In either case, the exception must be handled. This can be done in one of two
ways: The first way is to place the statement in a try statement that has a catch clause that
handles the exception; in this case, the exception is handled within the subroutine, so that any
caller of the subroutine will never see the exception. The second way is to declare that the
subroutine can throw the exception. This is done by adding a “throws” clause to the subroutine
heading, which alerts any callers to the possibility that an exception might be generated when
the subroutine is executed. The caller will, in turn, be forced either to handle the exception in a
try statement or to declare the exception in a throws clause in its own header.
Exception-handling is mandatory for any exception class that is not a subclass of either
Error or RuntimeException. Exceptions that require mandatory handling generally represent
conditions that are outside the control of the programmer. For example, they might
represent bad input or an illegal action taken by the user. There is no way to avoid such
errors, so a robust program has to be prepared to handle them. The design of Java makes it
impossible for programmers to ignore the possibility of such errors.
Among the exceptions that require mandatory handling are several that can occur when
using Java’s input/output routines. This means that you can ’t even use these routines unless you
understand something about exception-handling. Chapter 11 deals with input/output and uses mandatory
exception-handling extensively.
8.3. EXCEPTIONS AND TRY..CATCH 393

8.3.5 Programming with Exceptions

Exceptions can be used to help write robust programs. They provide an organized and struc-
tured approach to robustness. Without exceptions, a program can become cluttered with if
statements that test for various possible error conditions. With exceptions, it becomes possible
to write a clean implementation of an algorithm that will handle all the normal cases. The
exceptional cases can be handled elsewhere, in a catch clause of a try statement.
When a program encounters an exceptional condition and has no way of handling it im-
mediately, the program can throw an exception. In some cases, it makes sense to throw an
exception belonging to one of Java’s predefined classes, such as IllegalArgumentException or
IOException. However, if there is no standard class that adequately represents the exceptional
condition, the programmer can define a new exception class. The new class must extend the
standard class Throwable or one of its subclasses. In general, if the programmer does not want
to require mandatory exception handling, the new class will extend RuntimeException (or one of
its subclasses). To create a new exception class that does require mandatory handling, the
programmer can extend one of the other subclasses of Exception or can extend Exception itself.
Here, for example, is a class that extends Exception, and therefore requires mandatory
exception handling when it is used:
public class ParseError extends Exception {
public ParseError(String message) {
Create a ParseError object containing
the given message as its error
message. super(message);
}
}

The class contains only a constructor that makes it possible to create a ParseError object
containing a given error message. (The statement “super(message)” calls a constructor in the
superclass, Exception. See Subsection 5.6.3.) Of course the class inherits the getMessage() and
printStackTrace() routines from its superclass. If e refers to an object of type ParseError,
then the function call [Link]() will retrieve the error message that was specified in the
constructor. But the main point of the ParseError class is simply to exist. When an object of type
ParseError is thrown, it indicates that a certain type of error has occurred. (Parsing , by the way,
refers to figuring out the syntax of a string. A ParseError would indicate, presumably, that some string
that is being processed by the program does not have the expected form.)
A throw statement can be used in a program to throw an error of type ParseError. The
constructor for the ParseError object must specify an error message. For example:
throw new ParseError("Encountered an illegal negative number.");

or
throw new ParseError("The word ’" + word
+ "’ is not a valid file name.");

If the throw statement does not occur in a try statement that catches the error, then the
subroutine that contains the throw statement must declare that it can throw a ParseError by
adding the clause “throws ParseError” to the subroutine heading. For example,
void getUserData() throws ParseError {
. . .
}
394 CHAPTER 8. CORRECTNESS AND ROBUSTNESS

This would not be required if ParseError were defined as a subclass of RuntimeException instead of
Exception, since in that case exception handling for ParseErrors would not be mandatory.
A routine that wants to handle ParseErrors can use a try statement with a catch
clause that catches ParseErrors. For example:
try {
getUserData();
processUserData();
}
catch (ParseError pe) {
. . . // Handle the error
}

Note that since ParseError is a subclass of Exception, a catch clause of the form “catch
(Exception e)” would also catch ParseErrors, along with any other object of type Exception.
Sometimes, it’s useful to store extra data in an exception object. For example,
class ShipDestroyed extends RuntimeException {
Ship ship; // Which ship was destroyed.
int where x, where y; // Location where ship was destroyed.
ShipDestroyed(String message, Ship s, int x, int y) {
Constructor creates a ShipDestroyed object
carrying an error message plus the information
that the ship s was destroyed at location (x,y)
on the screen.
super(message);
ship = s;
where x = x;
where y = y;
}
}

Here, a ShipDestroyed object contains an error message and some information about a ship
that was destroyed. This could be used, for example, in a statement:
if ( [Link]() )
throw new ShipDestroyed("You’ve been hit!", userShip, xPos, yPos);

Note that the condition represented by a ShipDestroyed object might not even be
considered an error. It could be just an expected interruption to the normal flow of a game.
Exceptions can sometimes be used to handle such interruptions neatly.
∗∗∗
The ability to throw exceptions is particularly useful in writing general-purpose
subroutines and classes that are meant to be used in more than one program. In this case,
the person writing the subroutine or class often has no reasonable way of handling the error,
since that person has no way of knowing exactly how the subroutine or class will be used. In
such circumstances, a novice programmer is often tempted to print an error message and
forge ahead, but this is almost never satisfactory since it can lead to unpredictable results
down the line. Printing an error message and terminating the program is almost as bad,
since it gives the program no chance to handle the error.
The program that calls the subroutine or uses the class needs to know that the error has occurred. In
languages that do not support exceptions, the only alternative is to return some special value or to set the
value of some variable to indicate that an error has occurred. For
8.3. EXCEPTIONS AND TRY..CATCH 395

example, the readMeasurement() function in Subsection 8.2.2 returns the value -1 if

the user’s input is illegal. However, this only does any good if the main program bothers to
test the return value. It is very easy to be lazy about checking for special return values every
time a subroutine is called. And in this case, using -1 as a signal that an error has occurred
makes it impossible to allow negative measurements. Exceptions are a cleaner way for a
subroutine to react when it encounters an error.
It is easy to modify the readMeasurement() subroutine to use exceptions instead of a
special return value to signal an error. My modified subroutine throws a ParseError when the
user’s input is illegal, where ParseError is the subclass of Exception that was defined above.
(Arguably, it might be reasonable to avoid defining a new class by using the standard
exception class IllegalArgumentException instead.) The changes from the original version
are shown in italic:
/**
Reads the user’s input measurement from one line of input.
Precondition: The input line is not empty.
Postcondition: If the user’s input is legal, the measurement
* is converted to inches and returned.
@throws ParseError if the user’s input is not
legal. */
static double readMeasurement() throws ParseError {
double inches; // Total number of inches in user’s measurement.

double measurement; // One measurement,

such as the 12 in "12 miles."

such as "miles."
char ch; // Used to peek at next character in the user’s input.
inches = 0; // No inches have yet been read.
skipBlanks();
ch = [Link]();

/* As long as there is more input on the line, read a

measurement and add the equivalent number of inches to the
variable, inches. If an error is detected during the loop,
end the subroutine immediately by throwing a ParseError. */
while (ch != ’\n’) {

/* Get the next measurement and the units. Before

reading anything, make sure that a legal value is
there to read. */
if ( ! [Link](ch) ) {
throw new ParseError("Expected to find a number, but found " + ch);
}
measurement = [Link]();
skipBlanks();
if ([Link]() == ’\n’) {
throw new ParseError("Missing unit of measure at end of line.");
}
units = [Link]();
units = [Link]();
396 CHAPTER 8. CORRECTNESS AND ROBUSTNESS

/* Convert the measurement to inches and add it to the total. */

if ([Link]("inch")
[Link]("inches") ||
[Link]("in")) { inches += measurement;
}
else if ([Link]("foot")
[Link]("feet") || [Link]("ft"))
{ inches += measurement * 12;
}
else if ([Link]("yard")
[Link]("yards") || [Link]("yd"))
{ inches += measurement * 36;
}
else if ([Link]("mile")
[Link]("miles") || [Link]("mi"))
{ inches += measurement * 12 * 5280;
}
else {
throw new ParseError("\"" + units
+ "\" is not a legal unit of measure.");
}

/* Look ahead to see whether the next thing on the

line is the end-of-line. */
skipBlanks();
ch = [Link]();

} // end while

return inches;

} // end readMeasurement()

In the main program, this subroutine is called in a try statement of the form
try {
inches = readMeasurement();
}
catch (ParseError e) {
. . . // Handle the error.
}

The complete program can be found in the file [Link]. From the user’s
point of view, this program has exactly the same behavior as the program
LengthConverter2 from the previous section. Internally, however, the programs are
significantly different, since LengthConverter3 uses exception-handling.

8.4 Assertions
In this short section, we look at assertions, another feature of the Java programming language
that can be used to aid in the development of correct and robust programs.
Recall that a precondition is a condition that must be true at a certain point in a program, for the
execution of the program to continue correctly from that point. In the case where
8.4. ASSERTIONS 397

there is a chance that the precondition might not be satisfied—for example, if it depends on
input from the user—then it’s a good idea to insert an if statement to test it. But then the
question arises, What should be done if the precondition does not hold? One option is to
throw an exception. This will terminate the program, unless the exception is caught and
handled elsewhere in the program.
In many cases, of course, instead of using an if statement to test whether a precondition
holds, a programmer tries to write the program in a way that will guarantee that the precondi-
tion holds. In that case, the test should not be necessary, and the if statement can be avoided.
The problem is that programmers are not perfect. In spite of the programmer’s intention, the
program might contain a bug that screws up the precondition. So maybe it’s a good idea to
check the precondition—at least during the debugging phase of program development.
Similarly, a postcondition is a condition that is true at a certain point in the program as a
consequence of the code that has been executed before that point. Assuming that the code
is correctly written, a postcondition is guaranteed to be true, but here again testing whether
a desired postcondition is actually true is a way of checking for a bug that might have
screwed up the postcondition. This is somthing that might be desirable during debugging.
The programming languages C and C++ have always had a facility for adding what are
called assertions to a program. These assertions take the form “assert( condition )”,
where condition is a boolean-valued expression. This condition expresses a precondition or
post-condition that should hold at that point in the program. When the computer encounters
an assertion during the execution of the program, it evaluates the condition. If the condition
is false, the program is terminated. Otherwise, the program continues normally. This allows
the programmer’s belief that the condition is true to be tested; if if it not true, that indicates
that the part of the program that preceded the assertion contained a bug. One nice thing
about as-sertions in C and C++ is that they can be “turned off” at compile time. That is, if the
program is compiled in one way, then the assertions are included in the compiled code. If
the program is compiled in another way, the assertions are not included. During debugging,
the first type of compilation is used. The release version of the program is compiled with
assertions turned off. The release version will be more efficient, because the computer
won’t have to evaluate all the assertions.
Although early versions of Java did not have assertions, an assertion facility similar to the
one in C/C++ has been available in Java since version 1.4. As with the C/C++ version, Java
assertions can be turned on during debugging and turned off during normal execution. In Java,
however, assertions are turned on and off at run time rather than at compile time. An assertion
in the Java source code is always included in the compiled class file. When the program is run in
the normal way, these assertions are ignored; since the condition in the assertion is not
evaluated in this case, there is little or no performance penalty for having the assertions in the
program. When the program is being debugged, it can be run with assertions enabled, as
discussed below, and then the assertions can be a great help in locating and identifying bugs.
∗∗∗
An assertion statement in Java takes one of the following two forms:
assert condition ;

or
assert condition : error-message ;

where condition is a boolean-valued expression and error-message is a string or an expres-

sion of type String. The word “assert” is a reserved word in Java, which cannot be used as an
398 CHAPTER 8. CORRECTNESS AND ROBUSTNESS

identifier. An assertion statement can be used anyplace in Java where a statement is legal.
If a program is run with assertions disabled, an assertion statement is equivalent to an
empty statement and has no effect. When assertions are enabled and an assertion
statement is encountered in the program, the condition in the assertion is evaluated. If the
value is true, the program proceeds normally. If the value of the condition is false, then
an exception of type [Link] is thrown, and the program will crash
(unless the error is caught by a try statement). If the assert statement includes an
error-message , then the error message string becomes the message in the AssertionError.
So, the statement “assert condition : error-message ;" is similar to
if ( condition == false )
throw new AssertionError( error-message );

except that the if statement is executed whenever the program is run, and the assert
state-ment is executed only when the program is run with assertions enabled.
The question is, when to use assertions instead of exceptions? The general rule is to use
assertions to test conditions that should definitely be true, if the program is written correctly.
Assertions are useful for testing a program to see whether or not it is correct and for finding
the errors in an incorrect program. After testing and debugging, when the program is used in
the normal way, the assertions in the program will be ignored. However, if a problem turns
up later, the assertions are still there in the program to be used to help locate the error. If
someone writes to you to say that your program doesn’t work when he does such-and-such,
you can run the program with assertions enabled, do such-and-such, and hope that the
assertions in the program will help you locate the point in the program where it goes wrong.
Consider, for example, the root() method from Subsection 8.3.3 that calculates a root of a
quadratic equation. If you believe that your program will always call this method with legal
arguments, then it would make sense to write the method using assertions instead of exceptions:
/**
Returns the larger of the two roots of the quadratic equation
A*x*x + B*x + C = 0, provided it has any roots.
Precondition: A != 0 and B*B - 4*A*C >= 0.
*/
static public double root( double A, double B, double C ) {
assert A != 0 : "Leading coefficient of quadratic equation cannot
be zero."; double disc = B*B - 4*A*C;
assert disc >= 0 : "Discriminant of quadratic equation cannot be
negative."; return (-B + [Link](disc)) / (2*A);
}

The assertions are not checked when the program is run in the normal way. If you are correct in
your belief that the method is never called with illegal arguments, then checking the conditions in
the assertions would be unnecessary. If your belief is not correct, the problem should turn up
during testing or debugging, when the program is run with the assertions enabled.
If the root() method is part of a software library that you expect other people to use, then
the situation is less clear. Sun’s Java documentation advises that assertions should not be
used for checking the contract of public methods: If the caller of a method violates the
contract by passing illegal parameters, then an exception should be thrown. This will enforce
the contract whether or not assertions are enabled. (However, while it’s true that Java
programmers expect the contract of a method to be enforced with exceptions, there are reasonable
arguments for using assertions instead, in some cases.)
8.5. INTRODUCTION TO THREADS 399

On the other hand, it never hurts to use an assertion to check a postcondition of a

method. A postcondition is something that is supposed to be true after the method has
executed, and it can be tested with an assert statement at the end of the method. If the
postcodition is false, there is a bug in the method itself, and that is something that needs to
be found during the development of the method.
∗∗∗
To have any effect, assertions must be enabled when the program is run. How to do this
depends on what programming environment you are using. (See Section 2.6 for a discussion of
programming environments.) In the usual command line environment, assertions are enabled by
adding the option -enableassertions to the java command that is used to run the program. For
example, if the class that contains the main program is RootFinder, then the command
java -enableassertions RootFinder

will run the program with assertions enabled. The -enableassertions option can be
abbre-viated to -ea, so the command can alternatively be written as
java -ea RootFinder

In fact, it is possible to enable assertions in just part of a program. An option of the form
“-ea: class-name ” enables only the assertions in the specified class. Note that there are
no spaces between the -ea, the “:”, and the name of the class. To enable all the assertions
in a package and in its sub-packages, you can use an option of the form “ -ea: package-
name ...”. To enable assertions in the “default package” (that is, classes that are not
specified to belong to a package, like almost all the classes in this book), use “-ea:...”.
For example, to run a Java program named “MegaPaint” with assertions enabled for every
class in the packages named “paintutils” and “drawing”, you would use the command:
java -ea:paintutils... -ea:drawing... MegaPaint

If you are using the Eclipse integrated development environment, you can specify the -ea
option by creating a run configuration. Right-click the name of the main program class in the
Package Explorer pane, and select “Run As” from the pop-up menu and then “Run. . . ” from the
submenu. This will open a dialog box where you can manage run configurations. The name of
the project and of the main class will be already be filled in. Click the “Arguments” tab, and enter
-ea in the box under “VM Arguments”. The contents of this box are added to the java
command that is used to run the program. You can enter other options in this box, including
more complicated enableassertions options such as -ea:paintutils.... When you
click the “Run” button, the options will be applied. Furthermore, they will be applied whenever
you run the program, unless you change the run configuration or add a new configuration. Note
that it is possible to make two run configurations for the same class, one with assertions enabled
and one with assertions disabled.

8.5 Introduction to Threads

Like people, computers can multitask . That is, they can be working on several different tasks
at the same time. A computer that has just a single central processing unit can’t literally do two
things at the same time, any more than a person can, but it can still switch its attention back and
forth among several tasks. Furthermore, it is increasingly common for computers to have more
than one processing unit, and such computers can literally work on several tasks simultaneously.
It is likely that from now on, most of the increase in computing power will
400 CHAPTER 8. CORRECTNESS AND ROBUSTNESS

come from adding additional processors to computers rather than from increasing the speed of
individual processors. To use the full power of these multiprocessing computers, a programmer
must do parallel programming , which means writing a program as a set of several tasks that
can be executed simultaneously. Even on a single-processor computer, parallel programming
techniques can be useful, since some problems can be tackled most naturally by breaking the
solution into a set of simultaneous tasks that cooperate to solve the problem.
In Java, a single task is called a thread . The term “thread” refers to a “thread of control” or
“thread of execution,” meaning a sequence of instructions that are executed one after another—
the thread extends through time, connecting each instruction to the next. In a multithreaded
program, there can be many threads of control, weaving through time in parallel and forming the
complete fabric of the program. (Ok, enough with the metaphor, already!) Every Java program
has at least one thread; when the Java virtual machine runs your program, it creates a thread
that is responsible for executing the main routine of the program. This main thread can in turn
create other threads that can continue even after the main thread has terminated. In a GUI
program, there is at least one additional thread, which is responsible for handling events and
drawing components on the screen. This GUI thread is created when the first window is opened.
So in fact, you have already done parallel programming! When a main routine opens a window,
both the main thread and the GUI thread can continue to run in parallel. Of course, parallel
programming can be used in much more interesting ways.
Unfortunately, parallel programming is even more difficult than ordinary, single-threaded
programming. When several threads are working together on a problem, a whole new category
of errors is possible. This just means that techniques for writing correct and robust programs are
even more important for parallel programming than they are for normal programming. (That’s
one excuse for having this section in this chapter—another is that we will need threads at
several points in future chapters, and I didn’t have another place in the book where the topic fits
more naturally.) Since threads are a difficult topic, you will probably not fully understand
everything in this section the first time through the material. Your understanding should improve
as you encounter more examples of threads in future sections.

8.5.1 Creating and Running Threads

In Java, a thread is represented by an object belonging to the class [Link] (or to
a subclass of this class). The purpose of a Thread object is to execute a single method. The
method is executed in its own thread of control, which can run in parallel with other threads.
When the execution of the method is finished, either because the method terminates normally or
because of an uncaught exception, the thread stops running. Once this happens, there is no way
to restart the thread or to use the same Thread object to start another thread.
There are two ways to program a thread. One is to create a subclass of Thread and to define
the method public void run() in the subclass. This run() method defines the task that
will be performed by the thread; that is, when the thread is started, it is the run() method that
will be executed in the thread. For example, here is a simple, and rather useless, class that
defines a thread that does nothing but print a message on standard output:
public class NamedThread extends Thread {
private String name; // The name of this thread.
public NamedThread(String name) { // Constructor gives name to thread.
[Link] = name;
}
public void run() { // The run method prints a message to standard output.
8.5. INTRODUCTION TO THREADS 401

[Link]("Greetings from thread ’" + name + "’!");

}
}

To use a NamedThread, you must of course create an object belonging to this class. For
example,
NamedThread greetings = new NamedThread("Fred");

However, creating the object does not automatically start the thread running. To do that, you
must call the start() method in the thread object. For the example, this would be done
with the statement
[Link]();

The purpose of the start() method is to create a new thread of control that will execute
the Thread object’s run() method. The new thread runs in parallel with the thread in which
the start() method was called, along with any other threads that already existed. This
means that the code in the run() method will execute at the same time as the statements
that follow the call to [Link](). Consider this code segment:
NamedThread greetings = new NamedThread("Fred");
[Link]();
[Link]("Thread has been started.");

After [Link]() is executed, there are two threads. One of them will print
“Thread has been started.” while the other one wants to print “Greetings from thread
’Fred’ !”. It is important to note that these messages can be printed in either order. The
two threads run simultaneously and will compete for access to standard output, so that they
can print their messages. Whichever thread happens to be the first to get access will be the
first to print its message. In a normal, single-threaded program, things happen in a definite,
predictable order from beginning to end. In a multi-threaded program, there is a fundamental
indeterminancy. You can’t be sure what order things will happen in. This indeterminacy is
what makes parallel programming so difficult!
Note that calling [Link]() is very different from calling
[Link](). Calling [Link]() will execute the run() method in the
same thread, rather than creating a new thread. This means that all the work of the run()
will be done before the computer moves on to the statement that follows the call to
[Link]() in the program. There is no parallelism and no indeterminacy.
∗∗∗
I mentioned that there are two ways to program a thread. The first way was to de-fine a
subclass of Thread. The second is to define a class that implements the interface
[Link]. The Runnable interface defines a single method, public void
run(). An object that implements the Runnable interface can be passed as a parameter to
the con-structor of an object of type Thread. When that thread’s start method is called,
the thread will execute the run() method in the Runnable object. For example, as an
alternative to the NamedThread class, we could define the class:
public class NamedRunnable implements Runnable
{ private String name; // The name of this thread.
public NamedRunnable(String name) { // Constructor gives name to
object. [Link] = name;

}
402 CHAPTER 8. CORRECTNESS AND ROBUSTNESS

public void run() { // The run method prints a message to standard

output. [Link]("Greetings from thread ’" + name
+"’!");
}
}

To use this version of the class, we would create a NamedRunnable object and use that
object to create an object of type Thread :
NamedRunnable greetings = new
NamedRunnable("Fred"); Thread greetingsThread =
new Thread(greetings); [Link]();

Finally, I’ll note that it is sometimes convenient to define a thread using an anonymous
inner class (Subsection 5.7.3). For example:
Thread greetingsFromFred = new Thread() {
public void run() {
[Link]("Greetings from Fred!");
}
};
[Link]();

∗∗∗
To help you understand how multiple threads are executed in parallel, we consider the
sample program [Link]. This program creates several threads. Each thread
performs exactly the same task. The task is to count the number of integers less than
1000000 that are prime. (The particular task that is done is not important for our purposes
here.) On my computer, this task takes a little more than one second of processing time.
The threads that perform this task are defined by the following static nested class:
/**
When a thread belonging to this class is run it will count the
number of primes between 2 and 1000000. It will print the result
to standard output, along with its ID number and the elapsed
time between the start and the end of the computation.
*/
private static class CountPrimesThread extends Thread {
int id; // An id number for this thread; specified in the constructor.
public CountPrimesThread(int id) {
[Link] = id;
}
public void run() {
long startTime = [Link]();
int count = countPrimes(2,1000000); // Counts the primes.
long elapsedTime = [Link]() - startTime;
[Link]("Thread " + id + " counted " +
count + " primes in " + (elapsedTime/1000.0) + " seconds.");
}
}

The main program asks the user how many threads to run, and then creates and starts the specified number
of threads:
 8.5. INTRODUCTION TO THREADS 403
public static void main(String[] args) {

int numberOfThreads = 0;
while (numberOfThreads < 1 || numberOfThreads > 25) {
[Link]("How many threads do you want to use (1 to 25) ? ");
numberOfThreads = [Link]();
if (numberOfThreads < 1 || numberOfThreads > 25)
[Link]("Please enter a number between 1 and 25 !");
}
[Link]("\nCreating " + numberOfThreads
+ " prime counting threads...");
CountPrimesThread[] worker = new CountPrimesThread[numberOfThreads];
for (int i = 0; i < numberOfThreads; i++)
worker[i] = new CountPrimesThread( i );
for (int i = 0; i < numberOfThreads; i++)
worker[i].start();
[Link]("Threads have been created and started.");
}

It would be a good idea for you to compile and run the program or to try the applet
version, which can be found in the on-line version of this section.
When I ran the program with one thread, it took 1.18 seconds for my computer to do the
computation. When I ran it using six threads, the output was:
Creating 6 prime counting threads...
Threads have been created and started.
Thread 1 counted 78498 primes in 6.706 seconds.
Thread 4 counted 78498 primes in 6.693 seconds.
Thread 0 counted 78498 primes in 6.838 seconds.
Thread 2 counted 78498 primes in 6.825 seconds.
Thread 3 counted 78498 primes in 6.893 seconds.
Thread 5 counted 78498 primes in 6.859 seconds.

The second line was printed immediately after the first. At this point, the main program
has ended but the six threads continue to run. After a pause of about seven seconds, all six
threads completed at about the same time. The order in which the threads complete is not
the same as the order in which they were started, and the order is indeterminate. That is, if
the program is run again, the order in which the threads complete will probably be different.
On my computer, six threads take about six times longer than one thread. This is because
my computer has only one processor. Six threads, all doing the same task, take six times as
much processing as one thread. With only one processor to do the work, the total elapsed time
for six threads is about six times longer than the time for one thread. On a computer with two
processors, the computer can work on two tasks at the same time, and six threads might
complete in as little as three times the time it takes for one thread. On a computer with six or
more processors, six threads might take no more time than a single thread. Because of
overhead and other reasons, the actual speedup will probably be smaller than this analysis
indicates, but on a multiprocessor machine, you should see a definite speedup. What happens
when you run the program on your own computer? How many processors do you have?
Whenever there are more threads to be run than there are processors to run them, the
computer divides its attention among all the runnable threads by switching rapidly from one
thread to another. That is, each processor runs one thread for a while then switches to another
thread and runs that one for a while, and so on. Typically, these “context switches” occur about
100 times or more per second. The result is that the computer makes progress on all
404 CHAPTER 8. CORRECTNESS AND ROBUSTNESS

the tasks, and it looks to the user as if all the tasks are being executed simultaneously. This
is why in the sample program, in which each thread has the same amount of work to do, all
the threads complete at about the same time: Over any time period longer than a fraction of
a second, the computer’s time is divided approximately equally among all the threads.
When you do parallel programming in order to spread the work among several
processors, you might want to take into account the number of available processors. You
might, for example, want to create one thread for each processor. In Java, you can find out
the number of processors by calling the function
[Link]().availableProcessors()

which returns an int giving the number of processors that are available to the Java Virtual Machine. In
some cases, this might be less than the actual number of processors in the computer.

8.5.2 Operations on Threads

The Thread class includes several useful methods in addition to the start() method that
was discussed above. I will mention just a few of them.
If thrd is an object of type Thread, then the boolean-valued function
[Link]() can be used to test whether or not the thread is alive. A thread is “alive”
between the time it is started and the time when it terminates. After the thread has
terminated it is said to be “dead”. (The rather gruesome metaphor is also used when we
refer to “killing” or “aborting” a thread.)
The static method [Link](milliseconds) causes the thread that executes
this method to “sleep” for the specified number of milliseconds. A sleeping thread is still
alive, but it is not running. While a thread is sleeping, the computer will work on any other
runnable threads (or on other programs). [Link]() can be used to insert a pause
in the execution of a thread. The sleep method can throw an exception of type
InterruptedException, which is an exception class that requires mandatory exception
handling (see Subsection 8.3.4). In practice, this means that the sleep method is usually
used in a try..catch statement that catches the potential InterruptedException:
try {
[Link](lengthOfPause);
}
catch (InterruptedException e) {
}

One thread can interrupt another thread to wake it up when it is sleeping or paused for some
other reason. A Thread, thrd, can be interrupted by calling its method
[Link](), but you are not likely to do this until you start writing rather advanced
applications, and you are not likely to need to do anything in response to an
InterruptedException (except to catch it). It’s unfortunate that you have to worry about it at
all, but that’s the way that mandatory exception handling works.
Sometimes, it’s necessary for one thread to wait for anther thread to die. This is done with
the join() method from the Thread class. Suppose that thrd is a Thread. Then, if another thread
calls [Link](), that other thread will go to sleep until thrd termi-nates. If thrd is already dead
when [Link]() is called, then it simply has no effect— the thread that called [Link]() proceeds
immediately. The method join() can throw an InterruptedException, which must be handled. As
an example, the following code starts several threads, waits for them all to terminate, and then outputs
the elapsed time:
8.5. INTRODUCTION TO THREADS 405

CountPrimesThread[] worker = new CountPrimesThread[numberOfThreads];

long startTime = [Link](); for (int i = 0; i <
numberOfThreads; i++) {
worker[i] = new CountPrimesThread();
worker[i].start();
}
for (int i = 0; i < numberOfThreads; i++) {
try {
worker[i].join(); // Sleep until worker[i] has terminated.
}
catch (InterruptedException e) {
}
}
At this point, all the worker threads have terminated. long elapsedTime =
[Link]() - startTime; [Link]("Elapsed time: " +
(elapsedTime/1000.0) + " seconds.");

An observant reader will note that this code assumes that no InterruptedException will occur.
To be absolutely sure that the thread worker[i] has terminated in an environment where
InterruptedExceptions are possible, you would have to do something like:
while (worker[i].isAlive()) {
try {
worker[i].join();
}
catch (InterruptedException e) {
}
}

8.5.3 Mutual Exclusion with “synchronized”

Programming several threads to carry out independent tasks is easy. The real di fficulty arises
when threads have to interact in some way. One way that threads interact is by sharing
resources. When two threads need access to the same resource, such as a variable or a window
on the screen, some care must be taken that they don’t try to use the same resource at the
same time. Otherwise, the situation could be something like this: Imagine several cooks sharing
the use of just one measuring cup, and imagine that Cook A fills the measuring cup with milk,
only to have Cook B grab the cup before Cook A has a chance to empty the milk into his bowl.
There has to be some way for Cook A to claim exclusive rights to the cup while he performs the
two operations: Add-Milk-To-Cup and Empty-Cup-Into-Bowl.
Something similar happens with threads, even with something as simple as adding one
to a counter. The statement
count = count + 1;

is actually a sequence of three operations:

Step 1. Get the value of count
Step 2. Add 1 to the value.
Step 3. Store the new value in count
406 CHAPTER 8. CORRECTNESS AND ROBUSTNESS

Suppose that several threads perform these three steps. Remember that it’s possible for two
threads to run at the same time, and even if there is only one processor, it’s possible for that
processor to switch from one thread to another at any point. Suppose that while one thread is
between Step 2 and Step 3, another thread starts executing the same sequence of steps. Since
the first thread has not yet stored the new value in count, the second thread reads the old
value of count and adds one to that old value. After both threads have executed Step 3, the
value of count has gone up only by 1 instead of by 2! This type of problem is called a race
condition . This occurs when one thread is in the middle of a multi-step operation, and another
thread changes some value or condition that the first thread is depending upon. (The first thread
is “in a race” to complete all the steps before it is interrupted by another thread.) Another
example of a race condition can occur in an if statement. Suppose the following statement,
which is meant to avoid a division-by-zero error is executed by a thread:
if ( A != 0 )
B=C/A;

If the variable A is shared by several threads, and if nothing is done to guard against the
race condition, then it is possible that a second thread will change the value of A to zero
between the time that the first thread checks the condition A != 0 and the time that it does
the division. This means that the thread ends up dividing by zero, even though it just
checked that A was not zero!
To fix the problem of race conditions, there has to be some way for a thread to get
exclusive access to a shared resource. This is not a trivial thing to implement, but Java
provides a high level and relatively easy-to-use approach to exclusive access. It’s done with
synchronized methods and with the synchronized statement . These are used to protect
shared resources by making sure that only one thread at a time will try to access the
resource. Synchronization in Java actually provides only mutual exclusion, which means
that exclusive access to a resource is only guaranteed if every thread that needs access to
that resource uses synchronization. Synchronization is like a cook leaving a note that says,
“I’m using the measuring cup.” This will get the cook exclusive access to the cup—but only if
all the cooks agree to check the note before trying to grab the cup.
Because this is a difficult topic, I will start with a simple example. Suppose that we want
to avoid the race condition that occurs when several threads all want to add 1 to a counter.
We can do this by defining a class to represent the counter and by using synchronized
methods in that class:
public class ThreadSafeCounter {
private int count = 0; // The value of the counter.

synchronized public void increment() {

count = count + 1;
}
synchronized public int getValue() {
return count;
}
}

If tsc is of type ThreadSafeCounter, then any thread can call [Link]() to add 1 to the
counter in a completely safe way. The fact that [Link]() is synchronized means that only one
thread can be in this method at a time; once a thread starts executing this
8.5. INTRODUCTION TO THREADS 407

method, it is guaranteed that it will finish executing it without having another thread change the
value of [Link] in the meantime. There is no possibility of a race condition. Note that the
guarantee depends on the fact that count is a private variable. This forces all access to
[Link] to occur in the synchronized methods that are provided by the class. If count
were public, it would be possible for a thread to bypass the synchronization by, for example,
saying [Link]++. This could change the value of count while another thread is in the
middle of the [Link](). Synchronization does not guarantee exclusive access; it
only guarantees mutual exclusion among all the threads that are properly synchronized.
The ThreadSafeCounter class does not prevent all possible race conditions that might
arise when using a counter. Consider the if statement:
if ( [Link]() == 0 )
doSomething();

where doSomething() is some method that requires the value of the counter to be zero.
There is still a race condition here, which occurs if a second thread increments the counter
between the time the first thread tests [Link]() == 0 and the time it executes
doSomething(). The first thread needs exclusive access to the counter during the
execution of the whole if statement. (The synchronization in the ThreadSafeCounter class
only gives it exclusive access during the time it is evaluating [Link]().) We can
solve the race condition by putting the if statement in a synchronized statement:
synchronized(tsc) {
if ( [Link]() == 0 )
doSomething();
}

Note that the synchronized statement takes an object—tsc in this case—as a kind of
param-eter. The syntax of the synchronized statement is:
synchronized( object ) {
statements
}

In Java, mutual exclusion is always associated with an object; we say that the synchroniza-tion
is “on” that object. For example, the if statement above is “synchronized on tsc.” A
synchronized instance method, such as those in the class ThreadSafeCounter, is synchronized
on the object that contains the instance method. In fact, adding the synchronized modifier to
the definition of an instance method is pretty much equivalent to putting the body of the method
in a synchronized statement, synchronized(this) {...}. It is also possible to have
synchronized static methods; a synchronized static method is synchronized on a special class
object that represents the class that contains the static method.
The real rule of synchronization in Java is: Two threads cannot be synchronized on the
same object at the same time; that is, they cannot simultaneously be executing code segments
that are synchronized on that object. If one thread is synchronized on an object, and a second
thread tries to synchronize on the same object, the second thread is forced to wait until the first
thread has finished with the object. This is implemented using something called a lock . Every
object has a lock, and that lock can be “held” by only one thread at a time. To enter a
synchronized statement or synchronized method, a thread must obtain the associated object’s
lock. If the lock is available, then the thread obtains the lock and immediately begins executing
the synchronized code. It releases the lock after it finishes executing the synchronized code. If
Thread A tries to obtain a lock that is already held by Thread B, then Thread A has
408 CHAPTER 8. CORRECTNESS AND ROBUSTNESS

to wait until Thread B releases the lock. In fact, Thread A will go to sleep, and will not be
awoken until the lock becomes available.
∗∗∗
As a simple example of shared resources, we return to the prime-counting problem.
Suppose that we want to count all the primes in a given range of integers, and suppose that
we want to divide the work up among several threads. Each thread will be assigned part of
the range of integers and will count the primes in its assigned range. At the end of its
computation, the thread has to add its count to the overall total number of primes found. The
variable that represents the total is shared by all the threads. If each thread just says
total = total + count;

then there is a (small) chance that two threads will try to do this at the same time and that
the final total will be wrong. To prevent this race condition, access to total has to be
synchronized. My program uses a synchronized method to add the counts to the total:
synchronized private static void
addToTotal(int x) { total = total + x;
[Link](total + " primes found so far.");
}

The source code for the program can be found in [Link]. This program counts
the primes in the range 3000001 to 6000000. (The numbers are rather arbitrary.) The main()
routine in this program creates between 1 and 5 threads and assigns part of the job to each
thread. It then waits for all the threads to finish, using the join() method as described above,
and reports the total elapsed time. If you run the program on a multiprocessor computer, it
should take less time for the program to run when you use more than one thread. You can
compile and run the program or try the equivalent applet in the on-line version of this section.
∗∗∗
Synchronization can help to prevent race conditions, but it introduces the possibility of
another type of error, deadlock . A deadlock occurs when a thread waits forever for a resource
that it will never get. In the kitchen, a deadlock might occur if two very simple-minded cooks both
want to measure a cup of milk at the same time. The first cook grabs the measuring cup, while
the second cook grabs the milk. The first cook needs the milk, but can’t find it because the
second cook has it. The second cook needs the measuring cup, but can’t find it because the first
cook has it. Neither cook can continue and nothing more gets done. This is deadlock. Exactly the
same thing can happen in a program, for example if there are two threads (like the two cooks)
both of which need to obtain locks on the same two objects (like the milk and the measuring cup)
before they can proceed. Deadlocks can easily occur, unless great care is taken to avoid them.
Fortunately, we won’t be looking at any examples that require locks on more than one object, so
we will avoid that source of deadlock.

8.5.4 Wait and Notify

Threads can interact with each other in other ways besides sharing resources. For example, one
thread might produce some sort of result that is needed by another thread. This imposes some
restriction on the order in which the threads can do their computations. If the second thread gets
to the point where it needs the result from the first thread, it might have to stop and wait for the
result to be produced. Since the second thread can ’t continue, it might as well go to sleep. But then
there has to be some way to notify the second thread when the result is
8.5. INTRODUCTION TO THREADS 409

ready, so that it can wake up and continue its computation. Java, of course, has a way to do this
kind of waiting and notification: It has wait() and notify() methods that are defined as
instance methods in class Object and so can be used with any object. The reason why wait()
and notify() should be associated with objects is not obvious, so don’t worry about it at this
point. It does, at least, make it possible to direct di fferent notifications to a di fferent recipients,
depending on which object’s notify() method is called.
The general idea is that when a thread calls a wait() method in some object, that
thread goes to sleep until the notify() method in the same object is called. It will have to
be called, obviously, by another thread, since the thread that called wait() is sleeping. A
typical pattern is that Thread A calls wait() when it needs a result from Thread B, but that
result is not yet available. When Thread B has the result ready, it calls notify(), which
will wake Thread A up so that it can use the result. It is not an error to call notify() when
no one is waiting; it just has no effect. To implement this, Thread A will execute code simlar
to the following, where obj is some object:
if ( resultIsAvailable() == false )
[Link](); // wait for noification that the result is
available useTheResult();

while Thread B does something like:

generateTheResult();
[Link](); // send out a notification that the result is available

Now, there is a really nasty race condition in this code. The two threads might execute
their code in the following order:
Thread A checks resultIsAvailable() and finds that the result is not ready, so it
decides to execute the [Link]() statement, but before it does,
Thread B finishes generating the result and calls [Link]()
Thread A calls [Link]() to wait for notification that the result is ready.

In Step 3, Thread A is waiting for a notification that will never come, because notify() has
already been called. This is a kind of deadlock that can leave Thread A waiting forever.
Obviously, we need some kind of synchronization. The solution is to enclose both Thread A’s
code and Thread B’s code in synchronized statements, and it is very natural to synchronize
on the same object, obj, that is used for the calls to wait() and notify(). In fact, since
synchronization is almost always needed when wait() and notify() are used, Java makes
it an absolute requirement. In Java, a thread can legally call [Link]() or [Link]()
only if that thread holds the synchronization lock associated with the object obj. If it does not
hold that lock, then an exception is thrown. (The exception is of type
IllegalMonitorStateException, which does not require mandatory handling and which is typically
not caught.) One further complication is that the wait() method can throw an
InterruptedException and so should be called in a try statement that handles the exception.
To make things more definite, lets consider a producer/consumer problem where one
thread produces a result that is consumed by another thread. Assume that there is a shared
variable named sharedResult that is used to transfer the result from the producer to the
consumer. When the result is ready, the producer sets the variable to a non-null value. The
producer can check whether the result is ready by testing whether the value of
sharedResult is null. We will use a variable named lock for synchronization. The the
code for the producer thread could have the form:
410 CHAPTER 8. CORRECTNESS AND ROBUSTNESS

makeResult = generateTheResult(); // Not synchronized!

synchronized(lock) {
sharedResult = makeResult;
[Link]();
}

while the consumer would execute code such as:

synchronized(lock) {
while ( sharedResult == null ) {
try {
[Link]();
}
catch (InterruptedException e) {
}
}
useResult = sharedResult;
}
useTheResult(useResult); // Not synchronized!

The calls to generateTheResult() and useTheResult() are not synchronized, which

al-lows them to run in parallel with other threads that might also synchronize on lock. Since
sharedResult is a shared variable, all references to sharedResult should be synchronized,
so the references to sharedResult must be inside the synchronized statements. The goal
is to do as little as possible (but not less) in synchronized code segments.
If you are uncommonly alert, you might notice something funny: [Link]() does not
finish until [Link]() is executed, but since both of these methods are called in
synchronized statements that synchronize on the same object, shouldn’t it be impossible for
both methods to be running at the same time? In fact, [Link]() is a special case: When
the consumer thread calls [Link](), it gives up the lock that it holds on the
synchronization object, lock. This gives the producer thread a chance to execute the
synchronized(lock) block that contains the [Link]() statement. After the producer
thread exits from this block, the lock is returned to the consumer thread so that it can continue.
The producer/consumer pattern can be generalized and made more useful without mak-
ing it any more complex. In the general case, multiple results are produced by one or more
producer threads and are consumed by one or more consumer threads. Instead of having
just one sharedResult object, we keep a list of objects that have been produced but not
yet con-sumed. Producer threads add objects to this list. Consumer threads remove objects
from this list. The only time when a thread is blocked from running is when a consumer
thread tries to get a result from the list, and no results are available. It is easy to encapsulate
the whole producer/consumer pattern in a class (where I assume that there is a class
ResultType that represents the result objects):
/**
An object of type ProducerConsumer represents a list of results
that are available for processing. Results are added to the list
by calling the produce method and are remove by calling consume.
If no result is available when consume is called, the method will
not return until a result becomes available.
*/
private static class ProducerConsumer {

private ArrayList<ResultType> items = new ArrayList<ResultType>();

8.5. INTRODUCTION TO THREADS 411

This ArrayList holds results that have been produced and are waiting
to be consumed. See Subsection 7.3.3 for information on ArrayList.

public void produce(ResultType item) {

synchronized(items) {
[Link](item); // Add item to the list of results.
[Link](); // Notify any thread waiting in consume() method.
}
}

public ResultType consume() {

ResultType item;
synchronized(items) {
If no results are available, wait for notification from
produce(). while ([Link]() == 0) {
try
{ [Link](
);
}
catch (InterruptedException e) {
}
}
At this point, we know that at least one result is
available. item = [Link](0);
}
return item;
}

For an example of a program that uses a ProducerConsumer class, see [Link].

This program performs the same task as [Link], but the threads communicate using
the producer/consumer pattern instead of with a shared variable.
Going back to our kitchen analogy for a moment, consider a restaurant with several
waiters and several cooks. If we look at the flow of customer orders into the kitchen, the
waiters “produce” the orders and leave them in a pile. The orders are “consumed” by the
cooks; whenever a cook needs a new order to work on, she picks one up from the pile. The
pile of orders, or course, plays the role of the list of result objects in the producer/consumer
pattern. Note that the only time that a cook has to wait is when she needs a new order to
work on, and there are no orders in the pile. The cook must wait until one of the waiters
places an order in the pile. We can complete the analogy by imagining that the waiter rings
a bell when he places the order in the pile—ringing the bell is like calling the notify()
method to notify the cooks that an order is available.
A final note on notify: It is possible for several threads to be waiting for notification. A call
to [Link]() will wake only one of the threads that is waiting on obj. If you want to wake
all threads that are waiting on obj, you can call [Link](). And a final note on
wait: There is an another version of wait() that takes a number of milliseconds as a
parameter. A thread that calls [Link](milliseconds) will wait only up to the specified
number of milliseconds for a notification. If a notification doesn’t occur during that period, the
thread will wake up and continue without the notification. In practice, this feature is most often
used to let a waiting thread wake periodically while it is waiting in order to perform some periodic
task, such as causing a message “Waiting for computation to finish” to blink.
412 CHAPTER 8. CORRECTNESS AND ROBUSTNESS

8.5.5 Volatile Variables

And a final note on communication among threads: In general, threads communicate by
sharing variables and accessing those variables in synchronized methods or synchronized
statements. However, synchronization is fairly expensive computationally, and excessive
use of it should be avoided. So in some cases, it can make sense for threads to refer to
shared variables without synchronizing their access to those variables.
However, a subtle problem arises when the value of a shared variable is set is one thread
and used in another. Because of the way that threads are implemented in Java, the second
thread might not see the changed value of the variable immediately. That is, it is possible that a
thread will continue to see the old value of the shared variable for some time after the value of
the variable has been changed by another thread. This is because threads are allowed to cache
shared data. That is, each thread can keep its own local copy of the shared data. When one
thread changes the value of a shared variable, the local copies in the caches of other threads
are not immediately changed, so the other threads continue to see the old value.
When a synchronized method or statement is entered, threads are forced to update their
caches to the most current values of the variables in the cache. So, using shared variables
in synchronized code is always safe.
It is still possible to use a shared variable outside of synchronized code, but in that case,
the variable must be declared to be volatile. The volatile keyword is a modifier that can
be added to a variable declaration, as in
private volatile int count;

If a variable is declared to be volatile, no thread will keep a local copy of that variable in its
cache. Instead, the thread will always use the official, main copy of the variable. This means that
any change made to the variable will immediately be available to all threads. This makes it safe
for threads to refer to volatile shared variables even outside of synchronized code.
(Remember, though, that synchronization is still the only way to prevent race conditions.)
When the volatile modifier is applied to an object variable, only the variable itself is
declared to be volatile, not the contents of the object that the variable points to. For this
reason, volatile is generally only used for variables of simple types such as primitive
types and enumerated types.
A typical example of using volatile variables is to send a signal from one thread to
another that tells the second thread to terminate. The two threads would share a variable
volatile boolean terminate = false;

The run method of the second thread would check the value of terminate frequently and
end when the value of terminate becomes true:
public void run() {
while (true) {
if (terminate)
return;
.
// Do some work

}
}

This thread will run until some other thread sets the value of terminate to true. Something like
this is really the only clean way for one thread to cause another thread to die.
8.6. ANALYSIS OF ALGORITHMS 413

(By the way, you might be wondering why threads should use local data caches in the
first place, since it seems to complicate things unnecessarily. Caching is allowed because of
the structure of multiprocessing computers. In many multiprocessing computers, each
processor has some local memory that is directly connected to the processor. A thread’s
cache is stored in the local memory of the processor on which the thread is running. Access
to this local memory is much faster than access to other memory, so it is more efficient for a
thread to use a local copy of a shared variable rather than some “master copy” that is stored
in non-local memory.)

8.6 Analysis of Algorithms

This chapter has concentrated mostly on correctness of programs. In practice, another issue is
also important: efficiency . When analyzing a program in terms of efficiency, we want to look at
questions such as, “How long does it take for the program to run?” and “Is there another
approach that will get the answer more quickly?” Efficiency will always be less important than
correctness; if you don’t care whether a program works correctly, you can make it run very
quickly indeed, but no one will think it’s much of an achievement! On the other hand, a program
that gives a correct answer after ten thousand years isn’t very useful either, so e fficiency is often
an important issue.
The term “efficiency” can refer to efficient use of almost any resource, including time,
computer memory, disk space, or network bandwidth. In this section, however, we will deal
exclusively with time efficiency, and the major question that we want to ask about a program
is, how long does it take to perform its task?
It really makes little sense to classify an individual program as being “e fficient” or “ine ffi-
cient.” It makes more sense to compare two (correct) programs that perform the same task and
ask which one of the two is “more efficient,” that is, which one performs the task more quickly.
However, even here there are difficulties. The running time of a program is not well-defined. The
run time can be different depending on the number and speed of the processors in the computer
on which it is run and, in the case of Java, on the design of the Java Virtual Machine which is
used to interpret the program. It can depend on details of the compiler which is used to translate
the program from high-level language to machine language. Furthermore, the run time of a
program depends on the size of the problem which the program has to solve. It takes a sorting
program longer to sort 10000 items than it takes it to sort 100 items. When the run times of two
programs are compared, it often happens that Program A solves small problems faster than
Program B, while Program B solves large problems faster than Program A, so that it is simply
not the case that one program is faster than the other in all cases.
In spite of these difficulties, there is a field of computer science dedicated to analyzing
the efficiency of programs. The field is known as Analysis of Algorithms. The focus is on
algorithms, rather than on programs as such, to avoid having to deal with multiple im-
plementations of the same algorithm written in different languages, compiled with di fferent
compilers, and running on different computers. Analysis of Algorithms is a mathematical
field that abstracts away from these down-and-dirty details. Still, even though it is a
theoretical field, every working programmer should be aware of some of its techniques and
results. This section is a very brief introduction to some of those techniques and results.
Because this is not a mathematics book, the treatment will be rather informal.
One of the main techniques of analysis of algorithms is asymptotic analysis. The term
“asymptotic” here means basically “the tendency in the long run.” An asymptotic analysis of
414 CHAPTER 8. CORRECTNESS AND ROBUSTNESS

an algorithm’s run time looks at the question of how the run time depends on the size of the
problem. The analysis is asymptotic because it only considers what happens to the run time
as the size of the problem increases without limit; it is not concerned with what happens for
problems of small size or, in fact, for problems of any fixed finite size. Only what happens in
the long run, as the problem size increases without limit, is important. Showing that
Algorithm A is asymptotically faster than Algorithm B doesn’t necessarily mean that
Algorithm A will run faster than Algorithm B for problems of size 10 or size 1000 or even size
1000000—it only means that if you keep increasing the problem size, you will eventually
come to a point where Algorithm A is faster than Algorithm B. An asymptotic analysis is only
a first approximation, but in practice it often gives important and useful information.
∗∗∗
Central to asymptotic analysis is Big-Oh notation . Using this notation, we might say, for
2
example, that an algorithm has a running time that is O(n ) or O(n) or O(log(n)). These notations
are read “Big-Oh of n squared,” “Big-Oh of n,” and “Big-Oh of log n” (where log is a logarithm
function). More generally, we can refer to O(f(n)) (“Big-Oh of f of n”), where f(n) is some function
that assigns a positive real number to every positive integer n. The “n” in this notation refers to
the size of the problem. Before you can even begin an asymptotic analysis, you need some way
to measure problem size. Usually, this is not a big issue. For example, if the problem is to sort a
list of items, then the problem size can be taken to be the number of items in the list. When the
input to an algorithm is an integer, as in the case of algorithm that checks whether a given
positive integer is prime, the usual measure of the size of a problem is the number of bits in the
input integer rather than the integer itself. More generally, the number of bits in the input to a
problem is often a good measure of the size of the problem.
To say that the running time of an algorithm is O(f(n)) means that for large values of the
problem size, n, the running time of the algorithm is no bigger than some constant times f(n).
(More rigorously, there is a number C and a positive integer M such that whenever n is
greater than M, the run time is less than or equal to C*f(n).) The constant takes into account
details such as the speed of the computer on which the algorithm is run; if you use a slower
computer, you might have to use a bigger constant in the formula, but changing the constant
won’t change the basic fact that the run time is O(f(n)). The constant also makes it
unnecessary to say whether we are measuring time in seconds, years, CPU cycles, or any
other unit of measure; a change from one unit of measure to another is just multiplication by
a constant. Note also that O(f(n)) doesn’t depend at all on what happens for small problem
sizes, only on what happens in the long run as the problem size increases without limit.
To look at a simple example, consider the problem of adding up all the numbers in an
array. The problem size, n, is the length of the array. Using A as the name of the array, the
algorithm can be expressed in Java as:
total = 0;
for (int i = 0; i < n; i++)
total = total + A[i];

This algorithm performs the same operation, total = total + A[i], n times. The total time spent
on this operation is a*n, where a is the time it takes to perform the operation once. Now, this is
not the only thing that is done in the algorithm. The value of i is incremented and is compared to
n each time through the loop. This adds an additional time of b*n to the run time, for some
constant b. Furthermore, i and total both have to be initialized to zero; this adds some constant amount c
to the running time. The exact running time would then be (a+b)*n+c, where the constants a, b, and c depend
on factors such as how the code is compiled
8.6. ANALYSIS OF ALGORITHMS 415

and what computer it is run on. Using the fact that c is less than or equal to c*n for any
positive integer n, we can say that the run time is less than or equal to (a+b+c)*n. That is,
the run time is less than or equal to a constant times n. By definition, this means that the run
time for this algorithm is O(n).
If this explanation is too mathematical for you, we can just note that for large values of n,
the c in the formula (a+b)*n+c is insignificant compared to the other term, (a+b)*n. We say
that c is a “lower order term.” When doing asymptotic analysis, lower order terms can be
discarded. A rough, but correct, asymptotic analysis of the algorithm would go something
like this: Each iteration of the for loop takes a certain constant amount of time. There are n
iterations of the loop, so the total run time is a constant times n, plus lower order terms (to
account for the initialization). Disregarding lower order terms, we see that the run time is
O(n).
∗∗∗
Note that to say that an algorithm has run time O(f(n)) is to say that its run time is no
bigger than some constant times n (for large values of n). O(f(n)) puts an upper limit on the
run time. However, the run time could be smaller, even much smaller. For example, if the
2 10
run time is O(n), it would also be correct to say that the run time is O(n ) or even O(n ). If
the run time is less than a constant times n, then it is certainly less than the same constant
2 10
times n or n .
Of course, sometimes it’s useful to have a lower limit on the run time. That is, we want
to be able to say that the run time is greater than or equal to some constant times f(n) (for
large values of n). The notation for this is Ω(f(n)), read “Omega of f of n.” “Omega” is the
name of a letter in the Greek alphabet, and Ω is the upper case version of that letter. (To be
technical, saying that the run time of an algorithm is Ω(f(n)) means that there is a positive
number C and a positive integer M such that whenever n is greater than M, the run time is
greater than or equal to C*f(n).) O(f(n)) tells you something about the maximum amount of
time that you might have to wait for an algorithm to finish; Ω(f(n)) tells you something about
the minimum time.
The algorithm for adding up the numbers in an array has a run time that is Ω(n) as well
as O(n). When an algorithm has a run time that is both Ω(f(n)) and O(f(n)), its run time is
said to be Θ(f(n)), read “Theta of f of n.” (Theta is another letter from the Greek alphabet.)
To say that the run time of an algorithm is Θ(f(n)) means that for large values of n, the run
time is between a*f(n) and b*f(n), where a and b are constants (with b greater than a, and
both greater than 0).
Let’s look at another example. Consider the algorithm that can be expressed in Java in
the following method:
/**
Sorts the n array elements A[0], A[1], ..., A[n-1] into
increasing order. */
public static simpleBubbleSort( int[] A,
int n ) { for (int i = 0; i < n; i++) {
Do n passes through the array...
for (int j = 0; j < n-1; j++)
{ if ( A[j] > A[j+1] ) {
A[j] and A[j+1] are out of order, so swap
them int temp = A[j];
A[j] = A[j+1];
A[j+1] = temp;
416 CHAPTER 8. CORRECTNESS AND ROBUSTNESS

}
}
}
}

Here, the parameter n represents the problem size. The outer for loop in the method is
executed n times. Each time the outer for loop is executed, the inner for loop is exectued n-1
2
times, so the if statement is executed n*(n-1) times. This is n -n, but since lower order terms
are not significant in an asymptotic analysis, it’s good enough to say that the if statement is
2 2
executed about n times. In particular, the test A[j] > A[j+1] is executed about n times,
2
and this fact by itself is enough to say that the run time of the algorithm is Ω(n ), that is, the run
2
time is at least some constant times n . Furthermore, if we look at other operations—the
2
assignment statements, incrementing i and j, etc.—none of them are executed more than n
2 2
times, so the run time is also O(n ), that is, the run time is no more than some constant times n .
2 2 2
Since it is both Ω(n ) and O(n ), the run time of the simpleBubbleSort algorithm is Θ(n ).
You should be aware that some people use the notation O(f(n)) as if it meant Θ(f(n)).
That is, when they say that the run time of an algorithm is O(f(n)), they mean to say that the
run time is about equal to a constant times f(n). For that, they should use Θ(f(n)). Properly
speaking, O(f(n)) means that the run time is less than a constant times f(n), possibly much
less.
∗∗∗
So far, my analysis has ignored an important detail. We have looked at how run time
depends on the problem size, but in fact the run time usually depends not just on the size of
the problem but on the specific data that has to be processed. For example, the run time of
a sorting algorithm can depend on the initial order of the items that are to be sorted, and not
just on the number of items.
To account for this dependency, we can consider either the worst case run time
analysis or the average case run time analysis of an algorithm. For a worst case run time
analysis, we consider all possible problems of size n and look at the longest possible run
time for all such problems. For an average case analysis, we consider all possible problems
of size n and look at the average of the run times for all such problems. Usually, the
average case analysis assumes that all problems of size n are equally likely to be
encountered, although this is not always realistic—or even possible in the case where there
is an infinite number of different problems of a given size.
In many cases, the average and the worst case run times are the same to within a
constant multiple. This means that as far as asymptotic analysis is concerned, they are the
same. That is, if the average case run time is O(f(n)) or Θ(f(n)), then so is the worst case.
However, later in the book, we will encounter a few cases where the average and worst
case asymptotic analyses differ.
∗∗∗
So, what do you really have to know about analysis of algorithms to read the rest of this
book? We will not do any rigorous mathematical analysis, but you should be able to follow
informal discussion of simple cases such as the examples that we have looked at in this section.
Most important, though, you should have a feeling for exactly what it means to say that the
running time of an algorithm is O (f(n)) or Θ(f(n)) for some common functions f(n). The main point is that
these notations do not tell you anything about the actual numerical value of the running time of the algorithm
for any particular case. They do not tell you anything at all
8.6. ANALYSIS OF ALGORITHMS 417

about the running time for small values of n. What they do tell you is something about the
rate of growth of the running time as the size of the problem increases.
Suppose you compare two algorithm that solve the same problem. The run time of one
2 3
algorithm is Θ(n ), while the run time of the second algorithm is Θ(n ). What does this tell
you? If you want to know which algorithm will be faster for some particular problem of size,
say, 100, nothing is certain. As far as you can tell just from the asymptotic analysis, either
algorithm could be faster for that particular case—or in any particular case. But what you
can say for sure is that if you look at larger and larger problems, you will come to a point
2 3
where the Θ(n ) algorithm is faster than the Θ(n ) algorithm. Furthermore, as you continue
2
to increase the problem size, the relative advantage of the Θ(n ) algorithm will continue to
2
grow. There will be values of n for which the Θ(n ) algorithm is a thousand times faster, a
million times faster, a billion times faster, and so on. This is because for any positive
3 2
constants a and b, the function a*n grows faster than the function b*n as n gets larger.
3 2
(Mathematically, the limit of the ratio of a*n to b*n is infinite as n approaches infinity.)
2
This means that for “large” problems, a Θ(n ) algorithm will definitely be faster than a
3
Θ(n ) algorithm. You just don’t know—based on the asymptotic analysis alone—exactly how
2
large “large” has to be. In practice, in fact, it is likely that the Θ(n ) algorithm will be faster
even for fairly small values of n, and absent other information you would generally prefer a
2 3
Θ(n ) algorithm to a Θ(n ) algorithm.
So, to understand and apply asymptotic analysis, it is essential to have some idea of the
2 3 4
rates of growth of some common functions. For the power functions n, n , n , n , . . . , the larger
n
the exponent, the greater the rate of growth of the function. Exponential functions such as 2 and
n
10 , where the n is in the exponent, have a growth rate that is faster than that of any power
function. In fact, exponential functions grow so quickly that an algorithm whose run time grows
exponentially is almost certainly impractical even for relatively modest values of n, because the
running time is just too long. Another function that often turns up in asymptotic analysis is the
logarithm function, log(n). There are actually many di fferent logarithm functions, but the one that
is usually used in computer science is the so-called logarithm to the base two, which is defined
x
by the fact that log(2 ) = x for any number x. (Usually, this function is written log 2 (n), but I will
leave out the subscript 2, since I will only use the base-two logarithm in this book.) The logarithm
function grows very slowly. The growth rate of log(n) is much smaller than the growth rate of n.
The growth rate of n*log(n) is a little larger than the growth rate of n, but much smaller than the
2
growth rate of n . The following table should help you understand the di fferences among the
rates of grows of various functions:

The reason that log(n) shows up so often is because of its association with multiplying
and dividing by two: Suppose you start with the number n and divide it by 2, then divide by 2
again, and so on, until you get a number that is less than or equal to 1. Then the number of
divisions is equal (to the nearest integer) to log(n).
418 CHAPTER 8. CORRECTNESS AND ROBUSTNESS

As an example, consider the binary search algorithm from Subsection 7.4.1. This
algorithm searches for an item in a sorted array. The problem size, n, can be taken to be the
length of the array. Each step in the binary search algorithm divides the number of items still
under consideration by 2, and the algorithm stops when the number of items under
consideration is less than or equal to 1 (or sooner). It follows that the number of steps for an
array of length n is at most log(n). This means that the worst-case run time for binary search
is Θ(log(n)). (The average case run time is also Θ(log(n)).) By comparison, the linear search
algorithm, which was also presented in Subsection 7.4.1 has a run time that is Θ(n). The Θ
notation gives us a quantitative way to express and to understand the fact that binary search
is “much faster” than linear search.
In binary search, each step of the algorithm divides the problem size by 2. It often
happens that some operation in an algorithm (not necessarily a single step) divides the
problem size by 2. Whenever that happens, the logarithm function is likely to show up in an
asymptotic analysis of the run time of the algorithm.
Analysis of Algorithms is a large, fascinating field. We will only use a few of the most basic ideas from this
field, but even those can be very helpful for understanding the differences among algorithms.
Exercises 419

Exercises for Chapter 8

Write a program that uses the following subroutine, from Subsection 8.3.3, to solve equa-
tions specified by the user.
/**
Returns the larger of the two roots of the quadratic equation
A*x*x + B*x + C = 0, provided it has any roots. If A == 0 or
if the discriminant, B*B - 4*A*C, is negative, then an exception
of type IllegalArgumentException is thrown.
*/
static public double root( double A, double B, double C ) throws
IllegalArgumentException {
if (A == 0) {
throw new IllegalArgumentException("A can’t be zero.");
}
else {
double disc = B*B - 4*A*C;
if (disc < 0)
throw new IllegalArgumentException("Discriminant <
zero."); return (-B + [Link](disc)) / (2*A);
}
}

Your program should allow the user to specify values for A, B, and C. It should call the
subroutine to compute a solution of the equation. If no error occurs, it should print the root.
However, if an error occurs, your program should catch that error and print an error
message. After processing one equation, the program should ask whether the user wants
to enter another equation. The program should continue until the user answers no.

As discussed in Section 8.1, values of type int are limited to 32 bits. Integers that are too
large to be represented in 32 bits cannot be stored in an int variable. Java has a
standard class, [Link], that addresses this problem. An object of
type BigInteger is an integer that can be arbitrarily large. (The maximum size is limited
only by the amount of memory on your computer.) Since BigIntegers are objects, they
must be manipulated using instance methods from the BigInteger class. For example,
you can’t add two BigIntegers with the + operator. Instead, if N and M are variables
that refer to BigIntegers, you can compute the sum of N and M with the function call
[Link](M). The value returned by this function is a new BigInteger object that is equal
to the sum of N and M.
The BigInteger class has a constructor new BigInteger(str), where str is a string.
The string must represent an integer, such as “3” or “39849823783783283733”. If the string does not
represent a legal integer, then the constructor throws a NumberFormatException.
There are many instance methods in the BigInteger class. Here are a few that you will
find useful for this exercise. Assume that N and M are variables of type BigInteger.

[Link](M) — a function that returns a BigInteger representing the sum of N and M.

[Link](M) — a function that returns a BigInteger representing the result of
multiplying N times M.
420 CHAPTER 8. CORRECTNESS AND ROBUSTNESS

[Link](M) — a function that returns a BigInteger representing the result of

divid-ing N by M, discarding the remainder.
[Link]() — a function that returns an ordinary int. The returned value
represents the sign of the integer N. The returned value is 1 if N is greater than
zero. It is -1 if N is less than zero. And it is 0 if N is zero.
[Link](M) — a function that returns a boolean value that is true if N and M
have the same integer value.
[Link]() — a function that returns a String representing the value of N.
[Link](k) — a function that returns a boolean value. The parameter k is an
inte-ger. The return value is true if the k-th bit in N is 1, and it is false if the
k-th bit is 0. Bits are numbered from right to left, starting with 0. Testing “if
([Link](0))” is an easy way to check whether N is even or odd.
[Link](0) is true if and only if N is an odd number.

For this exercise, you should write a program that prints 3N+1 sequences with
starting values specified by the user. In this version of the program, you should use
BigIntegers to represent the terms in the sequence. You can read the user’s input into
a String with the [Link]() function. Use the input value to create the
BigInteger object that represents the starting point of the 3N+1 sequence. Don’t forget
to catch and handle the NumberFormatException that will occur if the user’s input is not
a legal integer! You should also check that the input number is greater than zero.
If the user’s input is legal, print out the 3N+1 sequence. Count the number of terms
in the sequence, and print the count at the end of the sequence. Exit the program when
the user inputs an empty line.

A Roman numeral represents an integer using letters. Examples are XVII to represent 17,
MCMLIII for 1953, and MMMCCCIII for 3303. By contrast, ordinary numbers such as
17 or 1953 are called Arabic numerals. The following table shows the Arabic equivalent
of all the single-letter Roman numerals:
M 1000 X 10
D 500 V 5
C 100 I 1
50

When letters are strung together, the values of the letters are just added up, with
the following exception. When a letter of smaller value is followed by a letter of larger
value, the smaller value is subtracted from the larger value. For example, IV represents
5 - 1, or 4. And MCMXCV is interpreted as M + CM + XC + V, or 1000 + (1000 - 100) +
(100 - 10) + 5, which is 1995. In standard Roman numerals, no more than thee
consecutive copies of the same letter are used. Following these rules, every number
between 1 and 3999 can be represented as a Roman numeral made up of the
following one- and two-letter combinations:
M 1000 X 10
CM 900 IX 9
D 500 V 5
CD 400 IV 4
C 100 I 1
XC 90
Exercises 421

50
XL40

Write a class to represent Roman numerals. The class should have two
constructors. One constructs a Roman numeral from a string such as “XVII” or
“MCMXCV”. It should throw a NumberFormatException if the string is not a legal
Roman numeral. The other constructor constructs a Roman numeral from an int. It
should throw a NumberForma-tException if the int is outside the range 1 to 3999.
In addition, the class should have two instance methods. The method
toString() returns the string that represents the Roman numeral. The method
toInt() returns the value of the Roman numeral as an int.
At some point in your class, you will have to convert an int into the string that
represents the corresponding Roman numeral. One way to approach this is to
gradually “move” value from the Arabic numeral to the Roman numeral. Here is the
beginning of a routine that will do this, where number is the int that is to be converted:
String roman = "";
int N = number;
while (N >= 1000) {
Move 1000 from N to
roman. roman += "M";
N -= 1000;
}
while (N >= 900) {
Move 900 from N to
roman. roman += "CM";
N -= 900;
}
.
// Continue with other values from the above table.

(You can save yourself a lot of typing in this routine if you use arrays in a clever way to
represent the data in the above table.)
Once you’ve written your class, use it in a main program that will read both Arabic
numerals and Roman numerals entered by the user. If the user enters an Arabic
numeral, print the corresponding Roman numeral. If the user enters a Roman numeral,
print the corresponding Arabic numeral. (You can tell the di fference by using
[Link]() to peek at the first character in the user’s input. If that character is a
digit, then the user’s input is an Arabic numeral. Otherwise, it’s a Roman numeral.) The
program should end when the user inputs an empty line.

The source code file file [Link] defines a class, Expr, that can be used to represent
mathematical expressions involving the variable x. The expression can use the
operators +, -, *, /, and ^ (where ^ represents the operation of raising a number to
a power). It can use mathematical functions such as sin, cos, abs, and ln. See
the source code file for full details. The Expr class uses some advanced techniques
which have not yet been covered in this textbook. However, the interface is easy to
understand. It contains only a constructor and two public methods.
The constructor new Expr(def) creates an Expr object defined by a given
expres-sion. The parameter, def, is a string that contains the definition. For example,
422 CHAPTER 8. CORRECTNESS AND ROBUSTNESS

new Expr("x^2") or new Expr("sin(x)+3*x"). If the parameter in the

constructor call does not represent a legal expression, then the constructor throws an
IllegalArgumentEx-ception. The message in the exception describes the error.
If func is a variable of type Expr and num is of type double, then
[Link](num) is a function that returns the value of the expression when the number
num is substituted for the variable x in the expression. For example, if Expr represents
the expression 3*x+1, then [Link](5) is 3*5+1, or 16. If the expression is
undefined for the specified value of x, then the special value [Link] is returned.
Finally, [Link]() returns the definition of the expression. This is just the
string that was used in the constructor that created the expression object.
For this exercise, you should write a program that lets the user enter an expression.
If the expression contains an error, print an error message. Otherwise, let the user
enter some numerical values for the variable x. Print the value of the expression for
each number that the user enters. However, if the expression is undefined for the
specified value of x, print a message to that effect. You can use the boolean-valued
function [Link](val) to check whether a number, val, is [Link].
The user should be able to enter as many values of x as desired. After that, the
user should be able to enter a new expression. In the on-line version of this exercise,
there is an applet that simulates my solution, so that you can see how it works.

This exercise uses the class Expr, which was described in Exercise 8.4 and which is defined in the
source code file [Link]. For this exercise, you should write a GUI program that can graph a
function, f(x), whose definition is entered by the user. The program should have a text-input
box where the user can enter an expression involving the variable x, such as x^2 or sin(x-
3)/x. This expression is the definition of the function. When the user presses return in the text
input box, the program should use the contents of the text input box to construct an object of
type Expr. If an error is found in the definition, then the program should display an error
message. Otherwise, it should display a graph of the function. (Note: A JTextField
generates an ActionEvent when the user presses return.)
The program will need a JPanel for displaying the graph. To keep things simple,
this panel should represent a fixed region in the xy-plane, defined by -5 <= x <= 5
and -5 <= y <= 5. To draw the graph, compute a large number of points and
connect them with line segments. (This method does not handle discontinuous
functions properly; doing so is very hard, so you shouldn’t try to do it for this exercise.)
My program divides the interval -5 <= x <= 5 into 300 subintervals and uses the
301 endpoints of these subin-tervals for drawing the graph. Note that the function might
be undefined at one of these x-values. In that case, you have to skip that point.
A point on the graph has the form (x,y) where y is obtained by evaluating the
user’s expression at the given value of x. You will have to convert these real numbers
to the integer coordinates of the corresponding pixel on the canvas. The formulas for
the conversion are:
= (int)( (x + 5)/10 * width ); b
= (int)( (5 - y)/10 * height );

where a and b are the horizontal and vertical coordinates of the pixel, and width
and height are the width and height of the panel.
You can find an applet version of my solution in the on-line version of this exercise.
Exercises 423

Exercise 3.2 asked you to find the integer in the range 1 to 10000 that has the largest
number of divisors. Now write a program that uses multiple threads to solve the same
problem. By using threads, your program will take less time to do the computation
when it is run on a multiprocessor computer. At the end of the program, output the
elapsed time, the integer that has the largest number of divisors, and the number of
divisors that it has. The program can be modeled on the sample prime-counting
program [Link] from Subsection 8.5.3.
424 CHAPTER 8. CORRECTNESS AND ROBUSTNESS

Quiz on Chapter 8

What does it mean to say that a program is robust ?

Why do programming languages require that variables be declared before they are used?
What does this have to do with correctness and robustness?

What is a precondition? Give an example.

Explain how preconditions can be used as an aid in writing correct programs.

Java has a predefined class called Throwable. What does this class represent? Why does
it exist?

Write a method that prints out a 3N+1 sequence starting from a given integer, N. The starting
value should be a parameter to the method. If the parameter is less than or equal to zero,
throw an IllegalArgumentException. If the number in the sequence becomes too large to be
represented as a value of type int, throw an ArithmeticException.

Rewrite the method from the previous question, using assert statements instead of ex-
ceptions to check for errors. What the difference between the two versions of the
method when the program is run?

Some classes of exceptions require mandatory exception handling. Explain what this
means.

Consider a subroutine processData() that has the header

static void processData() throws IOException

Write a try..catch statement that calls this subroutine and prints an error message
if an IOException occurs.

Why should a subroutine throw an exception when it encounters an error? Why not just
terminate the program?

Suppose that a program uses a single thread that takes 4 seconds to run. Now suppose that
the program creates two threads and divides the same work between the two threads.
What can be said about the expected execution time of the program that uses two threads?

Consider the ThreadSafeCounter example from Subsection 8.5.3:

public class ThreadSafeCounter {
private int count = 0; // The value of the counter.
synchronized public void increment() {
count = count + 1;
}
synchronized public int getValue() {
return count;
}

}
Quiz 425

The increment() method is synchronized so that the caller of the method can complete
the three steps of the operation “Get value of count,” “Add 1 to value,” “Store new value in
count” without being interrupted by another thread. But getValue() consists of a single,
simple step. Why is getValue() synchronized? (This is a deep and tricky question.)
426 CHAPTER 8. CORRECTNESS AND ROBUSTNESS
Chapter 9

Linked Data Structures and

Recursion

In this chapter, we look at two advanced programming techniques, recursion and linked data
structures, and some of their applications. Both of these techniques are related to the seemingly
paradoxical idea of defining something in terms of itself. This turns out to be a remarkably
powerful idea.
A subroutine is said to be recursive if it calls itself, either directly or indirectly. That is, the
subroutine is used in its own definition. Recursion can often be used to solve complex
problems by reducing them to simpler problems of the same type.
A reference to one object can be stored in an instance variable of another object. The
objects are then said to be “linked.” Complex data structures can be built by linking objects
together. An especially interesting case occurs when an object contains a link to another
object that belongs to the same class. In that case, the class is used in its own definition.
Several important types of data structures are built using classes of this kind.

9.1 Recursion

At one time or another, you’ve probably been told that you can’t define something in terms of
itself. Nevertheless, if it’s done right, defining something at least partially in terms of itself can be
a very powerful technique. A recursive definition is one that uses the concept or thing that is
being defined as part of the definition. For example: An “ancestor” is either a parent or an
ancestor of a parent. A “sentence” can be, among other things, two sentences joined by a
conjunction such as “and.” A “directory” is a part of a disk drive that can hold files and
directories. In mathematics, a “set” is a collection of elements, which can themselves be sets. A
“statement” in Java can be a while statement, which is made up of the word “while”, a
boolean-valued condition, and a statement.
Recursive definitions can describe very complex situations with just a few words. A def-inition
of the term “ancestor” without using recursion might go something like “a parent, or a
grandparent, or a great-grandparent, or a great-great-grandparent, and so on.” But saying “and
so on” is not very rigorous. (I’ve often thought that recursion is really just a rigorous way of
saying “and so on.”) You run into the same problem if you try to define a “directory” as “a file that
is a list of files, where some of the files can be lists of files, where some of those files can be
lists of files, and so on.” Trying to describe what a Java statement can look like, without using
recursion in the definition, would be difficult and probably pretty comical.

427
428 CHAPTER 9. LINKED DATA STRUCTURES AND RECURSION

Recursion can be used as a programming technique. A recursive subroutine is one

that calls itself, either directly or indirectly. To say that a subroutine calls itself directly means
that its definition contains a subroutine call statement that calls the subroutine that is being
defined. To say that a subroutine calls itself indirectly means that it calls a second
subroutine which in turn calls the first subroutine (either directly or indirectly). A recursive
subroutine can define a complex task in just a few lines of code. In the rest of this section,
we’ll look at a variety of examples, and we’ll see other examples in the rest of the book.

9.1.1 Recursive Binary Search

Let’s start with an example that you’ve seen before: the binary search algorithm from
Subsec-tion 7.4.1. Binary search is used to find a specified value in a sorted list of items (or,
if it does not occur in the list, to determine that fact). The idea is to test the element in the
middle of the list. If that element is equal to the specified value, you are done. If the
specified value is less than the middle element of the list, then you should search for the
value in the first half of the list. Otherwise, you should search for the value in the second half
of the list. The method used to search for the value in the first or second half of the list is
binary search. That is, you look at the middle element in the half of the list that is still under
consideration, and either you’ve found the value you are looking for, or you have to apply
binary search to one half of the remaining elements. And so on! This is a recursive
description, and we can write a recursive subroutine to implement it.
Before we can do that, though, there are two considerations that we need to take into
account. Each of these illustrates an important general fact about recursive subroutines. First of
all, the binary search algorithm begins by looking at the “middle element of the list.” But what if
the list is empty? If there are no elements in the list, then it is impossible to look at the middle
element. In the terminology of Subsection 8.2.1, having a non-empty list is a “precondition” for
looking at the middle element, and this is a clue that we have to modify the algorithm to take this
precondition into account. What should we do if we find ourselves searching for a specified value
in an empty list? The answer is easy: If the list is empty, we can be sure that the value does not
occur in the list, so we can give the answer without any further work. An empty list is a base
case for the binary search algorithm. A base case for a recursive algorithm is a case that is
handled directly, rather than by applying the algorithm recursively. The binary search algorithm
actually has another type of base case: If we find the element we are looking for in the middle of
the list, we are done. There is no need for further recursion.
The second consideration has to do with the parameters to the subroutine. The problem
is phrased in terms of searching for a value in a list. In the original, non-recursive binary
search subroutine, the list was given as an array. However, in the recursive approach, we
have to able to apply the subroutine recursively to just a part of the original list. Where the
original subroutine was designed to search an entire array, the recursive subroutine must be
able to search part of an array. The parameters to the subroutine must tell it what part of the
array to search. This illustrates a general fact that in order to solve a problem recursively, it
is often necessary to generalize the problem slightly.
Here is a recursive binary search algorithm that searches for a given value in part of an
array of integers:
/**
Search in the array A in positions numbered loIndex to hiIndex,
inclusive, for the specified value. If the value is found, return
the index in the array where it occurs. If the value is not found,
9.1. RECURSION 429

return -1. Precondition: The array must be sorted into increasing

order.
*/
static int binarySearch(int[] A, int loIndex, int hiIndex, int value) {

if (loIndex > hiIndex) {

The starting position comes after the final index,
so there are actually no elements in the specified
range. The value does not occur in this empty
list! return -1;
}
else {
Look at the middle position in the list. If the
value occurs at that position, return that position.
Otherwise, search recursively in either the first
half or the second half of the list.
int middle = (loIndex + hiIndex) / 2;
if (value == A[middle])
return middle;
else if (value < A[middle])
return binarySearch(A, loIndex, middle - 1,
value); else // value must be > A[middle]
return binarySearch(A, middle + 1, hiIndex, value);
}
} // end binarySearch()

In this routine, the parameters loIndex and hiIndex specify the part of the array that
is to be searched. To search an entire array, it is only necessary to call binarySearch(A,
0, [Link] - 1, value). In the two base cases—when there are no elements in the
specified range of indices and when the value is found in the middle of the range—the
subroutine can return an answer immediately, without using recursion. In the other cases, it
uses a recursive call to compute the answer and returns that answer.
Most people find it difficult at first to convince themselves that recursion actually works.
The key is to note two things that must be true for recursion to work properly: There must be
one or more base cases, which can be handled without using recursion. And when recursion
is applied during the solution of a problem, it must be applied to a problem that is in some
sense smaller—that is, closer to the base cases—than the original problem. The idea is that
if you can solve small problems and if you can reduce big problems to smaller problems,
then you can solve problems of any size. Ultimately, of course, the big problems have to be
reduced, possibly in many, many steps, to the very smallest problems (the base cases).
Doing so might involve an immense amount of detailed bookkeeping. But the computer does
that bookkeeping, not you! As a programmer, you lay out the big picture: the base cases
and the reduction of big problems to smaller problems. The computer takes care of the
details involved in reducing a big problem, in many steps, all the way down to base cases.
Trying to think through this reduction in detail is likely to drive you crazy, and will probably
make you think that recursion is hard. Whereas in fact, recursion is an elegant and powerful
method that is often the simplest approach to solving a complex problem.
A common error in writing recursive subroutines is to violate one of the two rules: There
must be one or more base cases, and when the subroutine is applied recursively, it must be
applied to a problem that is smaller than the original problem. If these rules are violated, the
430 CHAPTER 9. LINKED DATA STRUCTURES AND RECURSION

result can be an infinite recursion, where the subroutine keeps calling itself over and over,
without ever reaching a base case. Infinite recursion is similar to an infinite loop. However,
since each recursive call to the subroutine uses up some of the computer’s memory, a
program that is stuck in an infinite recursion will run out of memory and crash before long.
(In Java, the program will crash with an exception of type StackOverflowError.)

9.1.2 Towers of Hanoi

Binary search can be implemented with a while loop, instead of with recursion, as was done in
Subsection 7.4.1. Next, we turn to a problem that is easy to solve with recursion but di fficult to
solve without it. This is a standard example known as “The Towers of Hanoi.” The problem
involves a stack of various-sized disks, piled up on a base in order of decreasing size. The
object is to move the stack from one base to another, subject to two rules: Only one disk can be
moved at a time, and no disk can ever be placed on top of a smaller disk. There is a third base
that can be used as a “spare.” The starting situation for a stack of ten disks is shown in the top
half of the following picture. The situation after a number of moves have been made is shown in
the bottom half of the picture. These pictures are from the applet at the end of Section 9.5, which
displays an animation of the step-by-step solution of the problem.

The problem is to move ten disks from Stack 0 to Stack 1, subject to certain rules. Stack 2
can be used as a spare location. Can we reduce this to smaller problems of the same type,
possibly generalizing the problem a bit to make this possible? It seems natural to consider the
size of the problem to be the number of disks to be moved. If there are N disks in Stack 0, we
know that we will eventually have to move the bottom disk from Stack 0 to Stack 1. But before
we can do that, according to the rules, the first N-1 disks must be on Stack 2. Once we’ve moved
the N-th disk to Stack 1, we must move the other N-1 disks from Stack 2 to Stack 1 to complete
the solution. But moving N-1 disks is the same type of problem as moving N disks, except that
it’s a smaller version of the problem. This is exactly what we need to do recursion! The problem has to be
generalized a bit, because the smaller problems involve moving disks from Stack 0 to Stack 2 or from Stack 2 to
Stack 1, instead of from Stack 0 to Stack 1. In the recursive subroutine that solves the problem, the stacks that
serve as the source and destination
9.1. RECURSION 431

of the disks have to be specified. It’s also convenient to specify the stack that is to be used
as a spare, even though we could figure that out from the other two parameters. The base
case is when there is only one disk to be moved. The solution in this case is trivial: Just
move the disk in one step. Here is a version of the subroutine that will print out step-by-step
instructions for solving the problem:
/**
Solve the problem of moving the number of disks specified
by the first parameter from the stack specified by the
second parameter to the stack specified by the third
parameter. The stack specified by the fourth parameter
is available for use as a spare. Stacks are specified by
number: 0, 1, or 2.
*/
static void TowersOfHanoi(int disks, int from, int to, int
spare) { if (disks == 1) {
There is only one disk to be moved. Just move it.
[Link]("Move a disk from stack number "
from + " to stack number " + to);
}
else {
Move all but one disk to the spare stack, then
move the bottom disk, then put all the other
disks on top of it.

from + " to stack number " + to);

TowersOfHanoi(disks-1, spare, to, from);
}
}

This subroutine just expresses the natural recursive solution. The recursion works because
each recursive call involves a smaller number of disks, and the problem is trivial to solve in the
base case, when there is only one disk. To solve the “top level” problem of moving N disks from
Stack 0 to Stack 1, it should be called with the command TowersOfHanoi(N,0,1,2). The
subroutine is demonstrated by the sample program [Link].
Here, for example, is the output from the program when it is run with the number of disks
set equal to 3:
Move a disk from stack number 0 to stack number 2
Move a disk from stack number 0 to stack number 1
Move a disk from stack number 2 to stack number 1
Move a disk from stack number 0 to stack number 2
Move a disk from stack number 1 to stack number 0
Move a disk from stack number 1 to stack number 2
Move a disk from stack number 0 to stack number 2
Move a disk from stack number 0 to stack number 1
Move a disk from stack number 2 to stack number 1
Move a disk from stack number 2 to stack number 0
Move a disk from stack number 1 to stack number 0
Move a disk from stack number 2 to stack number 1
Move a disk from stack number 0 to stack number 2
Move a disk from stack number 0 to stack number 1
Move a disk from stack number 2 to stack number 1
432 CHAPTER 9. LINKED DATA STRUCTURES AND RECURSION

The output of this program shows you a mass of detail that you don’t really want to think
about! The difficulty of following the details contrasts sharply with the simplicity and
elegance of the recursive solution. Of course, you really want to leave the details to the
computer. It’s much more interesting to watch the applet from Section 9.5, which shows the
solution graph-ically. That applet uses the same recursive subroutine, except that the
[Link] statements are replaced by commands that show the image of the
disk being moved from one stack to another.
There is, by the way, a story that explains the name of this problem. According to this
story, on the first day of creation, a group of monks in an isolated tower near Hanoi were
given a stack of 64 disks and were assigned the task of moving one disk every day,
according to the rules of the Towers of Hanoi problem. On the day that they complete their
task of moving all the disks from one stack to another, the universe will come to an end. But
N 64
don’t worry. The number of steps required to solve the problem for N disks is 2 - 1, and 2
- 1 days is over 50,000,000,000,000 years. We have a long way to go.
(In the terminology of Section 8.6, the Towers of Hanoi algorithm has a run time that is
n
Θ(2 ), where n is the number of disks that have to be moved. Since the exponential function
n
2 grows so quickly, the Towers of Hanoi problem can be solved in practice only for a small
number of disks.)
∗∗∗
By the way, in addtion to the graphical Towers of Hanoi applet at the end of this chapter,
there are two other end-of-chapter applets in the on-line version of this text that use
recursion. One is a maze-solving applet from the end of Section 11.5, and the other is a
pentominos applet from the end of Section 10.5.
The Maze applet first builds a random maze. It then tries to solve the maze by finding a
path through the maze from the upper left corner to the lower right corner. This problem is
actually very similar to a “blob-counting” problem that is considered later in this section. The
recursive maze-solving routine starts from a given square, and it visits each neighboring
square and calls itself recursively from there. The recursion ends if the routine finds itself at
the lower right corner of the maze.
The Pentominos applet is an implementation of a classic puzzle. A pentomino is a
connected figure made up of five equal-sized squares. There are exactly twelve figures that
can be made in this way, not counting all the possible rotations and reflections of the basic
figures. The problem is to place the twelve pentominos on an 8-by-8 board in which four of
the squares have already been marked as filled. The recursive solution looks at a board that
has already been partially filled with pentominos. The subroutine looks at each remaining
piece in turn. It tries to place that piece in the next available place on the board. If the piece
fits, it calls itself recursively to try to fill in the rest of the solution. If that fails, then the
subroutine goes on to the next piece. A generalized version of the pentominos applet with
many more features can be found at [Link]
The Maze applet and the Pentominos applet are fun to watch, and they give nice visual
representations of recursion.

9.1.3 A Recursive Sorting Algorithm

Turning next to an application that is perhaps more practical, we ’ll look at a recursive algorithm for
sorting an array. The selection sort and insertion sort algorithms, which were covered in Section 7.4, are fairly
simple, but they are rather slow when applied to large arrays. Faster
9.1. RECURSION 433

sorting algorithms are available. One of these is Quicksort , a recursive algorithm which
turns out to be the fastest sorting algorithm in most situations.
The Quicksort algorithm is based on a simple but clever idea: Given a list of items, select
any item from the list. This item is called the pivot . (In practice, I’ll just use the first item in
the list.) Move all the items that are smaller than the pivot to the beginning of the list, and
move all the items that are larger than the pivot to the end of the list. Now, put the pivot
between the two groups of items. This puts the pivot in the position that it will occupy in the
final, completely sorted array. It will not have to be moved again. We’ll refer to this
procedure as QuicksortStep.

QuicksortStep is not recursive. It is used as a subroutine by Quicksort. The speed of

Quicksort depends on having a fast implementation of QuicksortStep. Since it’s not the main
point of this discussion, I present one without much comment.
/**
Apply QuicksortStep to the list of items in locations lo through hi
in the array A. The value returned by this routine is the final
position of the pivot item in the array.
*/
static int quicksortStep(int[] A, int lo, int hi) {
int pivot = A[lo]; // Get the pivot value.

The numbers hi and lo mark the endpoints of a range

of numbers that have not yet been tested. Decrease hi
and increase lo until they become equal, moving numbers
bigger than pivot so that they lie above hi and moving
numbers less than the pivot so that they lie below lo.
When we begin, A[lo] is an available space, since it used
to hold the pivot.
while (hi > lo) {
while (hi > lo && A[hi] > pivot) {
Move hi down past numbers greater than pivot.
These numbers do not have to be moved.
hi--;
}
if (hi == lo)
break;
434 CHAPTER 9. LINKED DATA STRUCTURES AND RECURSION

The number A[hi] is less than pivot. Move it into

the available space at A[lo], leaving an available
space at A[hi].
A[lo] = A[hi];
lo++;
while (hi > lo && A[lo] < pivot) {
Move lo up past numbers less than pivot.
These numbers do not have to be moved.
lo++;
}
if (hi == lo)
break;
The number A[lo] is greater than pivot. Move it into
the available space at A[hi], leaving an available
space at A[lo].
A[hi] = A[lo];
hi--;
} // end while
At this point, lo has become equal to hi, and there is
an available space at that position. This position lies
between numbers less than pivot and numbers greater than
pivot. Put pivot in this space and return its location.
A[lo] = pivot;
return lo;
} // end QuicksortStep

With this subroutine in hand, Quicksort is easy. The Quicksort algorithm for sorting a list
consists of applying QuicksortStep to the list, then applying Quicksort recursively to the items
that lie to the left of the new position of the pivot and to the items that lie to the right of that
position. Of course, we need base cases. If the list has only one item, or no items, then the list is
already as sorted as it can ever be, so Quicksort doesn’t have to do anything in these cases.
/**
Apply quicksort to put the array elements between
position lo and position hi into increasing
order. */
static void quicksort(int[] A, int lo,
int hi) { if (hi <= lo) {
The list has length one or zero. Nothing needs
to be done, so just return from the
subroutine. return;
}
else {
Apply quicksortStep and get the new pivot position.
Then apply quicksort to sort the items that
precede the pivot and the items that follow it.
int pivotPosition = quicksortStep(A, lo, hi); quicksort(A, lo,
pivotPosition - 1); quicksort(A, pivotPosition + 1, hi);
9.1. RECURSION 435

}
}

As usual, we had to generalize the problem. The original problem was to sort an array, but
the recursive algorithm is set up to sort a specified part of an array. To sort an entire array, A,
using the quickSort() subroutine, you would call quicksort(A, 0, [Link] - 1).
Quicksort is an interesting example from the point of view of the analysis of algorithms
(Section 8.6), because its average case run time di ffers greatly from its worst case run time.
Here is a very informal analysis, starting with the average case: Note that an application of
quicksortStep divides a problem into two sub-problems. On the average, the subproblems will be
of approximately the same size. A problem of size n is divided into two problems that are roughly
of size n/2; these are then divided into four problems that are roughly of size n/4; and so on.
Since the problem size is divided by 2 on each level, there will be approximately log(n) levels of
subdivision. The amount of processing on each level is proportional to n. (On the top level, each
element in the array is looked at and possibly moved. On the second level, where there are two
subproblems, every element but one in the array is part of one of those two subproblems and
must be looked at and possibly moved, so there is a total of about n steps in both subproblems
combined. Similarly, on the third level, there are four subproblems and a total of about n steps in
all four subproblems combined on that level. . . .) With a total of n steps on each level and
approximately log(n) levels in the average case, the average case run time for Quicksort is
Θ(n*log(n)). This analysis assumes that quicksortStep divides a problem into two approximately
equal parts. However, in the worst case, each application of quicksortStep divides a problem of
size n into a problem of size 0 and a problem of size n-1. This happens when the pivot element
ends up at the beginning or end of the array. In this worst case, there are n levels of
2
subproblems, and the worst-case run time is Θ(n ). The worst case is very rare—it depends on
the items in the array being arranged in a very special way, so the average performance of
Quicksort can be very good even though it is not so good in certain rare cases. There are sorting
algorithms that have both an average case and a worst case run time of Θ(n*log(n)). One
example is MergeSort, which you can look up if you are interested.

9.1.4 Blob Counting

The program [Link] displays a grid of small white and gray squares. The gray squares
are considered to be “filled” and the white squares are “empty.” For the purposes of this
example, we define a “blob” to consist of a filled square and all the filled squares that can be
reached from it by moving up, down, left, and right through other filled squares. If the user
clicks on any filled square in the program, the computer will count the squares in the blob
that contains the clicked square, and it will change the color of those squares to red. The
program has several controls. There is a “New Blobs” button; clicking this button will create
a new random pattern in the grid. A pop-up menu specifies the approximate percentage of
squares that will be filled in the new pattern. The more filled squares, the larger the blobs.
And a button labeled “Count the Blobs” will tell you how many different blobs there are in the
pattern. You can try an applet version of the program in the on-line version of the book. Here
is a picture of the program after the user has clicked one of the filled squares:
436 CHAPTER 9. LINKED DATA STRUCTURES AND RECURSION

Recursion is used in this program to count the number of squares in a blob. Without recursion,
this would be a very difficult thing to implement. Recursion makes it relatively easy, but it still
requires a new technique, which is also useful in a number of other applications. The data for the
grid of squares is stored in a two dimensional array of boolean values,
boolean[][] filled;

The value of filled[r][c] is true if the square in row r and in column c of the grid is
filled. The number of rows in the grid is stored in an instance variable named rows, and the
number of columns is stored in columns. The program uses a recursive instance method
named getBlobSize() to count the number of squares in the blob that contains the
square in a given row r and column c. If there is no filled square at position (r,c), then
the answer is zero. Otherwise, getBlobSize() has to count all the filled squares that can
be reached from the square at position (r,c). The idea is to use getBlobSize()
recursively to get the number of filled squares that can be reached from each of the
neighboring positions, (r+1,c), (r-1,c), (r,c+1), and (r,c-1). Add up these
numbers, and add one to count the square at (r,c) itself, and you get the total number of
filled squares that can be reached from (r,c). Here is an implementation of this algorithm,
as stated. Unfortunately, it has a serious flaw: It leads to an infinite recursion!
int getBlobSize(int r, int c) { // BUGGY, INCORRECT VERSION!!
This INCORRECT method tries to count all the filled
squares that can be reached from position (r,c) in the
grid. if (r < 0 || r >= rows || c < 0 || c >= columns) {
This position is not in the grid, so there is
no blob at this position. Return a blob size of
zero. return 0;
}
if (filled[r][c] == false) {
This square is not part of a blob, so return
zero. return 0;
}
int size = 1; // Count the square at this position, then count the
9.1. RECURSION 437

the blobs that are connected to this square

horizontally or vertically.
size += getBlobSize(r-1,c);
size += getBlobSize(r+1,c);
size += getBlobSize(r,c-1);
size += getBlobSize(r,c+1);
return size;
} // end INCORRECT getBlobSize()

Unfortunately, this routine will count the same square more than once. In fact, it will try to
count each square infinitely often! Think of yourself standing at position (r,c) and trying to
follow these instructions. The first instruction tells you to move up one row. You do that, and
then you apply the same procedure. As one of the steps in that procedure, you have to
move down one row and apply the same procedure yet again. But that puts you back at
position (r,c)! From there, you move up one row, and from there you move down one row.
. . . Back and forth forever! We have to make sure that a square is only counted and
processed once, so we don’t end up going around in circles. The solution is to leave a trail
of breadcrumbs—or on the computer a trail of boolean values—to mark the squares that
you’ve already visited. Once a square is marked as visited, it won’t be processed again. The
remaining, unvisited squares are reduced in number, so definite progress has been made in
reducing the size of the problem. Infinite recursion is avoided!
A second boolean array, visited[r][c], is used to keep track of which squares have
already been visited and processed. It is assumed that all the values in this array are set to
false before getBlobSize() is called. As getBlobSize() encounters unvisited squares,
it marks them as visited by setting the corresponding entry in the visited array to true.
When getBlobSize() encounters a square that is already visited, it doesn’t count it or
process it further. The technique of “marking” items as they are encountered is one that
used over and over in the programming of recursive algorithms. Here is the corrected
version of getBlobSize(), with changes shown in italic:
/**
Counts the squares in the blob at position (r,c) in the
grid. Squares are only counted if they are filled and
unvisited. If this routine is called for a position that
has been visited, the return value will be zero.
*/
int getBlobSize(int r, int c) {
if (r < 0 || r >= rows || c < 0 || c >= columns) {
This position is not in the grid, so there is
no blob at this position. Return a blob size of
zero. return 0;
}
if (filled[r][c] == false || visited[r][c] == true) {
This square is not part of a blob, or else it has
already been counted, so return zero.
return 0;
}
visited[r][c] = true;

// Mark the square as visited so that

we won’t count it again during the
following recursive calls.
int size = 1; // Count the square at this position, then count
the // the blobs that are connected to this square
438 CHAPTER 9. LINKED DATA STRUCTURES AND RECURSION

horizontally or vertically.
size += getBlobSize(r-1,c);
size += getBlobSize(r+1,c);
size += getBlobSize(r,c-1);
size += getBlobSize(r,c+1);
return size;
} // end getBlobSize()

In the program, this method is used to determine the size of a blob when the user clicks on a
square. After getBlobSize() has performed its task, all the squares in the blob are still
marked as visited. The paintComponent() method draws visited squares in red, which
makes the blob visible. The getBlobSize() method is also used for counting blobs. This is
done by the following method, which includes comments to explain how it works:
/**
When the user clicks the "Count the Blobs" button, find the
number of blobs in the grid and report the number in the
message label.
*/
void countBlobs() {

int count = 0; // Number of blobs.

/* First clear out the visited array. The getBlobSize() method

will mark every filled square that it finds by setting the
corresponding element of the array to true. Once a square
has been marked as visited, it will stay marked until all
the blobs have been counted. This will prevent the same blob
from being counted more than once. */

for (int r = 0; r < rows; r++)

for (int c = 0; c < columns; c++)
visited[r][c] = false;

/* For each position in the grid, call getBlobSize() to get

the size of the blob at that position. If the size is not
zero, count a blob. Note that if we come to a position
that was part of a previously counted blob, getBlobSize()
will return 0 and the blob will not be counted again. */

for (int r = 0; r < rows; r++)

for (int c = 0; c < columns; c++) {
if (getBlobSize(r,c) > 0)
count++;
}

repaint(); // Note that all the filled squares will be red,

since they have all now been visited.

[Link]("The number of blobs is " + count);

} // end countBlobs()
9.2. LINKED DATA STRUCTURES 439

9.2 Linked Data Structures

Every useful object contains instance variables. When the type of an instance variable is given
by a class or interface name, the variable can hold a reference to another object. Such a
reference is also called a pointer, and we say that the variable points to the object. (Of course,
any variable that can contain a reference to an object can also contain the special value null,
which points to nowhere.) When one object contains an instance variable that points to another
object, we think of the objects as being “linked” by the pointer. Data structures of great
complexity can be constructed by linking objects together.

9.2.1 Recursive Linking

Something interesting happens when an object contains an instance variable that can refer to
another object of the same type. In that case, the definition of the object’s class is recursive.
Such recursion arises naturally in many cases. For example, consider a class designed to repre-
sent employees at a company. Suppose that every employee except the boss has a supervisor,
who is another employee of the company. Then the Employee class would naturally contain an
instance variable of type Employee that points to the employee’s supervisor:
/**
An object of type Employee holds data about one
employee. */
public class Employee {
String name; // Name of the employee.

Employee supervisor; // The employee’s supervisor.

.
// (Other instance variables and methods.)

} // end class Employee

If emp is a variable of type Employee, then [Link] is another variable of

type Employee. If emp refers to the boss, then the value of [Link] should be
null to indicate the fact that the boss has no supervisor. If we wanted to print out the name
of the employee’s supervisor, for example, we could use the following Java statement:
if ( [Link] == null) {
[Link]( [Link] + " is the boss and has no supervisor!" );
}
else {
[Link]( "The supervisor of " + [Link] + "
is " ); [Link]( [Link] );
}

Now, suppose that we want to know how many levels of supervisors there are between a
given employee and the boss. We just have to follow the chain of command through a series
of supervisor links, and count how many steps it takes to get to the boss:
if ( [Link] == null ) {
[Link]( [Link] + " is the boss!" );
}
else {
440 CHAPTER 9. LINKED DATA STRUCTURES AND RECURSION

Employee runner; // For "running" up the chain of command.

runner = [Link];
if ( [Link] == null) {
[Link]( [Link] + " reports directly to the boss." );
}
else {
int count = 0;
while ( [Link] != null ) {
count++; // Count the supervisor on this level.
runner = [Link]; // Move up to the next level.
}
[Link]( "There are " + count
" supervisors between " + [Link]
" and the boss." );
}
}

As the while loop is executed, runner points in turn to the original employee, emp, then
to emp’s supervisor, then to the supervisor of emp’s supervisor, and so on. The count
variable is incremented each time runner “visits” a new employee. The loop ends when
[Link] is null, which indicates that runner has reached the boss. At
that point, count has counted the number of steps between emp and the boss.
In this example, the supervisor variable is quite natural and useful. In fact, data
structures that are built by linking objects together are so useful that they are a major topic
of study in computer science. We’ll be looking at a few typical examples. In this section and
the next, we’ll be looking at linked lists. A linked list consists of a chain of objects of the
same type, linked together by pointers from one object to the next. This is much like the
chain of supervisors between emp and the boss in the above example. It’s also possible to
have more complex situations, in which one object can contain links to several other objects.
We’ll look at an example of this in Section 9.4.
9.2. LINKED DATA STRUCTURES 441

9.2.2 Linked Lists

For most of the examples in the rest of this section, linked lists will be constructed out of
objects belonging to the class Node which is defined as follows:
class Node {
String item;
Node next;
}

The term node is often used to refer to one of the objects in a linked data structure. Objects of
type Node can be chained together as shown in the top part of the above picture. Each node
holds a String and a pointer to the next node in the list (if any). The last node in such a list can
always be identified by the fact that the instance variable next in the last node holds the value
null instead of a pointer to another node. The purpose of the chain of nodes is to represent a
list of strings. The first string in the list is stored in the first node, the second string is stored in the
second node, and so on. The pointers and the node objects are used to build the structure, but
the data that we are interested in representing is the list of strings. Of course, we could just as
easily represent a list of integers or a list of JButtons or a list of any other type of data by
changing the type of the item that is stored in each node.
Although the Nodes in this example are very simple, we can use them to illustrate the
common operations on linked lists. Typical operations include deleting nodes from the list,
inserting new nodes into the list, and searching for a specified String among the items in
the list. We will look at subroutines to perform all of these operations, among others.
For a linked list to be used in a program, that program needs a variable that refers to the first
node in the list. It only needs a pointer to the first node since all the other nodes in the list can be
accessed by starting at the first node and following links along the list from one node to the next.
In my examples, I will always use a variable named head, of type Node, that points to the first
node in the linked list. When the list is empty, the value of head is null.

9.2.3 Basic Linked List Processing

It is very common to want to process all the items in a linked list in some way. The common
pattern is to start at the head of the list, then move from each node to the next by by
following the pointer in the node, stopping when the null that marks the end of the list is
reached. If head is a variable of type Node that points to the first node in the list, then the
general form of the code is:
Node runner; // A pointer that will be used to traverse the list.
runner = head; // Start with runner pointing to the head of the list.
while ( runner != null ) { // Continue until null is encountered.
process( [Link] ); // Do something with the item in the current node.
 442 CHAPTER 9. LINKED DATA STRUCTURES AND RECURSION
runner = [Link]; // Move on to the next node in the list.

Our only access to the list is through the variable head, so we start by getting a copy of the
value in head with the assignment statement runner = head. We need a copy of head
because we are going to change the value of runner. We can’t change the value of head, or
we would lose our only access to the list! The variable runner will point to each node of the list
in turn. When runner points to one of the nodes in the list, [Link] is a pointer to the
next node in the list, so the assignment statement runner = [Link] moves the pointer
along the list from each node to the next. We know that we’ve reached the end of the list when
runner becomes equal to null. Note that our list-processing code works even for an empty
list, since for an empty list the value of head is null and the body of the while loop is not
executed at all. As an example, we can print all the strings in a list of Strings by saying:
Node runner = head;
while ( runner != null ) {
[Link]( [Link] );
runner = [Link];
}

The while loop can, by the way, be rewritten as a for loop. Remember that even though
the loop control variable in a for loop is often numerical, that is not a requirement. Here is
a for loop that is equivalent to the above while loop:
for ( Node runner = head; runner != null; runner =
[Link] ) { [Link]( [Link] );
}

Similarly, we can traverse a list of integers to add up all the numbers in the list. A linked
list of integers can be constructed using the class
public class IntNode {
int item; // One of the integers in the list.
IntNode next; // Pointer to the next node in the list.
}

If head is a variable of type IntNode that points to a linked list of integers, we can find the
sum of the integers in the list using:
int sum = 0;
IntNode runner = head;
while ( runner != null ) {
sum = sum + [Link]; // Add current item to the sum.
runner = [Link];
}
[Link]("The sum of the list items is " + sum);

It is also possible to use recursion to process a linked list. Recursion is rarely the natural way
to process a list, since it’s so easy to use a loop to traverse the list. However, understanding how
to apply recursion to lists can help with understanding the recursive processing of more complex
data structures. A non-empty linked list can be thought of as consisting of two parts: the head of
the list, which is just the first node in the list, and the tail of the list, which consists of the remainder of
the list after the head. Note that the tail is itself a linked list and that it is shorter than the original list (by one
node). This is a natural setup for recursion, where the problem of processing a list can be divided into
processing the head and recursively
9.2. LINKED DATA STRUCTURES 443

processing the tail. The base case occurs in the case of an empty list (or sometimes in the
case of a list of length one). For example, here is a recursive algorithm for adding up the
numbers in a linked list of integers:
if the list is empty then
return 0 (since there are no numbers to be added up)
otherwise
let listsum = the number in the head node
let tailsum be the sum of the numbers in the tail list (recursively)
add tailsum to listsum
return listsum

One remaining question is, how do we get the tail of a non-empty linked list? If head is a
variable that points to the head node of the list, then [Link] is a variable that points to the
second node of the list—and that node is in fact the first node of the tail. So, we can view
[Link] as a pointer to the tail of the list. One special case is when the original list consists
of a single node. In that case, the tail of the list is empty, and [Link] is null. Since an
empty list is represented by a null pointer, [Link] represents the tail of the list even in this
special case. This allows us to write a recursive list-summing function in Java as
/**
Compute the sum of all the integers in a linked list of integers.
@param head a pointer to the first node in the linked list
*/
public static int addItemsInList( IntNode
head ) { if ( head == null ) {
Base case: The list is empty, so the sum is
zero. return 0;
}
else {
Recursive case: The list is non-empty. Find the sum of
the tail list, and add that to the item in the head node.
(Note that this case could be written simply as
return [Link] + addItemsInList( [Link] );)
int listsum = [Link];
int tailsum = addItemsInList( [Link] );
listsum = listsum + tailsum;
return listsum;
}
}

I will finish by presenting a list-processing problem that is easy to solve with recursion,
but quite tricky to solve without it. The problem is to print out all the strings in a linked list of
strings in the reverse of the order in which they occur in the list. Note that when we do this,
the item in the head of a list is printed out after all the items in the tail of the list. This leads
to the following recursive routine. You should convince yourself that it works, and you should
think about trying to do the same thing without using recursion:
public static void printReversed( Node
head ) { if ( head == null ) {
Base case: The list is empty, and there is nothing to
print. return;
}
else {
444 CHAPTER 9. LINKED DATA STRUCTURES AND RECURSION

// Recursive case: The list is non-empty.

printReversed( [Link] ); // Print strings in tail, in reverse
order.
[Link]( [Link] ); // Print string in head node.
}
}

∗∗∗
In the rest of this section, we’ll look at a few more advanced operations on a linked list of
strings. The subroutines that we consider are instance methods in a class, StringList. An object
of type StringList represents a linked list of nodes. The class has a private instance variable
named head of type Node that points to the first node in the list, or is null if the list is empty.
Instance methods in class StringList access head as a global variable. The source code for
StringList is in the file [Link], and it is used in the sample program [Link].
Suppose we want to know whether a specified string, searchItem, occurs somewhere
in a list of strings. We have to compare searchItem to each item in the list. This is an
example of basic list traversal and processing. However, in this case, we can stop
processing if we find the item that we are looking for.
/**
Searches the list for a specified item.
@param searchItem the item that is to be searched for
@return true if searchItem is one of the items in the list or false if
searchItem does not occur in the list.
*/
public boolean find(String searchItem) {

Node runner; // A pointer for traversing the list.

runner = head; // Start by looking at the head of the list.

(head is an instance variable! )

while ( runner != null ) {

Go through the list looking at the string in each
node. If the string is the one we are looking for,
return true, since the string has been found in the
list. if ( [Link](searchItem) )
return true;
runner = [Link]; // Move on to the next node.
}

At this point, we have looked at all the items in the list

without finding searchItem. Return false to indicate that
the item does not exist in the list.

return false;

} // end find()

It is possible that the list is empty, that is, that the value of head is null. We should be
careful that this case is handled properly. In the above code, if head is null, then the body of
the while loop is never executed at all, so no nodes are processed and the return value is
false. This is exactly what we want when the list is empty, since the searchItem can’t occur
in an empty list.
9.2. LINKED DATA STRUCTURES 445

9.2.4 Inserting into a Linked List

The problem of inserting a new item into a linked list is more di fficult, at least in the case where
the item is inserted into the middle of the list. (In fact, it’s probably the most di fficult operation on
linked data structures that you’ll encounter in this chapter.) In the StringList class, the items in
the nodes of the linked list are kept in increasing order. When a new item is inserted into the list,
it must be inserted at the correct position according to this ordering. This means that, usually, we
will have to insert the new item somewhere in the middle of the list, between two existing nodes.
To do this, it’s convenient to have two variables of type Node, which refer to the existing nodes
that will lie on either side of the new node. In the following illustration, these variables are
previous and runner. Another variable, newNode, refers to the new node. In order to do the
insertion, the link from previous to runner must be “broken,” and new links from previous
to newNode and from newNode to runner must be added:

Once we have previous and runner pointing to the right nodes, the command
“[Link] = newNode;” can be used to make [Link] point to the new
node, instead of to the node indicated by runner. And the command “[Link] =
runner” will set [Link] to point to the correct place. However, before we can use
these commands, we need to set up runner and previous as shown in the illustration.
The idea is to start at the first node of the list, and then move along the list past all the items
that are less than the new item. While doing this, we have to be aware of the danger of
“falling off the end of the list.” That is, we can’t continue if runner reaches the end of the
list and becomes null. If insertItem is the item that is to be inserted, and if we assume
that it does, in fact, belong somewhere in the middle of the list, then the following code
would correctly position previous and runner:
Node runner, previous;
previous = head; // Start at the beginning of the list.
runner = [Link];
while ( runner != null && [Link](insertItem)
< 0 ) { previous = runner; // "previous = [Link]"
would also work runner = [Link];
}
446 CHAPTER 9. LINKED DATA STRUCTURES AND RECURSION

(This uses the compareTo() instance method from the String class to test whether the
item in the node is less than the item that is being inserted. See Subsection 2.3.2.)
This is fine, except that the assumption that the new node is inserted into the middle of
the list is not always valid. It might be that insertItem is less than the first item of the list.
In that case, the new node must be inserted at the head of the list. This can be done with
the instructions
[Link] = head; // Make [Link] point to the old head.
head = newNode; // Make newNode the new head of the list.

It is also possible that the list is empty. In that case, newNode will become the first and only
node in the list. This can be accomplished simply by setting head = newNode. The
following insert() method from the StringList class covers all of these possibilities:
/**
Insert a specified item to the list, keeping the list in order.
@param insertItem the item that is to be inserted.
*/
public void insert(String insertItem) {
Node newNode; newNode // A Node to contain the new item.
= new Node();
[Link] = insertItem; // (N.B. [Link] is null.)

if ( head == null ) {
The new item is the first (and only) one in the list.
Set head to point to it.
head = newNode;
}
else if ( [Link](insertItem) >= 0 ) {
The new item is less than the first item in the list,
so it has to be inserted at the head of the
list. [Link] = head;
head = newNode;
}
else {
The new item belongs somewhere after the first item
in the list. Search for its proper position and insert it.
Node runner; // A node for traversing the list.
Node previous; // Always points to the node preceding runner.
runner = [Link]; // Start by looking at the SECOND position.
previous = head;
while ( runner != null && [Link](insertItem) < 0 ) {
Move previous and runner along the list until runner
falls off the end or hits a list element that is
greater than or equal to insertItem. When this
loop ends, runner indicates the position where
insertItem must be inserted.
previous = runner;
runner = [Link];
}
[Link] = runner; // Insert newNode after previous.
[Link] = newNode;
}

} // end insert()
9.2. LINKED DATA STRUCTURES 447

If you were paying close attention to the above discussion, you might have noticed that
there is one special case which is not mentioned. What happens if the new node has to be
inserted at the end of the list? This will happen if all the items in the list are less than the
new item. In fact, this case is already handled correctly by the subroutine, in the last part of
the if statement. If insertItem is greater than all the items in the list, then the while
loop will end when runner has traversed the entire list and become null. However,
when that happens, previous will be left pointing to the last node in the list. Setting
[Link] = newNode adds newNode onto the end of the list. Since runner is
null, the command [Link] = runner sets [Link] to null, which is
the correct value that is needed to mark the end of the list.

9.2.5 Deleting from a Linked List

The delete operation is similar to insert, although a little simpler. There are still special cases
to consider. When the first node in the list is to be deleted, then the value of head has to be
changed to point to what was previously the second node in the list. Since [Link]
refers to the second node in the list, this can be done by setting head = [Link].
(Once again, you should check that this works when [Link] is null, that is, when
there is no second node in the list. In that case, the list becomes empty.)
If the node that is being deleted is in the middle of the list, then we can set up
previous and runner with runner pointing to the node that is to be deleted and with
previous pointing to the node that precedes that node in the list. Once that is done, the
command “[Link] = [Link];” will delete the node. The deleted node will
be garbage collected. I encourage you to draw a picture for yourself to illustrate this
operation. Here is the complete code for the delete() method:
/**
Delete a specfied item from the list, if that item is present.
If multiple copies of the item are present in the list, only
the one that comes first in the list is deleted.
@param deleteItem the item to be deleted
@return true if the item was found and deleted, or false if the item
was not in the list.
*/
public boolean delete(String deleteItem) {
if ( head == null ) {
The list is empty, so it certainly doesn’t contain
deleteString. return false;
}
else if ( [Link](deleteItem) ) {
The string is the first item of the list. Remove
it. head = [Link];
return true;
}
else {
The string, if it occurs at all, is somewhere beyond the
first element of the list. Search the list.
Node runner; // A node for traversing the list.
Node previous; // Always points to the node preceding runner.
runner = [Link]; // Start by looking at the SECOND list node.
previous = head;
448 CHAPTER 9. LINKED DATA STRUCTURES AND RECURSION

while ( runner != null && [Link](deleteItem) < 0 ) {

Move previous and runner along the list until runner
falls off the end or hits a list element that is
greater than or equal to deleteItem. When this
loop ends, runner indicates the position where
deleteItem must be, if it is in the list.
previous = runner;
runner = [Link];
}
if ( runner != null && [Link](deleteItem) ) {
Runner points to the node that is to be deleted.
Remove it by changing the pointer in the previous
node. [Link] = [Link];
return true;
}
else {
The item does not exist in the
list. return false;
}
}

} // end delete()

9.3 Stacks, Queues, and ADTs

A linked list is a particular type of data structure, made up of objects linked together by pointers.
In the previous section, we used a linked list to store an ordered list of Strings, and we
implemented insert, delete, and find operations on that list. However, we could easily
have stored the list of Strings in an array or ArrayList, instead of in a linked list. We could still
have implemented the same operations on the list. The implementations of these operations
would have been different, but their interfaces and logical behavior would still be the same.
The term abstract data type, or ADT , refers to a set of possible values and a set of
operations on those values, without any specification of how the values are to be represented or
how the operations are to be implemented. An “ordered list of strings” can be defined as an
abstract data type. Any sequence of Strings that is arranged in increasing order is a possible
value of this data type. The operations on the data type include inserting a new string, deleting a
string, and finding a string in the list. There are often several di fferent ways to implement the
same abstract data type. For example, the “ordered list of strings” ADT can be implemented as a
linked list or as an array. A program that only depends on the abstract definition of the ADT can
use either implementation, interchangeably. In particular, the implementation of the ADT can be
changed without affecting the program as a whole. This can make the program easier to debug
and maintain, so ADTs are an important tool in software engineering.
In this section, we’ll look at two common abstract data types, stacks and queues. Both
stacks and queues are often implemented as linked lists, but that is not the only possible implementation. You
should think of the rest of this section partly as a discussion of stacks and queues and partly as a case study in
ADTs.
9.3. STACKS, QUEUES, AND ADTS 449

9.3.1 Stacks

A stack consists of a sequence of items, which should be thought of as piled one on top of the
other like a physical stack of boxes or cafeteria trays. Only the top item on the stack is
accessible at any given time. It can be removed from the stack with an operation called pop. An
item lower down on the stack can only be removed after all the items on top of it have been
popped off the stack. A new item can be added to the top of the stack with an operation called
push . We can make a stack of any type of items. If, for example, the items are values of type
int, then the push and pop operations can be implemented as instance methods
void push (int newItem) — Add newItem to top of stack.
int pop() — Remove the top int from the stack and return it.

It is an error to try to pop an item from an empty stack, so it is important to be able to tell
whether a stack is empty. We need another stack operation to do the test, implemented as
an instance method
boolean isEmpty() — Returns true if the stack is empty.

This defines a “stack of ints” as an abstract data type. This ADT can be implemented in
several ways, but however it is implemented, its behavior must correspond to the abstract
mental image of a stack.

In the linked list implementation of a stack, the top of the stack is actually the node at the
head of the list. It is easy to add and remove nodes at the front of a linked list—much easier than
inserting and deleting nodes in the middle of the list. Here is a class that implements the “stack
of ints” ADT using a linked list. (It uses a static nested class to represent the nodes of the linked
list. If the nesting bothers you, you could replace it with a separate Node class.)
public class StackOfInts {
/**
An object of type Node holds one of the items in the linked list
that represents the stack.
*/
450 CHAPTER 9. LINKED DATA STRUCTURES AND RECURSION

private static class Node {

int item;
Node next;
}
private Node top; Pointer to the Node that is at the top of
of the stack. If top == null, then the
stack is empty.
/**
Add N to the top of the
stack. */
public void push( int N ) {
Node newTop; // A Node to hold the new item.
newTop = new Node();
[Link] = N; // Store N in the new Node.
[Link] = top; // The new Node points to the old top.
top = newTop; // The new item is now on top.
}
/**
Remove the top item from the stack, and return it.
Throws an IllegalStateException if the stack is empty when
this method is called.
*/
public int pop() {
if ( top == null )
throw new IllegalStateException("Can’t pop from an empty
stack."); int topItem = [Link]; // The item that is being popped.
top = [Link]; // The previous second item is now on top.
return topItem;
}
/**
Returns true if the stack is empty. Returns false
if there are one or more items on the stack.
*/
public boolean isEmpty() {
return (top == null);
}
} // end class StackOfInts

You should make sure that you understand how the push and pop operations operate on
the linked list. Drawing some pictures might help. Note that the linked list is part of the
private implementation of the StackOfInts class. A program that uses this class doesn’t
even need to know that a linked list is being used.
Now, it’s pretty easy to implement a stack as an array instead of as a linked list. Since the
number of items on the stack varies with time, a counter is needed to keep track of how many
spaces in the array are actually in use. If this counter is called top, then the items on the stack
are stored in positions 0, 1, . . . , top-1 in the array. The item in position 0 is on the bottom of the
stack, and the item in position top-1 is on the top of the stack. Pushing an item onto the stack is
easy: Put the item in position top and add 1 to the value of top. If we don ’t want to put a limit on the
number of items that the stack can hold, we can use the dynamic array techniques from Subsection 7.3.2.
Note that the typical picture of the array would show the
9.3. STACKS, QUEUES, AND ADTS 451

stack “upside down”, with the top of the stack at the bottom of the array. This doesn’t matter.
The array is just an implementation of the abstract idea of a stack, and as long as the stack
operations work the way they are supposed to, we are OK. Here is a second implementation
of the StackOfInts class, using a dynamic array:
public class StackOfInts { // (alternate version, using an array)
private int[] items = new int[10]; // Holds the items on the stack.

private int top = 0; // The number of items currently on the stack.

/**
Add N to the top of the
stack. */
public void push( int N ) {
if (top == [Link]) {
The array is full, so make a new, larger array and
copy the current stack items into it.
int[] newArray = new int[ 2*[Link] ];
[Link](items, 0, newArray, 0,
[Link]); items = newArray;
}
items[top] = N; // Put N in next available spot.
top++; // Number of items goes up by one.
}
/**
Remove the top item from the stack, and return it.
Throws an IllegalStateException if the stack is empty when
this method is called.
*/
public int pop() {
if ( top == 0 )
throw new IllegalStateException("Can’t pop from an empty
stack."); int topItem = items[top - 1] // Top item in the stack.
top--; // Number of items on the stack goes down by one.
return topItem;
}
/**
Returns true if the stack is empty. Returns false
if there are one or more items on the stack.
*/
public boolean isEmpty() {
return (top == 0);
}
} // end class StackOfInts

Once again, the implentation of the stack (as an array) is private to the class. The two versions
of the StackOfInts class can be used interchangeably, since their public interfaces are identical.
∗∗∗
It’s interesting to look at the run time analysis of stack operations. (See Section 8.6). We can
measure the size of the problem by the number of items that are on the stack. For the linked list
implementation of a stack, the worst case run time both for the push and for the pop
452 CHAPTER 9. LINKED DATA STRUCTURES AND RECURSION

operation is Θ(1). This just means that the run time is less than some constant, independent
of the number of items on the stack. This is easy to see if you look at the code. The
operations are implemented with a few simple assignment statements, and the number of
items on the stack has no effect.
For the array implementation, on the other hand, a special case occurs in the push
operation when the array is full. In that case, a new array is created and all the stack items
are copied into the new array. This takes an amount of time that is proportional to the
number of items on the stack. So, although the run time for push is usually Θ(1), the worst
case run time is Θ(n), where n is the number of items on the stack.

9.3.2 Queues
Queues are similar to stacks in that a queue consists of a sequence of items, and there are
restrictions about how items can be added to and removed from the list. However, a queue
has two ends, called the front and the back of the queue. Items are always added to the
queue at the back and removed from the queue at the front. The operations of adding and
removing items are called enqueue and dequeue. An item that is added to the back of the
queue will remain on the queue until all the items in front of it have been removed. This
should sound familiar. A queue is like a “line” or “queue” of customers waiting for service.
Customers are serviced in the order in which they arrive on the queue.

A queue can hold items of any type. For a queue of ints, the enqueue and dequeue
operations can be implemented as instance methods in a “QueueOfInts ” class. We also
need an instance method for checking whether the queue is empty:
void enqueue(int N) — Add N to the back of the queue.
int dequeue() — Remove the item at the front and return it.
boolean isEmpty() — Return true if the queue is empty.
A queue can be implemented as a linked list or as an array. An efficient array
implementation is a little trickier than the array implementation of a stack, so I won ’t give it here. In
the linked
9.3. STACKS, QUEUES, AND ADTS 453

list implementation, the first item of the list is at the front of the queue. Dequeueing an item
from the front of the queue is just like popping an item o ff a stack. The back of the queue is
at the end of the list. Enqueueing an item involves setting a pointer in the last node of the
current list to point to a new node that contains the item. To do this, we’ll need a command
like “[Link] = newNode;”, where tail is a pointer to the last node in the list. If
head is a pointer to the first node of the list, it would always be possible to get a pointer to
the last node of the list by saying:
Node tail; // This will point to the last node in the list.
tail = head; // Start at the first node.
while ([Link] != null) {
tail = [Link]; // Move to next node.
}
At this point, [Link] is null, so tail points to
the last node in the list.

However, it would be very inefficient to do this over and over every time an item is
enqueued. For the sake of efficiency, we’ll keep a pointer to the last node in an instance
variable. This complicates the class somewhat; we have to be careful to update the value of
this variable whenever a new node is added to the end of the list. Given all this, writing the
QueueOfInts class is not all that difficult:
public class QueueOfInts {
/**
An object of type Node holds one of the items
in the linked list that represents the
queue. */
private static class Node {
int item;
Node next;
}
private Node head = null; // Points to first Node in the queue.
The queue is empty when head is null.
private Node tail = null; // Points to last Node in the queue.
/**
Add N to the back of the
queue. */
public void enqueue( int N ) {
Node newTail = new Node(); // A Node to hold the new item.
[Link] = N;
if (head == null) {
The queue was empty. The new Node becomes
the only node in the list. Since it is both
the first and last node, both head and tail
point to it.
head = newTail;
tail = newTail;
}
else {
The new node becomes the new tail of the list.
(The head of the list is unaffected.)
454 CHAPTER 9. LINKED DATA STRUCTURES AND RECURSION

[Link] = newTail;
tail = newTail;
}
}
/**
Remove and return the front item in the queue.
Throws an IllegalStateException if the queue is
empty. */
public int dequeue() {
if ( head == null)
throw new IllegalStateException("Can’t dequeue from an empty
queue."); int firstItem = [Link];
head = [Link]; // The previous second item is now first.
if (head == null) {
The queue has become empty. The Node that was
deleted was the tail as well as the head of the
list, so now there is no tail. (Actually, the
class would work fine without this step.)
tail = null;
}
return firstItem;
}
/**
Return true if the queue is
empty. */
boolean isEmpty() {
return (head == null);
}
} // end class QueueOfInts

Queues are typically used in a computer (as in real life) when only one item can be
processed at a time, but several items can be waiting for processing. For example:
In a Java program that has multiple threads, the threads that want processing time on the
CPU are kept in a queue. When a new thread is started, it is added to the back of the
queue. A thread is removed from the front of the queue, given some processing time, and
then—if it has not terminated—is sent to the back of the queue to wait for another turn.
Events such as keystrokes and mouse clicks are stored in a queue called the “event queue”.
A program removes events from the event queue and processes them. It’s possible for
several more events to occur while one event is being processed, but since the events are
stored in a queue, they will always be processed in the order in which they occurred.
A web server is a progam that receives requests from web browsers for “pages.” It is easy for
new requests to arrive while the web server is still fulfilling a previous request. Requests
that arrive while the web server is busy are placed into a queue to await processing. Using
a queue ensures that requests will be processed in the order in which they were received.
Queues are said to implement a FIFO policy: First In, First Out. Or, as it is more
commonly expressed, first come, first served. Stacks, on the other hand implement a LIFO
policy: Last In, First Out. The item that comes out of the stack is the last one that was put in.
Just like queues, stacks can be used to hold items that are waiting for processing (although
in applications where queues are typically used, a stack would be considered “unfair”).
9.3. STACKS, QUEUES, AND ADTS 455

∗∗∗
To get a better handle on the difference between stacks and queues, consider the
sample program [Link]. I suggest that you run the program or try the applet
version that can be found in the on-line version of this section. The program shows a grid of
squares. Initially, all the squares are white. When you click on a white square, the program
will gradually mark all the squares in the grid, starting from the one where you click. To
understand how the program does this, think of yourself in the place of the program. When
the user clicks a square, you are handed an index card. The location of the square—its row
and column—is written on the card. You put the card in a pile, which then contains just that
one card. Then, you repeat the following: If the pile is empty, you are done. Otherwise, take
an index card from the pile. The index card specifies a square. Look at each horizontal and
vertical neighbor of that square. If the neighbor has not already been encountered, write its
location on a new index card and put the card in the pile.
While a square is in the pile, waiting to be processed, it is colored red; that is, red
squares have been encountered but not yet processed. When a square is taken from the
pile and processed, its color changes to gray. Once a square has been colored gray, its
color won’t change again. Eventually, all the squares have been processed, and the
procedure ends. In the index card analogy, the pile of cards has been emptied.
The program can use your choice of three methods: Stack, Queue, and Random. In
each case, the same general procedure is used. The only di fference is how the “pile of
index cards” is managed. For a stack, cards are added and removed at the top of the pile.
For a queue, cards are added to the bottom of the pile and removed from the top. In the
random case, the card to be processed is picked at random from among all the cards in the
pile. The order of processing is very different in these three cases.
You should experiment with the program to see how it all works. Try to understand how
stacks and queues are being used. Try starting from one of the corner squares. While the
process is going on, you can click on other white squares, and they will be added to the pile.
When you do this with a stack, you should notice that the square you click is processed
immediately, and all the red squares that were already waiting for processing have to wait.
On the other hand, if you do this with a queue, the square that you click will wait its turn until
all the squares that were already in the pile have been processed.
∗∗∗
Queues seem very natural because they occur so often in real life, but there are times
when stacks are appropriate and even essential. For example, consider what happens when
a routine calls a subroutine. The first routine is suspended while the subroutine is executed,
and it will continue only when the subroutine returns. Now, suppose that the subroutine calls
a second subroutine, and the second subroutine calls a third, and so on. Each subroutine is
suspended while the subsequent subroutines are executed. The computer has to keep track
of all the subroutines that are suspended. It does this with a stack.
When a subroutine is called, an activation record is created for that subroutine. The
activation record contains information relevant to the execution of the subroutine, such as its
local variables and parameters. The activation record for the subroutine is placed on a
stack. It will be removed from the stack and destroyed when the subroutine returns. If the
subroutine calls another subroutine, the activation record of the second subroutine is
pushed onto the stack, on top of the activation record of the first subroutine. The stack can
continue to grow as more subroutines are called, and it shrinks as those subroutines return.
456 CHAPTER 9. LINKED DATA STRUCTURES AND RECURSION

9.3.3 Postfix Expressions

As another example, stacks can be used to evaluate postfix expressions. An ordinary
mathe-matical expression such as 2+(15-12)*17 is called an infix expression. In an
infix expression, an operator comes in between its two operands, as in “2 + 2”. In a postfix
expression, an oper-ator comes after its two operands, as in “2 2 +”. The infix expression
“2+(15-12)*17” would be written in postfix form as “2 15 12 - 17 * +”. The “-”
operator in this expression applies to the two operands that precede it, namely “15” and
“12”. The “*” operator applies to the two operands that precede it, namely “15 12 -” and
“17”. And the “+” operator applies to “2” and “15 12 - 17 *”. These are the same
computations that are done in the original infix expression.
Now, suppose that we want to process the expression “2 15 12 - 17 * +”, from left to
right and find its value. The first item we encounter is the 2, but what can we do with it? At this
point, we don’t know what operator, if any, will be applied to the 2 or what the other operand
might be. We have to remember the 2 for later processing. We do this by pushing it onto a
stack. Moving on to the next item, we see a 15, which is pushed onto the stack on top of the 2.
Then the 12 is added to the stack. Now, we come to the operator, “-”. This operation applies to
the two operands that preceded it in the expression. We have saved those two operands on the
stack. So, to process the “-” operator, we pop two numbers from the stack, 12 and 15, and
compute 15 - 12 to get the answer 3. This 3 must be remembered to be used in later
processing, so we push it onto the stack, on top of the 2 that is still waiting there. The next item
in the expression is a 17, which is processed by pushing it onto the stack, on top of the 3. To
process the next item, “*”, we pop two numbers from the stack. The numbers are 17 and the 3
that represents the value of “15 12 -”. These numbers are multiplied, and the result, 51 is
pushed onto the stack. The next item in the expression is a “+” operator, which is processed by
popping 51 and 2 from the stack, adding them, and pushing the result, 53, onto the stack.
Finally, we’ve come to the end of the expression. The number on the stack is the value of the
entire expression, so all we have to do is pop the answer from the stack, and we are done! The
value of the expression is 53.
Although it’s easier for people to work with infix expressions, postfix expressions have
some advantages. For one thing, postfix expressions don’t require parentheses or
precedence rules. The order in which operators are applied is determined entirely by the
order in which they occur in the expression. This allows the algorithm for evaluating postfix
expressions to be fairly straightforward:
Start with an empty stack
for each item in the expression:
if the item is a number:
Push the number onto the stack
else if the item is an operator:
Pop the operands from the stack // Can generate an error
Apply the operator to the operands
Push the result onto the stack
else
There is an error in the expression
Pop a number from the stack // Can generate an
error if the stack is not empty:
There is an error in the expression
else:
The last number that was popped is the value of the expression
9.3. STACKS, QUEUES, AND ADTS 457

Errors in an expression can be detected easily. For example, in the expression “2 3 +

*”, there are not enough operands for the “*” operation. This will be detected in the
algorithm when an attempt is made to pop the second operand for “*” from the stack, since
the stack will be empty. The opposite problem occurs in “2 3 4 +”. There are not enough
operators for all the numbers. This will be detected when the 2 is left still sitting in the stack
at the end of the algorithm.
This algorithm is demonstrated in the sample program [Link]. This program lets
you type in postfix expressions made up of non-negative real numbers and the operators “+”, “-”,
3
“*”, “/”, and ”^”. The “^” represents exponentiation. That is, “2 3 ^” is evaluated as 2 . The
program prints out a message as it processes each item in the expression. The stack class that
is used in the program is defined in the file [Link]. The StackOfDouble class is
identical to the first StackOfInts class, given above, except that it has been modified to store
values of type double instead of values of type int.
The only interesting aspect of this program is the method that implements the postfix
evaluation algorithm. It is a direct implementation of the pseudocode algorithm given above:
/**
Read one line of input and process it as a postfix expression.
If the input is not a legal postfix expression, then an error
message is displayed. Otherwise, the value of the expression
is displayed. It is assumed that the first character on
the input line is a non-blank.
*/
private static void readAndEvaluate() {
StackOfDouble stack; // For evaluating the expression.

stack = new StackOfDouble(); // Make a new, empty stack.

[Link]();
while ([Link]() != ’\n’) {
if ( [Link]([Link]()) ) {
The next item in input is a number. Read it and
save it on the stack.
double num = [Link]();
[Link](num);
[Link](" Pushed constant " + num);
}
else {
Since the next item is not a number, the only thing
it can legally be is an operator. Get the operator
and perform the operation.
char op; // The operator, which must be +, -, *, /, or ^.
double x,y; // The operands, from the stack, for the operation.
double answer; // The result, to be pushed onto the stack.
op = [Link]();
if (op != ’+’ && op != ’-’ && op != ’*’ && op != ’/’ && op != ’^’) {
The character is not one of the acceptable
operations. [Link]("\nIllegal operator found in
input: " + op); return;
}
if ([Link]()) {
458 CHAPTER 9. LINKED DATA STRUCTURES AND RECURSION

[Link](" Stack is empty while trying to evaluate "

+ op); [Link]("\nNot enough numbers in
expression!"); return;
}
y = [Link]();
if ([Link]()) {
[Link](" Stack is empty while trying to evaluate "
+ op); [Link]("\nNot enough numbers in
expression!"); return;
}
x = [Link]();
switch (op) {
case ’+’:
answer = x + y;
break;
case ’-’:
answer = x - y;
break;
case ’*’:
answer = x * y;
break;
case ’/’:
answer = x / y;
break;
default:
answer = [Link](x,y); // (op must be ’^’.)
}
[Link](answer);
[Link](" Evaluated " + op + " and pushed " + answer);
}
[Link]();
} // end while
If we get to this point, the input has been read successfully.
If the expression was legal, then the value of the expression is
on the stack, and it is the only thing on the stack.
if ([Link]()) { // Impossible if the input is really non-empty.
[Link]("No expression provided.");
return;
}

double value = [Link](); // Value of the expression.

[Link](" Popped " + value + " at end of expression.");

if ([Link]() == false) {
[Link](" Stack is not empty.");
[Link]("\nNot enough operators for all the numbers!");
return;
}
[Link]("\nValue = " + value);

} // end readAndEvaluate()
9.4. BINARY TREES 459

Postfix expressions are often used internally by computers. In fact, the Java virtual machine is a
“stack machine” which uses the stack-based approach to expression evaluation that we have been
discussing. The algorithm can easily be extended to handle variables, as well as constants. When a
variable is encountered in the expression, the value of the variable is pushed onto the stack. It also
works for operators with more or fewer than two operands. As many operands as are needed are
popped from the stack and the result is pushed back on to the stack. For example, the unary minus
operator, which is used in the expression “-x”, has a single operand. We will continue to look at
expressions and expression evaluation in the next two sections.

9.4 Binary Trees

We have seen in the two previous sections how objects can be linked into lists. When an object
contains two pointers to objects of the same type, structures can be created that are much more
complicated than linked lists. In this section, we’ll look at one of the most basic and useful
structures of this type: binary trees. Each of the objects in a binary tree contains two pointers,
typically called left and right. In addition to these pointers, of course, the nodes can contain
other types of data. For example, a binary tree of integers could be made up of objects of the
following type:
class TreeNode {
int item; // The data in this node.
TreeNode left; // Pointer to the left subtree.
TreeNode right; // Pointer to the right subtree.
}

The left and right pointers in a TreeNode can be null or can point to other
objects of type TreeNode. A node that points to another node is said to be the parent of
that node, and the node it points to is called a child . In the picture below, for example, node
3 is the parent of node 6, and nodes 4 and 5 are children of node 2. Not every linked
structure made up of tree nodes is a binary tree. A binary tree must have the following
properties: There is exactly one node in the tree which has no parent. This node is called
the root of the tree. Every other node in the tree has exactly one parent. Finally, there can
be no loops in a binary tree. That is, it is not possible to follow a chain of pointers starting at
some node and arriving back at the same node.
460 CHAPTER 9. LINKED DATA STRUCTURES AND RECURSION

Ro N o
o t

de

n3 ll

2
u

6 l
n5 n
l
l

4 l
n
u
u

A node that has no children is called a leaf . A leaf node can be recognized by the fact
that both the left and right pointers in the node are null. In the standard picture of a binary
tree, the root node is shown at the top and the leaf nodes at the bottom—which doesn’t
show much respect for the analogy to real trees. But at least you can see the branching,
tree-like structure that gives a binary tree its name.

9.4.1 Tree Traversal

Consider any node in a binary tree. Look at that node together with all its descendents (that is,
its children, the children of its children, and so on). This set of nodes forms a binary tree, which
is called a subtree of the original tree. For example, in the picture, nodes 2, 4, and 5 form a
subtree. This subtree is called the left subtree of the root. Similarly, nodes 3 and 6 make up the
right subtree of the root. We can consider any non-empty binary tree to be made up of a root
node, a left subtree, and a right subtree. Either or both of the subtrees can be empty. This is a
recursive definition, matching the recursive definition of the TreeNode class. So it should not be
a surprise that recursive subroutines are often used to process trees.
Consider the problem of counting the nodes in a binary tree. (As an exercise, you might
try to come up with a non-recursive algorithm to do the counting, but you shouldn’t expect to
find one.) The heart of problem is keeping track of which nodes remain to be counted. It’s
not so easy to do this, and in fact it’s not even possible without an auxiliary data structure
such as a stack or queue. With recursion, however, the algorithm is almost trivial. Either the
tree is empty or it consists of a root and two subtrees. If the tree is empty, the number of
nodes is zero. (This is the base case of the recursion.) Otherwise, use recursion to count the
nodes in each subtree. Add the results from the subtrees together, and add one to count the
root. This gives the total number of nodes in the tree. Written out in Java:
/**
Count the nodes in the binary tree to which root points, and
return the answer. If root is null, the answer is zero.
*/
static int countNodes( TreeNode root ) {
if ( root == null )
9.4. BINARY TREES 461

return 0; // The tree is empty. It contains no nodes.

else {
int count = 1; // Start by counting the root.
count += countNodes([Link]); // Add the number of nodes
// in the left subtree.
count += countNodes([Link]); // Add the number of nodes
// in the right subtree.
return count; // Return the total.
}
} // end countNodes()

Or, consider the problem of printing the items in a binary tree. If the tree is empty, there
is nothing to do. If the tree is non-empty, then it consists of a root and two subtrees. Print the
item in the root and use recursion to print the items in the subtrees. Here is a subroutine that
prints all the items on one line of output:
/**
Print all the items in the tree to which root points.
The item in the root is printed first, followed by the
items in the left subtree and then the items in the
right subtree.
*/
static void preorderPrint( TreeNode root ) {
if ( root != null ) { // (Otherwise, there’s nothing to print.)
[Link]( [Link] + " " ); // Print the root item.
preorderPrint( [Link] ); // Print items in left subtree.
preorderPrint( [Link] ); // Print items in right subtree.
}
} // end preorderPrint()

This routine is called “preorderPrint” because it uses a preorder traversal of the tree. In
a preorder traversal, the root node of the tree is processed first, then the left subtree is
traversed, then the right subtree. In a postorder traversal , the left subtree is traversed,
then the right subtree, and then the root node is processed. And in an inorder traversal ,
the left subtree is traversed first, then the root node is processed, then the right subtree is
traversed. Printing subroutines that use postorder and inorder traversal differ from
preorderPrint only in the placement of the statement that outputs the root item:
/**
Print all the items in the tree to which root points.
The item in the left subtree printed first, followed
by the items in the right subtree and then the item
in the root node.
*/
static void postorderPrint( TreeNode root ) {
if ( root != null ) { // (Otherwise, there’s nothing to print.)
postorderPrint( [Link] ); // Print items in left subtree.
postorderPrint( [Link] ); // Print items in right subtree.
[Link]( [Link] + " " ); // Print the root item.
}
} // end postorderPrint()

/**
* Print all the items in the tree to which root points.
462 CHAPTER 9. LINKED DATA STRUCTURES AND RECURSION

The item in the left subtree printed first, followed

by the item in the root node and then the items
in the right subtree.
*/
static void inorderPrint( TreeNode root ) {
if ( root != null ) { // (Otherwise, there’s nothing to print.)
inorderPrint( [Link] ); // Print items in left subtree.
[Link]( [Link] + " " ); // Print the root item.
inorderPrint( [Link] ); // Print items in right subtree.
}
} // end inorderPrint()

Each of these subroutines can be applied to the binary tree shown in the illustration at
the beginning of this section. The order in which the items are printed differs in each case:
preorderPrint outputs: 1 2 4 5 3 6

postorderPrint outputs: 4 5 2 6 3 1

inorderPrint outputs: 4 2 5 1 3 6

In preorderPrint, for example, the item at the root of the tree, 1, is output before
anything else. But the preorder printing also applies to each of the subtrees of the root. The
root item of the left subtree, 2, is printed before the other items in that subtree, 4 and 5.
As for the right subtree of the root, 3 is output before 6. A preorder traversal applies at all
levels in the tree. The other two traversal orders can be analyzed similarly.

9.4.2 Binary Sort Trees

One of the examples in Section 9.2 was a linked list of strings, in which the strings were kept
in increasing order. While a linked list works well for a small number of strings, it becomes
inefficient for a large number of items. When inserting an item into the list, searching for that
item’s position requires looking at, on average, half the items in the list. Finding an item in
the list requires a similar amount of time. If the strings are stored in a sorted array instead of
in a linked list, then searching becomes more efficient because binary search can be used.
However, inserting a new item into the array is still inefficient since it means moving, on
average, half of the items in the array to make a space for the new item. A binary tree can
be used to store an ordered list of strings, or other items, in a way that makes both
searching and insertion efficient. A binary tree used in this way is called a binary sort tree.
A binary sort tree is a binary tree with the following property: For every node in the tree,
the item in that node is greater than every item in the left subtree of that node, and it is less
than or equal to all the items in the right subtree of that node. Here for example is a binary
sort tree containing items of type String. (In this picture, I haven ’t bothered to draw all the pointer
variables. Non-null pointers are shown as arrows.)
9.4. BINARY TREES 463

Binary sort trees have this useful property: An inorder traversal of the tree will process
the items in increasing order. In fact, this is really just another way of expressing the
definition. For example, if an inorder traversal is used to print the items in the tree shown
above, then the items will be in alphabetical order. The definition of an inorder traversal
guarantees that all the items in the left subtree of “judy” are printed before “judy”, and all the
items in the right subtree of “judy” are printed after “judy”. But the binary sort tree property
guarantees that the items in the left subtree of “judy” are precisely those that precede “judy”
in alphabetical order, and all the items in the right subtree follow “judy” in alphabetical order.
So, we know that “judy” is output in its proper alphabetical position. But the same argument
applies to the subtrees. “Bill” will be output after “alice” and before “fred” and its
descendents. “Fred” will be output after “dave” and before “jane” and “joe”. And so on.
Suppose that we want to search for a given item in a binary search tree. Compare that
item to the root item of the tree. If they are equal, we’re done. If the item we are looking for
is less than the root item, then we need to search the left subtree of the root—the right
subtree can be eliminated because it only contains items that are greater than or equal to
the root. Similarly, if the item we are looking for is greater than the item in the root, then we
only need to look in the right subtree. In either case, the same procedure can then be
applied to search the subtree. Inserting a new item is similar: Start by searching the tree for
the position where the new item belongs. When that position is found, create a new node
and attach it to the tree at that position.
Searching and inserting are efficient operations on a binary search tree, provided that the
tree is close to being balanced . A binary tree is balanced if for each node, the left subtree of
that node contains approximately the same number of nodes as the right subtree. In a perfectly
balanced tree, the two numbers differ by at most one. Not all binary trees are balanced, but if the
tree is created by inserting items in a random order, there is a high probability that the tree is
approximately balanced. (If the order of insertion is not random, however, it’s quite possible for
the tree to be very unbalanced.) During a search of any binary sort tree, every comparison
eliminates one of two subtrees from further consideration. If the tree is balanced, that means
cutting the number of items still under consideration in half. This is exactly the same as the
binary search algorithm, and the result, is a similarly efficient algorithm.
In terms of asymptotic analysis (Section 8.6), searching, inserting, and deleting in a binary
464 CHAPTER 9. LINKED DATA STRUCTURES AND RECURSION

search tree have average case run time Θ(log(n)). The problem size, n, is the number of items in
the tree, and the average is taken over all the di fferent orders in which the items could have
been inserted into the tree. As long the actual insertion order is random, the actual run time can
be expected to be close to the average. However, the worst case run time for binary search tree
operations is Θ(n), which is much worse than Θ(log(n)). The worst case occurs for certain
particular insertion orders. For example, if the items are inserted into the tree in order of
increasing size, then every item that is inserted moves always to the right as it moves down the
tree. The result is a “tree” that looks more like a linked list, since it consists of a linear string of
nodes strung together by their right child pointers. Operations on such a tree have the same
performance as operations on a linked list. Now, there are data structures that are similar to
simple binary sort trees, except that insertion and deletion of nodes are implemented in a way
that will always keep the tree balanced, or almost balanced. For these data structures,
searching, inserting, and deleting have both average case and worst case run times that are
Θ(log(n)). Here, however, we will look at only the simple versions of inserting and searching.
The sample program [Link] is a demonstration of binary sort trees. The
pro-gram includes subroutines that implement inorder traversal, searching, and insertion.
We’ll look at the latter two subroutines below. The main() routine tests the subroutines by
letting you type in strings to be inserted into the tree.
In this program, nodes in the binary tree are represented using the following static
nested class, including a simple constructor that makes creating nodes easier:
/**
An object of type TreeNode represents one node in a binary tree of
strings. */
private static class TreeNode {
String item; // The data in this node.
TreeNode left; // Pointer to left subtree.
TreeNode right; // Pointer to right subtree.

Constructor. Make a node containing

str. item = str;
}
} // end class TreeNode

A static member variable of type TreeNode points to the binary sort tree that is used by the
program:
private static TreeNode root; // Pointer to the root node in
the tree.
// When the tree is empty, root is null.

A recursive subroutine named treeContains is used to search for a given item in the
tree. This routine implements the search algorithm for binary trees that was outlined above:
/**
Return true if item is one of the items in the binary
sort tree to which root points. Return false if
not. */
static boolean treeContains( TreeNode root, String
item ) { if ( root == null ) {
Tree is empty, so it certainly doesn’t contain
item. return false;
}
else if ( [Link]([Link]) ) {
9.4. BINARY TREES 465

Yes, the item has been found in the root

node. return true;
}
else if ( [Link]([Link]) < 0 ) {
If the item occurs, it must be in the left
subtree. return treeContains( [Link], item );
}
else {
If the item occurs, it must be in the right
subtree. return treeContains( [Link], item );
}
} // end treeContains()

When this routine is called in the main() routine, the first parameter is the static member
variable root, which points to the root of the entire binary sort tree.
It’s worth noting that recursion is not really essential in this case. A simple, non-recursive
algorithm for searching a binary sort tree follows the rule: Start at the root and move down
the tree until you find the item or reach a null pointer. Since the search follows a single path
down the tree, it can be implemented as a while loop. Here is non-recursive version of the
search routine:
private static boolean treeContainsNR( TreeNode root, String item ) {
TreeNode runner; // For "running" down the tree.
runner = root; // Start at the root node.
while (true) {
if (runner == null) {
We’ve fallen off the tree without finding
item. return false;
}
else if ( [Link]([Link]) ) {
We’ve found the
item. return true;
}
else if ( [Link]([Link]) < 0 ) {
If the item occurs, it must be in the left subtree,
So, advance the runner down one level to the
left. runner = [Link];
}
else {
If the item occurs, it must be in the right subtree.
So, advance the runner down one level to the
right. runner = [Link];
}
} // end while
} // end treeContainsNR();

The subroutine for inserting a new item into the tree turns out to be more similar to the
non-recursive search routine than to the recursive. The insertion routine has to handle the
case where the tree is empty. In that case, the value of root must be changed to point to a
node that contains the new item:
root = new TreeNode( newItem );
466 CHAPTER 9. LINKED DATA STRUCTURES AND RECURSION

But this means, effectively, that the root can’t be passed as a parameter to the subroutine,
because it is impossible for a subroutine to change the value stored in an actual parameter.
(I should note that this is something that is possible in other languages.) Recursion uses
parameters in an essential way. There are ways to work around the problem, but the easiest
thing is just to use a non-recursive insertion routine that accesses the static member
variable root directly. One difference between inserting an item and searching for an item
is that we have to be careful not to fall off the tree. That is, we have to stop searching just
before runner becomes null. When we get to an empty spot in the tree, that’s where we
have to insert the new node:
/**
Add the item to the binary sort tree to which the global variable
"root" refers. (Note that root can’t be passed as a parameter to
this routine because the value of root might change, and a change
in the value of a formal parameter does not change the actual
parameter.) */
private static void treeInsert(String
newItem) { if ( root == null ) {
The tree is empty. Set root to point to a new node containing
the new item. This becomes the only node in the tree.
root = new TreeNode( newItem );
return;
}
TreeNode runner; // Runs down the tree to find a place for newItem.
runner = root; // Start at the root.
while (true) {
if ( [Link]([Link]) < 0 ) {
Since the new item is less than the item in runner,
it belongs in the left subtree of runner. If there
is an open space at [Link], add a new node there.
Otherwise, advance runner down one level to the
left. if ( [Link] == null ) {
[Link] = new TreeNode( newItem );
return; // New item has been added to the tree.
}
else
runner = [Link];
}
else {
Since the new item is greater than or equal to the item in
runner, it belongs in the right subtree of runner. If there
is an open space at [Link], add a new node there.
Otherwise, advance runner down one level to the right.
if ( [Link] == null ) {
[Link] = new TreeNode( newItem );
return; // New item has been added to the tree.
}
else
runner = [Link];
}
} // end while
} // end treeInsert()
9.4. BINARY TREES 467

9.4.3 Expression Trees

Another application of trees is to store mathematical expressions such as 15*(x+y) or
sqrt(42)+7 in a convenient form. Let’s stick for the moment to expressions made up of num-
bers and the operators +, -, *, and /. Consider the expression 3*((7+1)/4)+(17-5). This
expression is made up of two subexpressions, 3*((7+1)/4) and (17-5), combined with the
operator “+”. When the expression is represented as a binary tree, the root node holds the
operator +, while the subtrees of the root node represent the subexpressions 3*((7+1)/4)
and (17-5). Every node in the tree holds either a number or an operator. A node that holds a
number is a leaf node of the tree. A node that holds an operator has two subtrees representing
the operands to which the operator applies. The tree is shown in the illustration below. I will refer
to a tree of this type as an expression tree.
Given an expression tree, it’s easy to find the value of the expression that it represents.
Each node in the tree has an associated value. If the node is a leaf node, then its value is
simply the number that the node contains. If the node contains an operator, then the
associated value is computed by first finding the values of its child nodes and then applying
the operator to those values. The process is shown by the upward-directed arrows in the
illustration. The value computed for the root node is the value of the expression as a whole.
There are other uses for expression trees. For example, a postorder traversal of the tree will
output the postfix form of the expression.

An expression tree contains two types of nodes: nodes that contain numbers and nodes
that contain operators. Furthermore, we might want to add other types of nodes to make the
trees more useful, such as nodes that contain variables. If we want to work with expression
trees in Java, how can we deal with this variety of nodes? One way—which will be frowned
upon by object-oriented purists—is to include an instance variable in each node object to
record which type of node it is:
enum NodeType { NUMBER, OPERATOR } // Possible kinds of node.
468 CHAPTER 9. LINKED DATA STRUCTURES AND RECURSION

class ExpNode { // A node in an expression tree.

NoteType kind; // Which type of node is this?

double number; // The value in a node of type NUMBER.
char op; // The operator in a node of type OPERATOR.
ExpNode left; // Pointers to subtrees,
ExpNode right; // in a node of type OPERATOR.
ExpNode( double val ) {
Constructor for making a node of type
NUMBER. kind = [Link];
number = val;
}
ExpNode( char op, ExpNode left, ExpNode right ) {
Constructor for making a node of type
OPERATOR. kind = [Link];
[Link] = op;
[Link] = left;
[Link] = right;
}
} // end class ExpNode

Given this definition, the following recursive subroutine will find the value of an expression tree:
static double getValue( ExpNode node ) {
Return the value of the expression represented by
the tree to which node refers. Node must be non-
null. if ( [Link] == [Link] ) {
The value of a NUMBER node is the number it
holds. return [Link];
}
else { // The kind must be OPERATOR.
Get the values of the operands and combine them
using the operator.
double leftVal = getValue( [Link] );
double rightVal = getValue( [Link] );
switch ( [Link] ) {
case ’+’: return leftVal + rightVal;
case ’-’: return leftVal - rightVal;
case ’*’: return leftVal * rightVal;
case ’/’: return leftVal / rightVal;
default: return [Link]; // Bad operator.
}
}
} // end getValue()

Although this approach works, a more object-oriented approach is to note that since
there are two types of nodes, there should be two classes to represent them, ConstNode
and BinOpN-ode. To represent the general idea of a node in an expression tree, we need
another class, ExpNode. Both ConstNode and BinOpNode will be subclasses of ExpNode.
Since any actual node will be either a ConstNode or a BinOpNode, ExpNode should be an
abstract class. (See Subsection 5.5.5.) Since one of the things we want to do with nodes is
find their values, each class should have an instance method for finding the value:
9.4. BINARY TREES 469

abstract class ExpNode {

Represents a node of any type in an expression tree.

abstract double value(); // Return the value of this node.

} // end class ExpNode

class ConstNode extends ExpNode {

Represents a node that holds a number.

double number; // The number in the node.

ConstNode( double val ) {

Constructor. Create a node to hold
val. number = val;
}
double value() {
The value is just the number that the node
holds. return number;
}
} // end class ConstNode

class BinOpNode extends ExpNode {

// Represents a node that holds an operator.
char op; // The operator.
ExpNode left; // The left operand.
ExpNode right; // The right operand.

BinOpNode( char op, ExpNode left, ExpNode right ) {

Constructor. Create a node to hold the given
data. [Link] = op;
[Link] = left;
[Link] = right;
}
double value() {
To get the value, compute the value of the left and
right operands, and combine them with the
operator. double leftVal = [Link]();
double rightVal =
[Link](); switch ( op ) {
case ’+’: return leftVal + rightVal;
case ’-’: return leftVal - rightVal;
case ’*’: return leftVal * rightVal;
case ’/’: return leftVal / rightVal;
default: return [Link]; // Bad operator.
}
}
} // end class BinOpNode

Note that the left and right operands of a BinOpNode are of type ExpNode, not BinOpNode. This
allows the operand to be either a ConstNode or another BinOpNode—or any other type of ExpNode
that we might eventually create. Since every ExpNode has a value() method, we can
470 CHAPTER 9. LINKED DATA STRUCTURES AND RECURSION

call [Link]() to compute the value of the left operand. If left is in fact a
ConstNode, this will call the value() method in the ConstNode class. If it is in fact a
BinOpNode, then [Link]() will call the value() method in the BinOpNode class.
Each node knows how to compute its own value.
Although it might seem more complicated at first, the object-oriented approach has some
advantages. For one thing, it doesn’t waste memory. In the original ExpNode class, only
some of the instance variables in each node were actually used, and we needed an extra
instance variable to keep track of the type of node. More important, though, is the fact that
new types of nodes can be added more cleanly, since it can be done by creating a new
subclass of ExpNode rather than by modifying an existing class.
We’ll return to the topic of expression trees in the next section, where we’ll see how to
create an expression tree to represent a given expression.

9.5 A Simple Recursive Descent Parser

I have always been fascinated by language—both natural languages like English and the
artificial languages that are used by computers. There are many di fficult questions about how
languages can convey information, how they are structured, and how they can be processed.
Natural and artificial languages are similar enough that the study of programming languages,
which are pretty well understood, can give some insight into the much more complex and
difficult natural languages. And programming languages raise more than enough interesting
issues to make them worth studying in their own right. How can it be, after all, that computers
can be made to “understand” even the relatively simple languages that are used to write
programs? Computers, after all, can only directly use instructions expressed in very simple
machine language. Higher level languages must be translated into machine language. But the
translation is done by a compiler, which is just a program. How could such a translation program
be written?

9.5.1 Backus-Naur Form

Natural and artificial languages are similar in that they have a structure known as grammar
or syntax. Syntax can be expressed by a set of rules that describe what it means to be a
legal sentence or program. For programming languages, syntax rules are often expressed in
BNF (Backus-Naur Form), a system that was developed by computer scientists John
Backus and Peter Naur in the late 1950s. Interestingly, an equivalent system was developed
independently at about the same time by linguist Noam Chomsky to describe the grammar
of natural language. BNF cannot express all possible syntax rules. For example, it can’t
express the fact that a variable must be defined before it is used. Furthermore, it says
nothing about the meaning or semantics of the langauge. The problem of specifying the
semantics of a language—even of an artificial programming langauge—is one that is still far
from being completely solved. However, BNF does express the basic structure of the
language, and it plays a central role in the design of translation programs.
In English, terms such as “noun”, “transitive verb,” and “prepositional phrase” are syntac-tic
categories that describe building blocks of sentences. Similarly, “statement”, “number,” and
“while loop” are syntactic categories that describe building blocks of Java programs. In BNF, a
syntactic category is written as a word enclosed between “<” and ”>”. For example: <noun>,
<verb-phrase>, or <while-loop>. A rule in BNF specifies the structure of an item
9.5. A SIMPLE RECURSIVE DESCENT PARSER 471

in a given syntactic category, in terms of other syntactic categories and/or basic symbols of
the language. For example, one BNF rule for the English language might be
<sentence> ::= <noun-phrase> <verb-phrase>

The symbol “::=” is read “can be”, so this rule says that a <sentence> can be a <noun-
phrase> followed by a <verb-phrase>. (The term is “can be” rather than “is” because there
might be other rules that specify other possible forms for a sentence.) This rule can be thought of
as a recipe for a sentence: If you want to make a sentence, make a noun-phrase and follow it by
a verb-phrase. Noun-phrase and verb-phrase must, in turn, be defined by other BNF rules.
In BNF, a choice between alternatives is represented by the symbol “|”, which is read
“or”. For example, the rule
<verb-phrase> ::= <intransitive-verb> |
( <transitive-verb> <noun-phrase> )

says that a <verb-phrase> can be an <intransitive-verb>, or a <transitive-

verb> followed by a <noun-phrase>. Note also that parentheses can be used for grouping.
To express the fact that an item is optional, it can be enclosed between “[” and “]”. An optional
item that can be repeated one or more times is enclosed between “[” and “]...”. And a symbol
that is an actual part of the language that is being described is enclosed in quotes. For example,
<noun-phrase> ::= <common-noun>
[ "that" <verb-phrase> ] |
<common-noun> [ <prepositional-phrase> ]...

says that a <noun-phrase> can be a <common-noun>, optionally followed by the literal word
“that” and a <verb-phrase>, or it can be a <common-noun> followed by zero or more
<prepositional-phrase>’s. Obviously, we can describe very complex structures in this
way. The real power comes from the fact that BNF rules can be recursive. In fact, the two pre-
ceding rules, taken together, are recursive. A <noun-phrase> is defined partly in terms of
<verb-phrase>, while <verb-phrase> is defined partly in terms of <noun-phrase>. For
ex-ample, a <noun-phrase> might be “the rat that ate the cheese”, since “ate the cheese” is a
<verb-phrase>. But then we can, recursively, make the more complex <noun-phrase> “the
cat that caught the rat that ate the cheese” out of the <common-noun> “the cat”, the word “that”
and the <verb-phrase> “caught the rat that ate the cheese”. Building from there, we can
make the <noun-phrase> “the dog that chased the cat that caught the rat that ate the
cheese”. The recursive structure of language is one of the most fundamental properties of
language, and the ability of BNF to express this recursive structure is what makes it so useful.
BNF can be used to describe the syntax of a programming language such as Java in a
formal and precise way. For example, a <while-loop> can be defined as
<while-loop> ::= "while" "(" <condition> ")" <statement>

This says that a <while-loop> consists of the word “while”, followed by a left parenthesis,
followed by a <condition>, followed by a right parenthesis, followed by a
<statement>. Of course, it still remains to define what is meant by a condition and by a
statement. Since a statement can be, among other things, a while loop, we can already
see the recursive structure of the Java language. The exact specification of an if
statement, which is hard to express clearly in words, can be given as
<if-statement> ::=
"if" "(" <condition> ")" <statement>
"else" "if" "(" <condition> ")" <statement> ]...
"else" <statement> ]
472 CHAPTER 9. LINKED DATA STRUCTURES AND RECURSION

This rule makes it clear that the “else” part is optional and that there can be, optionally, one
or more “else if” parts.

9.5.2 Recursive Descent Parsing

In the rest of this section, I will show how a BNF grammar for a language can be used as a guide
for constructing a parser. A parser is a program that determines the grammatical structure of a
phrase in the language. This is the first step to determining the meaning of the phrase—which
for a programming language means translating it into machine language. Although we will look at
only a simple example, I hope it will be enough to convince you that compilers can in fact be
written and understood by mortals and to give you some idea of how that can be done.
The parsing method that we will use is called recursive descent parsing . It is not the
only possible parsing method, or the most efficient, but it is the one most suited for writing
compilers by hand (rather than with the help of so called “parser generator” programs). In a
recursive descent parser, every rule of the BNF grammar is the model for a subroutine. Not
every BNF grammar is suitable for recursive descent parsing. The grammar must satisfy a
certain property. Essentially, while parsing a phrase, it must be possible to tell what syntactic
category is coming up next just by looking at the next item in the input. Many grammars are
designed with this property in mind.
I should also mention that many variations of BNF are in use. The one that I’ve described
here is one that is well-suited for recursive descent parsing.
∗∗∗
When we try to parse a phrase that contains a syntax error, we need some way to
respond to the error. A convenient way of doing this is to throw an exception. I’ll use an
exception class called ParseError, defined as follows:
/**
An object of type ParseError represents a syntax error found in
the user’s input.
*/
private static class ParseError extends
Exception { ParseError(String message) {
super(message);
}
} // end nested class ParseError

Another general point is that our BNF rules don’t say anything about spaces between
items, but in reality we want to be able to insert spaces between items at will. To allow for
this, I’ll always call the routine [Link]() before trying to look ahead to see
what’s coming up next in input. [Link]() skips past any whitespace, such
as spaces and tabs, in the input, and stops when the next character in the input is either a
non-blank character or the end-of-line character.
Let’s start with a very simple example. A “fully parenthesized expression” can be
specified in BNF by the rules
<expression> ::= <number> |
"(" <expression> <operator> <expression> ")"

<operator> ::= "+" | "-" | "*" | "/"

9.5. A SIMPLE RECURSIVE DESCENT PARSER 473

where <number> refers to any non-negative real number. An example of a fully

parenthesized expression is “(((34-17)*8)+(2*7))”. Since every operator corresponds
to a pair of parenthe-ses, there is no ambiguity about the order in which the operators are to
be applied. Suppose we want a program that will read and evaluate such expressions. We’ll
read the expressions from standard input, using TextIO. To apply recursive descent parsing,
we need a subroutine for each rule in the grammar. Corresponding to the rule for
<operator>, we get a subroutine that reads an operator. The operator can be a choice of
any of four things. Any other input will be an error.
/**
If the next character in input is one of the legal operators,
read it and return it. Otherwise, throw a ParseError.
*/
static char getOperator() throws
ParseError { [Link]();
char op = [Link]();
if ( op == ’+’ || op == ’-’ || op == ’*’ || op ==
’/’ ) { [Link]();
return op;
}
else if (op == ’\n’)
throw new ParseError("Missing operator at end of
line."); else
throw new ParseError("Missing operator. Found
\"" + op + "\" instead of +, -, *,
or /.");
} // end getOperator()

I’ve tried to give a reasonable error message, depending on whether the next character is an
end-of-line or something else. I use [Link]() to look ahead at the next character before
I read it, and I call [Link]() before testing [Link]() in order to ignore
any blanks that separate items. I will follow this same pattern in every case.
When we come to the subroutine for <expression>, things are a little more interesting.
The rule says that an expression can be either a number or an expression enclosed in
parentheses. We can tell which it is by looking ahead at the next character. If the character is a
digit, we have to read a number. If the character is a “(“, we have to read the “(“, followed by an
expression, followed by an operator, followed by another expression, followed by a “)”. If the next
character is anything else, there is an error. Note that we need recursion to read the nested
expressions. The routine doesn’t just read the expression. It also computes and returns its value.
This requires semantical information that is not specified in the BNF rule.
/**
Read an expression from the current line of input and return its value.
@throws ParseError if the input contains a syntax error
*/
private static double expressionValue() throws
ParseError { [Link]();
if ( [Link]([Link]()) ) {
The next item in input is a number, so the expression
must consist of just that number. Read and return
the number.
return [Link]();
}
else if ( [Link]() == ’(’ ) {
474 CHAPTER 9. LINKED DATA STRUCTURES AND RECURSION

The expression must be of the form

"(" <expression> <operator> <expression> ")"
Read all these items, perform the operation, and
return the result.

double leftVal = expressionValue(); // Read and evaluate first operand.

char op = getOperator(); // Read the operator.
double rightVal = expressionValue(); // Read and evaluate
second operand. [Link]();
if ( [Link]() != ’)’ ) {
According to the rule, there must be a ")" here.
Since it’s missing, throw a ParseError.
throw new ParseError("Missing right parenthesis.");
}
[Link](); // Read the ")"
switch (op) { // Apply the operator and return the result.
case ’+’: return leftVal + rightVal;
case ’-’: return leftVal - rightVal;
case ’*’: return leftVal * rightVal;
case ’/’: return leftVal / rightVal;
default: return 0; // Can’t occur since op is one of the above.
// (But Java syntax requires a return value.)
}
}
else { // No other character can legally start an expression.
throw new ParseError("Encountered unexpected character, \"" +
[Link]() + "\" in input.");
}
} // end expressionValue()

I hope that you can see how this routine corresponds to the BNF rule. Where the rule
uses “|” to give a choice between alternatives, there is an if statement in the routine to
determine which choice to take. Where the rule contains a sequence of items, “(“
<expression> <operator> <expression> “)”, there is a sequence of statements in
the subroutine to read each item in turn.
When expressionValue() is called to evaluate the expression (((34-17)*8)+(2*7)), it
sees the “(“ at the beginning of the input, so the else part of the if statement is executed. The “(“
is read. Then the first recursive call to expressionValue() reads and evaluates the
subexpression ((34-17)*8), the call to getOperator() reads the “+” operator, and the sec-ond
recursive call to expressionValue() reads and evaluates the second subexpression (2*7).
Finally, the “)” at the end of the expression is read. Of course, reading the first subexpression, ((34-
17)*8), involves further recursive calls to the expressionValue() routine, but it’s better not to
think too deeply about that! Rely on the recursion to handle the details.
You’ll find a complete program that uses these routines in the file [Link].
∗∗∗
Fully parenthesized expressions aren’t very natural for people to use. But with ordinary
expressions, we have to worry about the question of operator precedence, which tells us, for
example, that the “*” in the expression “5+3*7” is applied before the “+”. The complex expression
“3*6+8*(7+1)/4-24” should be seen as made up of three “terms”, 3*6, 8*(7+1)/4, and 24, combined
with “+” and “-” operators. A term, on the other hand, can be made up of several factors combined
with “*” and “/” operators. For example, 8*(7+1)/4 contains the
9.5. A SIMPLE RECURSIVE DESCENT PARSER 475

factors 8, (7+1) and 4. This example also shows that a factor can be either a number or
an expression in parentheses. To complicate things a bit more, we allow for leading minus
signs in expressions, as in “-(3+4)” or “-7”. (Since a <number> is a positive number, this
is the only way we can get negative numbers. It’s done this way to avoid “3 * -7”, for
example.) This structure can be expressed by the BNF rules
<expression> ::= [ "-" ] <term> [ ( "+" | "-" ) <term> ]...
<term> ::= <factor> [ ( "*" | "/" ) <factor> ]...
<factor> ::= <number> | "(" <expression> ")"

The first rule uses the “[ ]...” notation, which says that the items that it encloses can
occur zero, one, two, or more times. This means that an <expression> can begin,
optionally, with a “-”. Then there must be a <term> which can optionally be followed by one
of the operators “+” or “-” and another <term>, optionally followed by another operator and
<term>, and so on. In a subroutine that reads and evaluates expressions, this repetition is
handled by a while loop. An if statement is used at the beginning of the loop to test
whether a leading minus sign is present:
/**
Read an expression from the current line of input and return its value.
@throws ParseError if the input contains a syntax error
*/
private static double expressionValue() throws
ParseError { [Link]();
boolean negative; // True if there is a leading minus sign.
negative = false;
if ([Link]() == ’-’)
{ [Link](); // Read the
minus sign. negative = true;
}
double val; // Value of the expression.
val = termValue();
if (negative)
val = -val;
[Link]();
while ( [Link]() == ’+’ || [Link]() == ’-’ ) {
Read the next term and add it to or subtract it from
the value of previous terms in the expression.
char op = [Link](); // Read the operator.
double nextVal = termValue();
if (op == ’+’)
val += nextVal;
else
val -= nextVal;
[Link]();
}
return val;
} // end expressionValue()

The subroutine for <term> is very similar to this, and the subroutine for <factor> is
similar to the example given above for fully parenthesized expressions. A complete program
that reads and evaluates expressions based on the above BNF rules can be found in the file
[Link].
476 CHAPTER 9. LINKED DATA STRUCTURES AND RECURSION

9.5.3 Building an Expression Tree

Now, so far, we’ve only evaluated expressions. What does that have to do with translating
programs into machine language? Well, instead of actually evaluating the expression, it
would be almost as easy to generate the machine language instructions that are needed to
evaluate the expression. If we are working with a “stack machine”, these instructions would
be stack operations such as “push a number” or “apply a + operation”. The program
[Link] can both evaluate the expression and print a list of stack machine
operations for evaluating the expression.
It’s quite a jump from this program to a recursive descent parser that can read a program
written in Java and generate the equivalent machine language code—but the conceptual
leap is not huge.
The SimpleParser3 program doesn’t actually generate the stack operations directly
as it parses an expression. Instead, it builds an expression tree, as discussed in the Section
9.4, to represent the expression. The expression tree is then used to find the value and to
gen-erate the stack operations. The tree is made up of nodes belonging to classes
ConstNode and BinOpNode that are similar to those given in the Section 9.4. Another class,
UnaryMi-nusNode, has been introduced to represent the unary minus operation. I’ve added
a method, printStackCommands(), to each class. This method is responsible for printing
out the stack operations that are necessary to evaluate an expression. Here for example is
the new BinOpNode class from [Link]:
private static class BinOpNode extends ExpNode {
char op; // The operator.
ExpNode left; // The expression for its left operand.
ExpNode right; // The expression for its right operand.
BinOpNode(char op, ExpNode left, ExpNode right) {
Construct a BinOpNode containing the specified
data. assert op == ’+’ || op == ’-’ || op == ’*’ || op
== ’/’; assert left != null && right != null;
[Link] = op;
[Link] = left;
[Link] = right;
}
double value() {
The value is obtained by evaluating the left and right
operands and combining the values with the
operator. double x = [Link]();
double y = [Link]();
switch (op) {
case ’+’: return
x + y;
case ’-’: return
x - y;
case ’*’: return
x * y;
case ’/’: return
x / y;
default:
return [Link]; // Bad operator!
}
}
9.5. A SIMPLE RECURSIVE DESCENT PARSER 477

void printStackCommands() {
To evalute the expression on a stack machine, first do
whatever is necessary to evaluate the left operand, leaving
the answer on the stack. Then do the same thing for the
second operand. Then apply the operator (which means popping
the operands, applying the operator, and pushing the
result). [Link]();
[Link]();
[Link](" Operator " + op);
}
}

It’s also interesting to look at the new parsing subroutines. Instead of computing a value,
each subroutine builds an expression tree. For example, the subroutine corresponding to
the rule for <expression> becomes
static ExpNode expressionTree() throws ParseError {
Read an expression from the current line of input and
return an expression tree representing the
expression. [Link]();
boolean negative; // True if there is a leading
minus sign. negative = false;
if ([Link]() == ’-’)
{ [Link]();
negative = true;
}
ExpNode exp; // The expression tree for the
expression. exp = termTree(); // Start with a
tree for first term. if (negative) {
Build the tree that corresponds to applying a
unary minus operator to the term we’ve
just read.
exp = new UnaryMinusNode(exp);
}
[Link]();
while ( [Link]() == ’+’ || [Link]() == ’-’ ) {
Read the next term and combine it with the
previous terms into a bigger expression
tree. char op = [Link]();
ExpNode nextTerm = termTree();
Create a tree that applies the binary operator
to the previous tree and the term we just
read. exp = new BinOpNode(op, exp, nextTerm);
[Link]();
}
return exp;
} // end expressionTree()

In some real compilers, the parser creates a tree to represent the program that is being
parsed. This tree is called a parse tree. Parse trees are somewhat different in form from
expression trees, but the purpose is the same. Once you have the tree, there are a number of
things you can do with it. For one thing, it can be used to generate machine language code. But
478 CHAPTER 9. LINKED DATA STRUCTURES AND RECURSION

there are also techniques for examining the tree and detecting certain types of programming
errors, such as an attempt to reference a local variable before it has been assigned a value.
(The Java compiler, of course, will reject the program if it contains such an error.) It’s also
possible to manipulate the tree to optimize the program. In optimization, the tree is
transformed to make the program more efficient before the code is generated.
And so we are back where we started in Chapter 1, looking at programming languages, compilers, and
machine language. But looking at them, I hope, with a lot more understanding and a much wider perspective.
Exercises 479

Exercises for Chapter 9

In many textbooks, the first examples of recursion are the mathematical functions
factorial and fibonacci. These functions are defined for non-negative integers using
the following recursive formulas:
factorial(0) = 1
factorial(N) = N*factorial(N-1) for N > 0
fibonacci(0) = 1
fibonacci(1) = 1
fibonacci(N) = fibonacci(N-1) + fibonacci(N-2) for N > 1

Write recursive functions to compute factorial(N) and fibonacci(N) for a

given non-negative integer N, and write a main() routine to test your functions.
(In fact, factorial and fibonacci are really not very good examples of recursion,
since the most natural way to compute them is to use simple for loops. Furthermore,
fibonacci is a particularly bad example, since the natural recursive approach to
computing this function is extremely inefficient.)

Exercise 7.6 asked you to read a file, make an alphabetical list of all the words that occur in
the file, and write the list to another file. In that exercise, you were asked to use an
ArrayList<String> to store the words. Write a new version of the same program that stores
the words in a binary sort tree instead of in an arraylist. You can use the binary sort tree
routines from [Link], which was discussed in Subsection 9.4.2.

Suppose that linked lists of integers are made from objects belonging to the class
class ListNode {
int item; // An item in the list.
ListNode next; // Pointer to the next node in the list.
}

Write a subroutine that will make a copy of a list, with the order of the items of the list
reversed. The subroutine should have a parameter of type ListNode, and it should
return a value of type ListNode. The original list should not be modified.
You should also write a main() routine to test your subroutine.

Subsection 9.4.1 explains how to use recursion to print out the items in a binary tree in
various orders. That section also notes that a non-recursive subroutine can be used to
print the items, provided that a stack or queue is used as an auxiliary data structure.
Assuming that a queue is used, here is an algorithm for such a subroutine:
Add the root node to an empty queue
while the queue is not empty:
Get a node from the queue
Print the item in the node
if [Link] is not null:
add it to the queue
if [Link] is not null:
add it to the queue
480 CHAPTER 9. LINKED DATA STRUCTURES AND RECURSION

Write a subroutine that implements this algorithm, and write a program to test the sub-
routine. Note that you will need a queue of TreeNodes, so you will need to write a class
to represent such queues.
(Note that the order in which items are printed by this algorithm is di fferent from all
three of the orders considered in Subsection 9.4.1.)

In Subsection 9.4.2, I say that “if the [binary sort] tree is created by inserting items in a
random order, there is a high probability that the tree is approximately balanced.” For
this exercise, you will do an experiment to test whether that is true.
The depth of a node in a binary tree is the length of the path from the root of the
tree to that node. That is, the root has depth 0, its children have depth 1, its
grandchildren have depth 2, and so on. In a balanced tree, all the leaves in the tree are
about the same depth. For example, in a perfectly balanced tree with 1023 nodes, all
the leaves are at depth 9. In an approximately balanced tree with 1023 nodes, the
average depth of all the leaves should be not too much bigger than 9.
On the other hand, even if the tree is approximately balanced, there might be a few
leaves that have much larger depth than the average, so we might also want to look at
the maximum depth among all the leaves in a tree.
For this exercise, you should create a random binary sort tree with 1023 nodes. The
items in the tree can be real numbers, and you can create the tree by generating 1023
random real numbers and inserting them into the tree, using the usual treeInsert()
method for binary sort trees. Once you have the tree, you should compute and output the
average depth of all the leaves in the tree and the maximum depth of all the leaves. To do
this, you will need three recursive subroutines: one to count the leaves, one to find the sum
of the depths of all the leaves, and one to find the maximum depth. The latter two
subroutines should have an int-valued parameter, depth, that tells how deep in the tree
you’ve gone. When you call this routine from the main program, the depth parameter is 0;
when you call the routine recursively, the parameter increases by 1.

The parsing programs in Section 9.5 work with expressions made up of numbers and
operators. We can make things a little more interesting by allowing the variable “x” to
occur. This would allow expression such as “3*(x-1)*(x+1)”, for example. Make a
new version of the sample program [Link] that can work with such
expressions. In your program, the main() routine can’t simply print the value of the
expression, since the value of the expression now depends on the value of x. Instead,
it should print the value of the expression for x=0, x=1, x=2, and x=3.
The original program will have to be modified in several other ways. Currently, the
program uses classes ConstNode, BinOpNode, and UnaryMinusNode to represent
nodes in an expression tree. Since expressions can now include x, you will need a
new class, VariableNode, to represent an occurrence of x in the expression.
In the original program, each of the node classes has an instance method, “double
value()”, which returns the value of the node. But in your program, the value can
depend on x, so you should replace this method with one of the form “double
value(double xValue)”, where the parameter xValue is the value of x.
Finally, the parsing subroutines in your program will have to take into account the
fact that expressions can contain x. There is just one small change in the BNF rules
for the expressions: A <factor> is allowed to be the variable x:
<factor> ::= <number> | <x-variable> | "(" <expression> ")"
Exercises 481

where <x-variable> can be either a lower case or an upper case “X”. This change
in the BNF requires a change in the factorTree() subroutine.

This exercise builds on the previous exercise, Exercise 9.6. To understand it, you should
have some background in Calculus. The derivative of an expression that involves the
variable x can be defined by a few recursive rules:
The derivative of a constant is 0.
The derivative of x is 1.
If A is an expression, let dA be the derivative of A. Then the derivative of -A is -dA.
If A and B are expressions, let dA be the derivative of A and let dB be the
derivative of B. Then the derivative of A+B is dA+dB.
The derivative of A-B is dA-dB.
The derivative of A*B is A*dB + B*dA.
The derivative of A/B is (B*dA - A*dB) / (B*B).

For this exercise, you should modify your program from the previous exercise so
that it can compute the derivative of an expression. You can do this by adding a
derivative-computing method to each of the node classes. First, add another abstract
method to the ExpNode class:
abstract ExpNode derivative();

Then implement this method in each of the four subclasses of ExpNode. All the information
that you need is in the rules given above. In your main program, instead of printing the
stack operations for the original expression, you should print out the stack operations that
define the derivative. Note that the formula that you get for the derivative can be much
more complicated than it needs to be. For example, the derivative of 3*x+1 will be
computed as (3*1+0*x)+0. This is correct, even though it’s kind of ugly, and it would be
nice for it to be simplified. However, simplifying expressions is not easy.
As an alternative to printing out stack operations, you might want to print the deriva-
tive as a fully parenthesized expression. You can do this by adding a printInfix()
routine to each node class. It would be nice to leave out unnecessary parentheses, but
again, the problem of deciding which parentheses can be left out without altering the
meaning of the expression is a fairly difficult one, which I don’t advise you to attempt.
(There is one curious thing that happens here: If you apply the rules, as given, to an
expression tree, the result is no longer a tree, since the same subexpression can occur
at multiple points in the derivative. For example, if you build a node to represent B*B
by saying “new BinOpNode(’*’,B,B)”, then the left and right children of the new
node are actually the same node! This is not allowed in a tree. However, the di fference
is harmless in this case since, like a tree, the structure that you get has no loops in it.
Loops, on the other hand, would be a disaster in most of the recursive tree-processing
subroutines that we have written, since it would lead to infinite recursion.)
482 CHAPTER 9. LINKED DATA STRUCTURES AND RECURSION

Quiz on Chapter 9

Explain what is meant by a recursive subroutine.

Consider the following subroutine:

static void printStuff(int level) {
if (level == 0) {
[Link]("*");
}
else {
[Link]("[");
printStuff(level - 1);
[Link](",");
printStuff(level - 1);
[Link]("]");
}
}

Show the output that would be produced by the subroutine calls printStuff(0),
printStuff(1), printStuff(2), and printStuff(3).

Suppose that a linked list is formed from objects that belong to the class
class ListNode {
int item; // An item in the list.
ListNode next; // Pointer to next item in the list.
}

Write a subroutine that will count the number of zeros that occur in a given linked list of
ints. The subroutine should have a parameter of type ListNode and should return a
value of type int.

What are the three operations on a stack?

What is the basic difference between a stack and a queue?

What is an activation record ? What role does a stack of activation records play in a
computer?

Suppose that a binary tree of integers is formed from objects belonging to the class
class TreeNode {
int item; // One item in the tree.
TreeNode left; // Pointer to the left subtree.
TreeNode right; // Pointer to the right subtree.
}

Write a recursive subroutine that will find the sum of all the nodes in the tree. Your
subroutine should have a parameter of type TreeNode, and it should return a value of
type int.

What is a postorder traversal of a binary tree?

Suppose that a <multilist> is defined by the BNF rule

Quiz 483

<multilist>::= <word> | "(" [ <multilist> ]... ")"

where a <word> can be any sequence of letters. Give five different <multilist>’s
that can be generated by this rule. (This rule, by the way, is almost the entire syntax of
the programming language LISP! LISP is known for its simple syntax and its elegant
and powerful semantics.)

10. Explain what is meant by parsing a computer program.

484 CHAPTER 9. LINKED DATA STRUCTURES AND RECURSION
Chapter 10

Generic Programming and

Collection Classes

How to avoid reinventing the wheel? Many data structures and algorithms, such as those from
Chapter 9, have been studied, programmed, and re-programmed by generations of computer
science students. This is a valuable learning experience. Unfortunately, they have also been
programmed and re-programmed by generations of working computer professionals, taking up
time that could be devoted to new, more creative work. A programmer who needs a list or a
binary tree shouldn’t have to re-code these data structures from scratch. They are well-
understood and have been programmed thousands of times before. The problem is how to make
pre-written, robust data structures available to programmers. In this chapter, we’ll look at Java’s
attempt to address this problem.

10.1 Generic Programming

Generic programming refers to writing code that will work for many types of data. We
encountered the term in Section 7.3, where we looked at dynamic arrays of integers. The source
code presented there for working with dynamic arrays of integers works only for data of type int.
But the source code for dynamic arrays of double, String, JButton, or any other type would be
almost identical, except for the substitution of one type name for another. It seems silly to write
essentially the same code over and over. As we saw in Subsection 7.3.3, Java goes some
distance towards solving this problem by providing the ArrayList class. An ArrayList is essentially
a dynamic array of values of type Object. Since every class is a subclass of Object, objects of
any type can be stored in an ArrayList. Java goes even further by providing “parameterized
types,” which were introduced in Subsection 7.3.4. There we saw that the ArrayList type can be
parameterized, as in “ArrayList<String>”, to limit the values that can be stored in the list to
objects of a specified type. Parameterized types extend Java’s basic philosophy of type-safe
programming to generic programming.
The ArrayList class is just one of several standard classes that are used for generic pro-
gramming in Java. We will spend the next few sections looking at these classes and how they
are used, and we’ll see that there are also generic methods and generic interfaces (see Subsec-
tion 5.7.1). All the classes and interfaces discussed in these sections are defined in the package
[Link], and you will need an import statement at the beginning of your program to get
access to them. (Before you start putting “import [Link].*” at the beginning of every
program, you should know that some things in [Link] have names that are the same as

485
486 CHAPTER 10. GENERIC PROGRAMMING AND COLLECTION CLASSES

things in other packages. For example, both [Link] and [Link]

exist, so it is often better to import the individual classes that you need.)
In the final section of this chapter, we will see that it is possible to define new generic
classes, interfaces, and methods. Until then, we will stick to using the generics that are
predefined in Java’s standard library.
It is no easy task to design a library for generic programming. Java’s solution has many
nice features but is certainly not the only possible approach. It is almost certainly not the
best, and has a few features that in my opinion can only be called bizarre, but in the context
of the overall design of Java, it might be close to optimal. To get some perspective on
generic programming in general, it might be useful to look very briefly at generic
programming in two other languages.

10.1.1 Generic Programming in Smalltalk

Smalltalk was one of the very first object-oriented programming languages. It is still used
today, although its use is not very common. It has not achieved anything like the popularity
of Java or C++, but it is the source of many ideas used in these languages. In Smalltalk,
essentially all programming is generic, because of two basic properties of the language.
First of all, variables in Smalltalk are typeless. A data value has a type, such as integer or
string, but variables do not have types. Any variable can hold data of any type. Parameters are
also typeless, so a subroutine can be applied to parameter values of any type. Similarly, a data
structure can hold data values of any type. For example, once you’ve defined a binary tree data
structure in SmallTalk, you can use it for binary trees of integers or strings or dates or data of
any other type. There is simply no need to write new code for each data type.
Secondly, all data values are objects, and all operations on objects are defined by methods
in a class. This is true even for types that are “primitive” in Java, such as integers. When the “+”
operator is used to add two integers, the operation is performed by calling a method in the
integer class. When you define a new class, you can define a “+” operator, and you will then be
able to add objects belonging to that class by saying “a + b” just as if you were adding
numbers. Now, suppose that you write a subroutine that uses the “+” operator to add up the
items in a list. The subroutine can be applied to a list of integers, but it can also be applied,
automatically, to any other data type for which “+” is defined. Similarly, a subroutine that uses the
“<" operator to sort a list can be applied to lists containing any type of data for which “ <” is
defined. There is no need to write a different sorting subroutine for each type of data.
Put these two features together and you have a language where data structures and al-
gorithms will work for any type of data for which they make sense, that is, for which the
appropriate operations are defined. This is real generic programming. This might sound
pretty good, and you might be asking yourself why all programming languages don’t work
this way. This type of freedom makes it easier to write programs, but unfortunately it makes
it harder to write programs that are correct and robust (see Chapter 8). Once you have a
data structure that can contain data of any type, it becomes hard to ensure that it only holds
the type of data that you want it to hold. If you have a subroutine that can sort any type of
data, it’s hard to ensure that it will only be applied to data for which the “<” operator is
defined. More particularly, there is no way for a compiler to ensure these things. The problem will
only show up at run time when an attempt is made to apply some operation to a data type for which it is not
defined, and the program will crash.
10.1. GENERIC PROGRAMMING 487

10.1.2 Generic Programming in C++

Unlike Smalltalk, C++ is a very strongly typed language, even more so than Java. Every
variable has a type, and can only hold data values of that type. This means that the kind of
generic programming that is used in Smalltalk is impossible in C++. Furthermore, C++ does
not have anything corresponding to Java’s Object class. That is, there is no class that is a
superclass of all other classes. This means that C++ can’t use Java’s style of generic
programming with non-parameterized generic types either. Nevertheless, C++ has a
powerful and flexible system of generic programming. It is made possible by a language
feature known as templates. In C++, instead of writing a different sorting subroutine for
each type of data, you can write a single subroutine template. The template is not a
subroutine; it’s more like a factory for making subroutines. We can look at an example, since
the syntax of C++ is very similar to Java’s:
template<class ItemType>
void sort( ItemType A[], int count ) {
Sort items in the array, A, into increasing order.
The items in positions 0, 1, 2, ..., (count-1) are sorted.
The algorithm that is used here is selection sort.
for (int i = count-1; i > 0; i--) {
int position of max = 0;
for (int j = 1; j <= count ; j++)
if ( A[j] > A[position of max] )
position of max = j;
ItemType temp = A[count];
A[count] = A[position of max];
A[position of max] = temp;
}
}

This piece of code defines a subroutine template. If you remove the first line, “template<class
ItemType>”, and substitute the word “int” for the word “ItemType” in the rest of the template, you
get a subroutine for sorting arrays of ints. (Even though it says “class ItemType”, you can
actually substitute any type for ItemType, including the primitive types.) If you substitute “string”
for “ItemType”, you get a subroutine for sorting arrays of strings. This is pretty much what the
compiler does with the template. If your program says “sort(list,10)” where list is an array
of ints, the compiler uses the template to generate a subroutine for sorting arrays of ints. If you
say “sort(cards,10)” where cards is an array of objects of type Card, then the compiler
generates a subroutine for sorting arrays of Cards. At least, it tries to. The template uses the “>”
operator to compare values. If this operator is defined for values of type Card, then the compiler
will successfully use the template to generate a subroutine for sorting cards. If “>” is not defined
for Cards, then the compiler will fail—but this will happen at compile time, not, as in Smalltalk, at
run time where it would make the program crash.
In addition to subroutine templates, C++ also has templates for making classes. If you
write a template for a binary tree class, you can use it to generate classes for binary trees of
ints, binary trees of strings, binary trees of dates, and so on—all from one template. The
most recent version of C++ comes with a large number of pre-written templates called the
Standard Template Library or STL. The STL is quite complex. Many people would say that
its much too complex. But it is also one of the most interesting features of C++.
488 CHAPTER 10. GENERIC PROGRAMMING AND COLLECTION CLASSES

10.1.3 Generic Programming in Java

Java’s generic programming features have gone through several stages of development.
The original version of Java had just a few generic data structure classes, such as Vector,
that could hold values of type Object. Java version 1.2 introduced a much larger group of
generics that followed the same basic model. These generic classes and interfaces as a
group are known as the Java Collection Framework . The ArrayList class is part of the
Collection Framework. The original Collection Framework was closer in spirit to Smalltalk
than it was to C++, since a data structure designed to hold Objects can be used with objects
of any type. Unfortunately, as in Smalltalk, the result is a category of errors that show up
only at run time, rather than at compile time. If a programmer assumes that all the items in a
data structure are strings and tries to process those items as strings, a run-time error will
occur if other types of data have inadvertently been added to the data structure. In Java, the
error will most likely occur when the program retrieves an Object from the data structure and
tries to type-cast it to type String. If the object is not actually of type String, the illegal type-
cast will throw an error of type ClassCastException.
Java 5.0 introduced parameterized types, such as ArrayList<String>. This made it
possible to create generic data structures that can be type-checked at compile time rather
than at run time. With these data structures, type-casting is not necessary, so
ClassCastExceptions are avoided. The compiler will detect any attempt to add an object of
the wrong type to the data structure; it will report a syntax error and will refuse to compile
the program. In Java 5.0, all of the classes and interfaces in the Collection Framework, and
even some classes that are not part of that framework, have been parameterized. Java’s
parameterized classes are similar to template classes in C++ (although the implementation
is very different), and their introduction moves Java’s generic programming model closer to
C++ and farther from Smalltalk. In this chapter, I will use the parameterized types almost
exclusively, but you should remember that their use is not mandatory. It is still legal to use a
parameterized class as a non-parameterized type, such as a plain ArrayList.
Note that there is a significant difference between parameterized classes in Java and tem-
plate classes in C++. A template class in C++ is not really a class at all—it’s a kind of factory for
generating classes. Every time the template is used with a new type, a new compiled class is
created. With a Java parameterized class, there is only one compiled class file. For example,
there is only one compiled class file, [Link], for the parameterized class ArrayList.
The parameterized types ArrayList<String> and ArrayList<Integer> both use the some compiled
class file, as does the plain ArrayList type. The type parameter—String or Integer —just tells the
compiler to limit the type of object that can be stored in the data structure. The type parame-ter
has no effect at run time and is not even known at run time. The type information is said to be
“erased” at run time. This type erasuer introduces a certain amount of weirdness. For ex-ample,
you can’t test “if (list instanceof ArrayList<String>)” because the instanceof
operator is evaluated at run time, and at run time only the plain ArrayList exists. Even worse, you
can’t create an array that has base type ArrayList<String> by using the new operator, as in “new
ArrayList<String>[N]”. This is because the new operator is evaluated at run time, and at
run time there is no such thing as “ArrayList<String>”; only the non-parameterized type
ArrayList exists at run time.
Fortunately, most programmers don’t have to deal with such problems, since they turn up only in
fairly advanced programming. Most people who use the Java Collection Framework will not encounter them,
and they will get the benefits of type-safe generic programming with little difficulty.
10.1. GENERIC PROGRAMMING 489

10.1.4 The Java Collection Framework

Java’s generic data structures can be divided into two categories: collections and maps. A
collection is more or less what it sound like: a collection of objects. A map associates objects in
one set with objects in another set in the way that a dictionary associates definitions with words
or a phone book associates phone numbers with names. A map is similar to what I called an
“association list” in Subsection 7.4.2. In Java, collections and maps are represented by the
parameterized interfaces Collection<T> and Map<T,S>. Here, “T” and “S” stand for any type
except for the primitive types. Map<T,S> is the first example we have seen where there are two
type parameters, T and S ; we will not deal further with this possibility until we look at maps more
closely in Section 10.3. In this section and the next, we look at collections only.
There are two types of collections: lists and sets. A list is a collection in which the
objects are arranged in a linear sequence. A list has a first item, a second item, and so on.
For any item in the list, except the last, there is an item that directly follows it. The defining
property of a set is that no object can occur more than once in a set; the elements of a set
are not neces-sarily thought of as being in any particular order. The ideas of lists and sets
are represented as parameterized interfaces List<T> and Set<T>. These are sub-interfaces
of Collection<T>. That is, any object that implements the interface List<T> or Set<T>
automatically implements Col-lection<T> as well. The interface Collection<T> specifies
general operations that can be applied to any collection at all. List<T> and Set<T> add
additional operations that are appropriate for lists and sets respectively.
Of course, any actual object that is a collection, list, or set must belong to a concrete
class that implements the corresponding interface. For example, the class ArrayList<T>
implements the interface List<T> and therefore also implements Collection<T>. This means
that all the methods that are defined in the list and collection interfaces can be used with, for
example, an ArrayList<String> object. We will look at various classes that implement the list
and set interfaces in the next section. But before we do that, we’ll look briefly at some of the
general operations that are available for all collections.
∗∗∗
The interface Collection<T> specifies methods for performing some basic operations on
any collection of objects. Since “collection” is a very general concept, operations that can be
applied to all collections are also very general. They are generic operations in the sense that
they can be applied to various types of collections containing various types of objects.
Suppose that coll is an object that implements the interface Collection<T> (for some
specific non-primitive type T ). Then the following operations, which are specified in the
interface Collection<T>, are defined for coll:
[Link]() — returns an int that gives the number of objects in the collection.
[Link]() — returns a boolean value which is true if the size of the collection is 0.
[Link]() — removes all objects from the collection.
[Link](tobject) — adds tobject to the collection. The parameter must be of
type T ; if not, a syntax error occurs at compile time. This method returns a boolean
value which tells you whether the operation actually modified the collection. For
example, adding an object to a Set has no effect if that object was already in the set.
[Link](object) — returns a boolean value that is true if object is in the
collection. Note that object is not required to be of type T, since it makes sense to check
whether object is in the collection, no matter what type object has. (For testing
490 CHAPTER 10. GENERIC PROGRAMMING AND COLLECTION CLASSES

equality, null is considered to be equal to itself. The criterion for testing non-null objects
for equality can differ from one kind of collection to another; see Subsection 10.1.6, below.)

[Link](object) — removes object from the collection, if it occurs in the

collection, and returns a boolean value that tells you whether the object was found.
Again, object is not required to be of type T.

[Link](coll2) — returns a boolean value that is true if every object

in coll2 is also in the coll. The parameter can be any collection.

[Link](coll2) — adds all the objects in coll2 to coll. The parameter,

coll2, can be any collection of type Collection<T>. However, it can also be more
general. For example, if T is a class and S is a sub-class of T, then coll2 can be of
type Collection<S>. This makes sense because any object of type S is automatically of
type T and so can legally be added to coll.

[Link](coll2) — removes every object from coll that also occurs in

the collection coll2. coll2 can be any collection.

[Link](coll2) — removes every object from coll that does not

occur in the collection coll2. It “retains” only the objects that do occur in coll2.
coll2 can be any collection.

[Link]() — returns an array of type Object[ ] that contains all the items in the
collection. The return value can be type-cast to another array type, if appropriate. Note
that the return type is Object[ ], not T[ ]! However, you can type-cast the return value to
a more specific type. For example, if you know that all the items in coll are of type
String, then (String[])[Link]() gives you an array of Strings containing
all the strings in the collection.

Since these methods are part of the Collection<T> interface, they must be defined for
every object that implements that interface. There is a problem with this, however. For
example, the size of some kinds of collection cannot be changed after they are created.
Methods that add or remove objects don’t make sense for these collections. While it is still
legal to call the methods, an exception will be thrown when the call is evaluated at run time.
The type of the exception is UnsupportedOperationException. Furthermore, since
Collection<T> is only an interface, not a concrete class, the actual implementation of the
method is left to the classes that implement the interface. This means that the semantics of
the methods, as described above, are not guaranteed to be valid for all collection objects;
they are valid, however, for classes in the Java Collection Framework.
There is also the question of efficiency. Even when an operation is defined for several
types of collections, it might not be equally efficient in all cases. Even a method as simple
as size() can vary greatly in efficiency. For some collections, computing the size() might
involve counting the items in the collection. The number of steps in this process is equal to
the number of items. Other collections might have instance variables to keep track of the
size, so evaluating size() just means returning the value of a variable. In this case, the
computation takes only one step, no matter how many items there are. When working with
collections, it’s good to have some idea of how efficient operations are and to choose a
collection for which the operations that you need can be implemented most e fficiently. We ’ll
see specific examples of this in the next two sections.
10.1. GENERIC PROGRAMMING 491

10.1.5 Iterators and for-each Loops

The interface Collection<T> defines a few basic generic algorithms, but suppose you want to
write your own generic algorithms. Suppose, for example, you want to do something as simple
as printing out every item in a collection. To do this in a generic way, you need some way of
going through an arbitrary collection, accessing each item in turn. We have seen how to do this
for specific data structures: For an array, you can use a for loop to iterate through all the array
indices. For a linked list, you can use a while loop in which you advance a pointer along the list.
For a binary tree, you can use a recursive subroutine to do an infix traversal. Collections can be
represented in any of these forms and many others besides. With such a variety of traversal
mechanisms, how can we even hope to come up with a single generic method that will work for
collections that are stored in wildly different forms? This problem is solved by iterators. An
iterator is an object that can be used to traverse a collection. Di fferent types of collections have
iterators that are implemented in different ways, but all iterators are used in the same way. An
algorithm that uses an iterator to traverse a collection is generic, because the same technique
can be applied to any type of collection. Iterators can seem rather strange to someone who is
encountering generic programming for the first time, but you should understand that they solve a
difficult problem in an elegant way.
The interface Collection<T> defines a method that can be used to obtain an iterator for
any collection. If coll is a collection, then [Link]() returns an iterator that can
be used to traverse the collection. You should think of the iterator as a kind of generalized
pointer that starts at the beginning of the collection and can move along the collection from
one item to the next. Iterators are defined by a parameterized interface named Iterator<T>.
If coll implements the interface Collection<T> for some specific type T, then
[Link]() returns an iterator of type Iterator<T>, with the same type T as its type
parameter. The interface Iterator<T> defines just three methods. If iter refers to an object
that implements Iterator<T>, then we have:

[Link]() — returns the next item, and advances the iterator. The return value is of
type T. This method lets you look at one of the items in the collection. Note that there is
no way to look at an item without advancing the iterator past that item. If this method is
called when no items remain, it will throw a NoSuchElementException.
[Link]() — returns a boolean value telling you whether there are more items
to be processed. In general, you should test this before calling [Link]().
[Link]() — if you call this after calling [Link](), it will remove the item that
you just saw from the collection. Note that this method has no parameter. It removes the
item that was most recently returned by [Link](). This might produce an
UnsupportedOperationException, if the collection does not support removal of items.

Using iterators, we can write code for printing all the items in any collection. Suppose, for
example, that coll is of type Collection<String>. In that case, the value returned by
[Link]() is of type Iterator<String>, and we can say:
Iterator<String> iter; // Declare the iterater variable.
iter = [Link](); // Get an iterator for the collection.
while ( [Link]() ) {
String item = [Link](); // Get the next item.
[Link](item);
}
492 CHAPTER 10. GENERIC PROGRAMMING AND COLLECTION CLASSES

The same general form will work for other types of processing. For example, the following
code will remove all null values from any collection of type Collection<JButton> (as long
as that collection supports removal of values):
Iterator<JButton> iter = [Link]():
while ( [Link]() ) {
JButton item = [Link]();
if (item == null)
[Link]();
}

(Note, by the way, that when Collection<T>, Iterator<T>, or any other parameterized type is
used in actual code, they are always used with actual types such as String or JButton in
place of the “formal type parameter” T. An iterator of type Iterator<String> is used to iterate
through a collection of Strings; an iterator of type Iterator<JButton> is used to iterate through
a collection of JButtons; and so on.)
An iterator is often used to apply the same operation to all the elements in a collection. In
many cases, it’s possible to avoid the use of iterators for this purpose by using a for-each loop.
The for-each loop was discussed in Subsection 3.4.4 for use with enumerated types and in
Subsection 7.2.2 for use with arrays. A for-each loop can also be used to iterate through any
collection. For a collection coll of type Collection<T>, a for-each loop takes the form:
for ( T x : coll ) { // "for each object x, of type T, in coll"
process x
}

Here, x is the loop control variable. Each object in coll will be assigned to x in turn, and
the body of the loop will be executed for each object. Since objects in coll are of type T,
x is declared to be of type T. For example, if namelist is of type Collection<String>, we
can print out all the names in the collection with:
for ( String name : namelist ) {
[Link]( name );
}

This for-each loop could, of course, be written as a while loop using an iterator, but the
for-each loop is much easier to follow.

10.1.6 Equality and Comparison

There are several methods in the collection interface that test objects for equality. For exam-ple,
the methods [Link](object) and [Link](object) look for an item in the
collection that is equal to object. However, equality is not such a simple matter. The obvious
technique for testing equality—using the == operator—does not usually give a reasonable an-
swer when applied to objects. The == operator tests whether two objects are identical in the
sense that they share the same location in memory. Usually, however, we want to consider two
objects to be equal if they represent the same value, which is a very di fferent thing. Two values
of type String should be considered equal if they contain the same sequence of characters. The
question of whether those characters are stored in the same location in memory is irrelevant.
Two values of type Date should be considered equal if they represent the same time.
The Object class defines the boolean-valued method equals(Object) for testing whether one
object is equal to another. This method is used by many, but not by all, collection classes for
deciding whether two objects are to be considered the same. In the Object class,
10.1. GENERIC PROGRAMMING 493

[Link](obj2) is defined to be the same as obj1 == obj2. However, for most sub-
classes of Object, this definition is not reasonable, and it should be overridden. The String
class, for example, overrides equals() so that for a String str, [Link](obj) if obj
is also a String and obj contains the same sequence of characters as str.
If you write your own class, you might want to define an equals() method in that class
to get the correct behavior when objects are tested for equality. For example, a Card class
that will work correctly when used in collections could be defined as:
public class Card { // Class to represent playing cards.

int suit; // Number from 0 to 3 that codes for the suit -- // spades,
diamonds, clubs or hearts. int value; // Number from 1 to 13 that represents
the value.

public boolean equals(Object obj) {

try {
Card other = (Card)obj; // Type-cast obj to a Card.
if (suit == [Link] && value == [Link]) {
The other card has the same suit and value as
this card, so they should be considered
equal. return true;
}
else
return false;
}
catch (Exception e) {
This will catch the NullPointerException that occurs if obj
is null and the ClassCastException that occurs if obj is
not of type Card. In these cases, obj is not equal to
this Card, so return false.
return false;
}
}
.
// other methods and constructors

Without the equals() method in this class, methods such as contains() and
remove() in the interface Collection<Card> will not work as expected.
A similar concern arises when items in a collection are sorted. Sorting refers to arranging
a sequence of items in ascending order, according to some criterion. The problem is that
there is no natural notion of ascending order for arbitrary objects. Before objects can be
sorted, some method must be defined for comparing them. Objects that are meant to be
compared should implement the interface [Link]. In fact, Comparable
is defined as a parameterized interface, Comparable<T>, which represents the ability to be
compared to an object of type T. The interface Comparable<T> defines one method:
public int compareTo( T obj )

The value returned by [Link](obj2) should be negative if and only if obj1 comes
before obj2, when the objects are arranged in ascending order. It should be positive if and only
if obj1 comes after obj2. A return value of zero means that the objects are considered
494 CHAPTER 10. GENERIC PROGRAMMING AND COLLECTION CLASSES

to be the same for the purposes of this comparison. This does not necessarily mean that the
objects are equal in the sense that [Link](obj2) is true. For example, if the objects
are of type Address, representing mailing addresses, it might be useful to sort the objects by zip
code. Two Addresses are considered the same for the purposes of the sort if they have the
same zip code—but clearly that would not mean that they are the same address.
The String class implements the interface Comparable<String> and defines compareTo
in a reasonable way (and in this case, the return value of compareTo is zero if and only if
the two strings that are being compared are equal). If you define your own class and want to
be able to sort objects belonging to that class, you should do the same. For example:
/**
Represents a full name consisting of a first name and a
last name. */
public class FullName implements Comparable<FullName> {
private String firstName, lastName; // Non-null first and last names.

public FullName(String first, String last) { // Constructor.

if (first == null || last == null)
throw new IllegalArgumentException("Names must be non-null.");
firstName = first;
lastName = last;
}
public boolean equals(Object obj) {
try {
FullName other = (FullName)obj; // Type-cast obj to type
FullName return [Link]([Link])
&& [Link]([Link]);
}
catch (Exception e) {
return false; // if obj is null or is not of type FirstName
}
}
public int compareTo( FullName other ) {
if ( [Link]([Link]) < 0 ) {
If lastName comes before the last name of
the other object, then this FullName comes
before the other FullName. Return a negative
value to indicate this.
return -1;
}
if ( [Link]([Link]) > 0 ) {
If lastName comes after the last name of
the other object, then this FullName comes
after the other FullName. Return a positive
value to indicate this.
return 1;
}
else {
Last names are the same, so base the comparison on
the first names, using compareTo from class
String. return [Link]([Link]);
}
10.1. GENERIC PROGRAMMING 495

}
.
// other methods

(I find it a little odd that the class here is declared as “class FullName implements
Comparable<FullName>”, with “FullName” repeated as a type parameter in the name of
the interface. However, it does make sense. It means that we are going to compare objects
that belong to the class FullName to other objects of the same type. Even though this is the
only reasonable thing to do, that fact is not obvious to the Java compiler—and the type
parameter in Comparable<FullName> is there for the compiler.)
There is another way to allow for comparison of objects in Java, and that is to provide a
separate object that is capable of making the comparison. The object must implement the
interface Comparator<T>, where T is the type of the objects that are to be compared. The
interface Comparator<T> defines the method:
public int compare( T obj1, T obj2 )

This method compares two objects of type T and returns a value that is negative, or positive,
or zero, depending on whether obj1 comes before obj2, or comes after obj2, or is
considered to be the same as obj2 for the purposes of this comparison. Comparators are
useful for compar-ing objects that do not implement the Comparable interface and for
defining several different orderings on the same collection of objects.
In the next two sections, we’ll see how Comparable and Comparator are used in the
context of collections and maps.

10.1.7 Generics and Wrapper Classes

As noted above, Java’s generic programming does not apply to the primitive types, since
generic data structures can only hold objects, while values of primitive type are not objects.
However, the “wrapper classes” that were introduced in Subsection 5.3.2 make it possible to
get around this restriction to a great extent.
Recall that each primitive type has an associated wrapper class: class Integer for type
int, class Boolean for type boolean, class Character for type char, and so on.
An object of type Integer contains a value of type int. The object serves as a “wrapper” for
the primitive type value, which allows it to be used in contexts where objects are required, such
as in generic data structures. For example, a list of Integers can be stored in a variable of type
ArrayList<Integer>, and interfaces such as Collection<Integer> and Set<Integer> are defined.
Furthermore, class Integer defines equals(), compareTo(), and toString() methods
that do what you would expect (that is, that compare and write out the corresponding primitive
type values in the usual way). Similar remarks apply for all the wrapper classes.
Recall also that Java does automatic conversions between a primitive type and the corre-
sponding wrapper type. (These conversions, which are called autoboxing and unboxing, were also
introduced in Subsection 5.3.2.) This means that once you have created a generic data structure to
hold objects belonging to one of the wrapper classes, you can use the data structure pretty much as if
it actually contained primitive type values. For example, if numbers is a vari-able of type
Collection<Integer>, it is legal to call [Link](17) or [Link](42). You can’t
literally add the primitive type value 17 to numbers, but Java will automatically con-vert the 17 to the
corresponding wrapper object, new Integer(17), and the wrapper object
496 CHAPTER 10. GENERIC PROGRAMMING AND COLLECTION CLASSES

will be added to the collection. (The creation of the object does add some time and memory
overhead to the operation, and you should keep that in mind in situations where efficiency is
important. An array of int is more efficient than an ArrayList<Integer>.)

10.2 Lists and Sets

In the previous section, we looked at the general properties of collection classes in Java. In this
section, we look at some specific collection classes and how to use them. These classes can be
divided into two categories: lists and sets. A list consists of a sequence of items arranged in a
linear order. A list has a definite order, but is not necessarily sorted into ascending order. A set is
a collection that has no duplicate entries. The elements of a set might or might not be arranged
into some definite order.

10.2.1 ArrayList and LinkedList

There are two obvious ways to represent a list: as a dynamic array and as a linked list. We’ve
encountered these already in Section 7.3 and Section 9.2. Both of these options are available in
generic form as the collection classes [Link] and [Link].
These classes are part of the Java Collection Framework. Each implements the interface List<T>, and
therefor the interface Collection<T>. An object of type ArrayList<T> represents an ordered sequence
of objects of type T, stored in an array that will grow in size whenever necessary as new items are
added. An object of type LinkedList<T> also represents an ordered sequence of objects of type T, but
the objects are stored in nodes that are linked together with pointers.
Both list classes support the basic list operations that are defined in the interface
List<T>, and an abstract data type is defined by its operations, not by its representation. So
why two classes? Why not a single List class with a single representation? The problem is
that there is no single representation of lists for which all list operations are e fficient. For
some operations, linked lists are more efficient than arrays. For others, arrays are more
efficient. In a particular application of lists, it’s likely that only a few operations will be used
frequently. You want to choose the representation for which the frequently used operations
will be as efficient as possible.
Broadly speaking, the LinkedList class is more efficient in applications where items will
often be added or removed at the beginning of the list or in the middle of the list. In an array,
these operations require moving a large number of items up or down one position in the
array, to make a space for a new item or to fill in the hole left by the removal of an item. In
terms of asymptotic analysis (Section 8.6), adding an element at the beginning or in the
middle of an array has run time Θ(n), where n is the number of items in the array. In a linked
list, nodes can be added or removed at any position by changing a few pointer values, an
operation that has run time Θ(1). That is, the operation takes only some constant amount of
time, independent of how many items are in the list.
On the other hand, the ArrayList class is more efficient when random access to items is
required. Random access means accessing the k-th item in the list, for any integer k. Random access is used
when you get or change the value stored at a specified position in the list. This is trivial for an array, with run
time Θ(1). But for a linked list it means starting at the beginning of the list and moving from node to node
along the list for k steps, an operation that has run time Θ(n).
10.2. LISTS AND SETS 497

Operations that can be done efficiently for both types of lists include sorting and adding
an item at the end of the list.
All lists implement the methods from interface Collection<T> that were discussed in Sub-
section 10.1.4. These methods include size(), isEmpty(), add(T), remove(Object),
and clear(). The add(T) method adds the object at the end of the list. The
remove(Object) method involves first finding the object, which is not very e fficient for any list
since it involves going through the items in the list from beginning to end until the object is found.
The interface List<T> adds some methods for accessing list items according to their numerical
positions in the list. Suppose that list is an object of type List<T>. Then we have the methods:

[Link](index) — returns the object of type T that is at position index in the list,
where index is an integer. Items are numbered 0, 1, 2, . . . , [Link]()-1. The
param-eter must be in this range, or an IndexOutOfBoundsException is thrown.
[Link](index,obj) — stores the object obj at position number index in the list,
replacing the object that was there previously. The object obj must be of type T. This
does not change the number of elements in the list or move any of the other elements.
[Link](index,obj) — inserts an object obj into the list at position number
index, where obj must be of type T. The number of items in the list increases by
one, and items that come after position index move up one position to make room for
the new item. The value of index must be in the range 0 to [Link](), inclusive.
If index is equal to [Link](), then obj is added at the end of the list.
[Link](index) — removes the object at position number index, and returns
that object as the return value of the method. Items after this position move up one
space in the list to fill the hole, and the size of the list decreases by one. The value of
index must be in the range 0 to [Link]()-1
[Link](obj) — returns an int that gives the position of obj in the list, if it
occurs. If it does not occur, the return value is -1. The object obj can be of any type,
not just of type T. If obj occurs more than once in the list, the index of the first
occurrence is returned.

These methods are defined both in class ArrayList<T> and in class LinkedList<T>,
although some of them—get and set—are only efficient for ArrayLists. The class
LinkedList<T> adds a few additional methods, which are not defined for an ArrayList. If
linkedlist is an object of type LinkedList<T>, then we have

[Link]() — returns the object of type T that is the first item in the list.
The list is not modified. If the list is empty when the method is called, an exception of
type NoSuchElementException is thrown (the same is true for the next three methods
as well).
[Link]() — returns the object of type T that is the last item in the list.
The list is not modified.
[Link]() — removes the first item from the list, and returns that
object of type T as its return value.
[Link]() — removes the last item from the list, and returns that
object of type T as its return value.
[Link](obj) — adds the obj, which must be of type T, to the
beginning of the list.
498 CHAPTER 10. GENERIC PROGRAMMING AND COLLECTION CLASSES

[Link](obj) — adds the object obj, which must be of type T, to the

end of the list. (This is exactly the same as [Link](obj) and is
apparently defined just to keep the naming consistent.)
These methods are apparently defined to make it easy to use a LinkedList as if it were a
stack or a queue. (See Section 9.3.) For example, we can use a LinkedList as a queue by
adding items onto one end of the list (using the addLast() method) and removing them
from the other end (using the removeFirst() method).
If list is an object of type List<T>, then the method [Link](), defined in the
interface Collection<T>, returns an Iterator that can be used to traverse the list from beginning to
end. However, for Lists, there is a special type of Iterator, called a ListIterator, which o ffers
additional capabilities. ListIterator<T> is an interface that extends the interface Iterator<T>. The
method [Link]() returns an object of type ListIterator<T>.
A ListIterator has the usual Iterator methods, hasNext(), next(), and remove(), but it
also has methods hasPrevious(), previous(), and add(obj) that make it possible to
move backwards in the list and to add an item at the current position of the iterator. To
understand how these work, it’s best to think of an iterator as pointing to a position between two
list elements, or at the beginning or end of the list. In this diagram, the items in a list are
represented by squares, and arrows indicate the possible positions of an iterator:

If iter is of type ListIterator<T>, then [Link]() moves the iterator one space to the
right along the list and returns the item that the iterator passes as it moves. The method
[Link]() moves the iterator one space to the left along the list and returns the item
that it passes. The method [Link]() removes an item from the list; the item that is
removed is the item that the iterator passed most recently in a call to either [Link]() or
[Link](). There is also a method [Link](obj) that adds the specified object to
the list at the current position of the iterator (where obj must be of type T ). This can be
between two existing items or at the beginning of the list or at the end of the list.
(By the way, the lists that are used in class LinkedList<T> are doubly linked lists.
That is, each node in the list contains two pointers—one to the next node in the list and one
to the previous node. This makes it possible to efficiently implement both the next() and
previous() methods of a ListIterator. Also, to make the addLast() and
getLast() methods of a LinkedList efficient, the class LinkedList <T> includes an instance
variable that points to the last node in the list.)
As an example of using a ListIterator, suppose that we want to maintain a list of items that is
always sorted into increasing order. When adding an item to the list, we can use a ListIterator to
find the position in the list where the item should be added. Once the position has been found,
we use the same list iterator to place the item in that position. The idea is to start at the
beginning of the list and to move the iterator forward past all the items that are smaller than the
item that is being inserted. At that point, the iterator’s add() method can be used to insert the
item. To be more definite, suppose that stringList is a variable of type List<String>. Assume that
that the strings that are already in the list are stored in ascending order and that newItem is a
string that we would like to insert into the list. The following code will place newItem in the list in its
correct position, so that the modified list is still in ascending order:
10.2. LISTS AND SETS 499

ListIterator<String> iter = [Link]();

Move the iterator so that it points to the position where
newItem should be inserted into the list. If newItem is
bigger than all the items in the list, then the while loop
will end when [Link]() becomes false, that is, when
the iterator has reached the end of the list.
while ([Link]()) {
String item = [Link]();
if ([Link](item) <= 0) {
newItem should come BEFORE item in the list.
Move the iterator back one space so that
it points to the correct insertion point,
and end the loop.
[Link]();
break;
}
}
[Link](newItem);

Here, stringList might be of type ArrayList<String> or of type LinkedList<String>.

The algorithm that is used to insert newItem into the list will be about equally efficient for
both types of lists, and it will even work for other classes that implement the interface
List<String>. You would probably find it easier to design an insertion algorithm that uses
array-like indexing with the methods get(index) and add(index,obj). However, that
algorithm would be horribly inefficient for LinkedLists because random access is so
inefficient for linked lists. (By the way, the insertion algorithm works when the list is empty. It
might be useful for you to think about why this is true.)

10.2.2 Sorting
Sorting a list is a fairly common operation, and there should really be a sorting method in the
List interface. There is not, presumably because it only makes sense to sort lists of certain
types of objects, but methods for sorting lists are available as static methods in the class
[Link]. This class contains a variety of static utility methods for
working with collections. The methods are generic; that is, they will work for collections of
objects of various types. Suppose that list is of type List<T>. The command
[Link](list);

can be used to sort the list into ascending order. The items in the list should implement the
interface Comparable<T> (see Subsection 10.1.6). The method [Link]() will
work, for example, for lists of String and for lists of any of the wrapper classes such as Integer
and Double. There is also a sorting method that takes a Comparator as its second argument:
[Link](list,comparator);

In this method, the comparator will be used to compare the items in the list. As mentioned in
the previous section, a Comparator is an object that defines a compare() method that can be
used to compare two objects. We’ll see an example of using a Comparator in Section 10.4.
The sorting method that is used by [Link]() is the so-called “merge sort”
algorithm, which has both worst-case and average-case run times that are Θ(n*log(n)) for
500 CHAPTER 10. GENERIC PROGRAMMING AND COLLECTION CLASSES

a list of size n. Although the average run time for MergeSort is a little slower than that of
QuickSort, its worst-case performance is much better than QuickSort’s. (QuickSort was
covered in Subsection 9.1.3.) MergeSort also has a nice property called “stability” that we
will encounter at the end of Subsection 10.4.3.
The Collections class has at least two other useful methods for modifying lists.
[Link](list) will rearrange the elements of the list into a random order.
[Link](list) will reverse the order of the elements, so that the last element
is moved to the beginning of the list, the next-to-last element to the second position, and so on.
Since an efficient sorting method is provided for Lists, there is no need to write one your-
self. You might be wondering whether there is an equally convenient method for standard
arrays. The answer is yes. Array-sorting methods are available as static methods in the
class [Link]. The statement
[Link](A);

will sort an array, A, provided either that the base type of A is one of the primitive types
(except boolean) or that A is an array of Objects that implement the Comparable
interface. You can also sort part of an array. This is important since arrays are often only
“partially filled.” The command:
[Link](A,fromIndex,toIndex);

sorts the elements A[fromIndex], A[fromIndex+1], . . . , A[toIndex-1] into ascending order. You
can use [Link](A,0,N-1) to sort a partially filled array which has items in the first
positions.
Java does not support generic programming for primitive types. In order to implement the
command [Link](A), the Arrays class contains eight methods: one method for
arrays of Objects and one method for each of the primitive types byte, short, int, long, float,
double, and char.

10.2.3 TreeSet and HashSet

A set is a collection of objects in which no object occurs more than once. Sets implement all the
methods in the interface Collection<T>, but do so in a way that ensures that no element occurs
twice in the set. For example, if set is an object of type Set<T>, then [Link](obj) will have
no effect on the set if obj is already an element of the set. Java has two classes that implement
the interface Set<T>: [Link] and [Link].
In addition to being a Set, a TreeSet has the property that the elements of the set are
arranged into ascending sorted order. An Iterator for a TreeSet will always visit the
elements of the set in ascending order.
A TreeSet cannot hold arbitrary objects, since there must be a way to determine the
sorted order of the objects it contains. Ordinarily, this means that the objects in a set of type
TreeSet<T> should implement the interface Comparable<T> and that
[Link](obj2) should be defined in a reasonable way for any two objects obj1
and obj2 in the set. Alter-natively, an object of type Comparator<T> can be provided as a
parameter to the constructor when the TreeSet is created. In that case, the compareTo()
method of the Comparator will be used to compare objects that are added to the set.
A TreeSet does not use the equals() method to test whether two objects are the same. Instead, it
uses the compareTo() method. This can be a problem. Recall from Subsection 10.1.6 that
compareTo() can consider two objects to be the same for the purpose of the comparison
10.2. LISTS AND SETS 501

even though the objects are not equal. For a TreeSet, this means that only one of those objects
can be in the set. For example, if the TreeSet contains mailing addresses and if the
compareTo() method for addresses just compares their zip codes, then the set can contain
only one address in each zip code. Clearly, this is not right! But that only means that you have to
be aware of the semantics of TreeSets, and you need to make sure that compareTo() is
defined in a reasonable way for objects that you put into a TreeSet. This will be true, by the way,
for Strings, Integers, and many other built-in types, since the compareTo() method for these
types considers two objects to be the same only if they are actually equal.
In the implementation of a TreeSet, the elements are stored in something similar to a binary
sort tree. (See Subsection 9.4.2.) However, the data structure that is used is balanced in the
sense that all the leaves of the tree are at about the same distance from the root of the tree. This
ensures that all the basic operations—inserting, deleting, and searching—are e fficient, with
worst-case run time Θ(log(n)), where n is the number of items in the set.
The fact that a TreeSet sorts its elements and removes duplicates makes it very useful in
some applications. Exercise 7.6 asked you to write a program that would read a file and
output an alphabetical list of all the words that occurred in the file, with duplicates removed.
The words were to be stored in an ArrayList, so it was up to you to make sure that the list
was sorted and contained no duplicates. The same task can be programmed much more
easily using a TreeSet instead of a list. A TreeSet automatically eliminates duplicates, and
an iterator for the set will automatically visit the items in the set in sorted order. An algorithm
for the program, using a TreeSet, would be:
TreeSet<String> words = new TreeSet<String>();

while there is more data in the input file:

Let word = the next word from the file
Convert word to lower case
[Link](word) // Adds the word only if not already present.

Iterator<String> iter = [Link]();

while ([Link]()):
Output [Link]() // Prints the words in sorted order.

If you would like to see a complete, working program, you can find it in the file
[Link].
As another example, suppose that coll is any Collection of Strings. (This would
also work for any other type for which compareTo() is properly defined). We can use a
TreeSet to sort the items of coll and remove the duplicates simply by saying:
TreeSet<String> set = new TreeSet();
[Link](coll);

The second statement adds all the elements of the collection to the set. Since it’s a Set,
duplicates are ignored. Since it’s a TreeSet, the elements of the set are sorted. If you would
like to have the data in some other type of data structure, it’s easy to copy the data from the
set. For example, to place the answer in an ArrayList, you could say:
TreeSet<String> set = new TreeSet<String>();
[Link](coll);
ArrayList<String> list = new
ArrayList<String>(); [Link](set);
502 CHAPTER 10. GENERIC PROGRAMMING AND COLLECTION CLASSES

Now, in fact, every one of Java’s collection classes has a constructor that takes a
Collection as an argument. All the items in that Collection are added to the new collection
when it is created. So, if coll is of type Collection<String>, then “new
TreeSet<String>(coll) creates a TreeSet that contains the same elements as coll,
but with duplicates removed and in sorted order. This means that we can abbreviate the four
lines in the above example to the single command:
ArrayList<String> list = new ArrayList<String>( new TreeSet<String>(coll) );

This makes a sorted list of the elements of coll with no duplicates. Although the repeated
type parameter, “<String>”, makes it a bit ugly to look at, this is still a nice example of the
power of generic programming. (It seems, by the way, there is no equally easy way to get a
sorted list with duplicates. To do this, we would need something like a TreeSet that allows
duplicates. The C++ programming language has such a thing and refers to it as a multiset .
The Smalltalk language has something similar and calls it a bag . Java, for the time being at
least, lacks this data type.)
∗∗∗
A HashSet stores its elements in a hash table, a type of data structure that I will discuss in the
next section. The operations of finding, adding, and removing elements are implemented very
efficiently in hash tables, even more so than for TreeSets. The elements of a HashSet are not stored
in any particular order, and so do not need to implement the Comparable interface. The equals()
method is used to determine whether two objects in a HashSet are to be considered the same. An
Iterator for a HashSet will visit its elements in what seems to be a completely arbitrary order, and it’s
possible for the order to change completely when a new element is added. Use a HashSet instead of
a TreeSet when the elements it contains are not comparable, or when the order is not important, or
when the small advantage in efficiency is important
∗∗∗
A note about the mathematics of sets: In mathematical set theory, the items in a set are
called members or elements of that set. Important operations include adding an element to
a set, removing an element from a set, and testing whether a given entity is an element of a
set. Operations that can be performed on two sets include union, intersection , and set
difference. All these operations are defined in Java for objects of type Set, but with
different names. Suppose that A and B are Sets. Then:
[Link](x) adds the element x to the set A.
[Link](x) removes the element x from the set A.
[Link](x) tests whether x is an element of the set A.
[Link](B) computes the union of A and B.
[Link](B) computes the intersection of A and B.
[Link](B) computes the set difference, A - B.
There are of course, differences between mathematical sets and sets in Java. Most important,
perhaps, sets in Java must be finite, while in mathematics, most of the fun in set theory comes from
working with infinity. In mathematics, a set can contain arbitrary elements, while in Java,
set of type Set<T> can only contain elements of type T. The operation [Link](B) acts by
modifying the value of A, while in mathematics the operation A union B computes a new set,
without changing the value of A or B. See Exercise 10.2 for an example of mathematical set
operations in Java.
10.2. LISTS AND SETS 503

10.2.4 EnumSet
Enumerated types (or “enums”) were introduced in Subsection 2.3.3. Suppose that E is an
enumerated type. Since E is a class, it is possible to create objects of type TreeSet<E> and
Hash-Set<E>. However, because enums are so simple, trees and hash tables are not the
most efficient implementation for sets of enumerated type values. Java provides the class
[Link] as an alternative way to create such sets.
Sets of enumerated type values are created using static methods in the class EnumSet. For
example, if e1, e2, and e3 are values belonging to the enumerated type E, then the method
[Link]( e1, e2, e3 )

creates and returns a set of type EnumSet<E> that contains exactly the elements e1, e2,
and e3. The set implements the interface Set<E>, so all the usual set and collection
operations are available. The implementation of these operations is very efficient. The
implementation uses what is called a bit vector. A bit is a quantity that has only two possible
values, zero and one. A set of type EnumSet<E> is represented by a bit vector that contains
one bit for each enum constant in the enumerated type E ; the bit corresponding to the
enum constant e is 1 if e is a member of the set and is 0 if e is not a member of the set.
The bit vectors for two sets of type EnumSet<E> can be very easily combined to represent
such operations as the union and intersection of two sets. The bit vector representation is
feasible for EnumSets, but not for other sets in Java, because an enumerated type contains
only a small finite number of enum constants. (Java actually has a class named BitSet that
uses bit vectors to represent finite sets of non-negative integers, but this class is not part of
the Java Collection Framework and does not implement the Set interface.)
The function [Link] can be used with any positive number of parameters. All the
parameters must be values of the same enumerated type. Null values are not allowed. An
EnumSet cannot contain the value null—any attempt to add null to an EnumSet will
result in a NullPointerException.
There is also a function [Link](e1,e2) that returns an EnumSet consisting of the
enum constants between e1 and e2, inclusive. The ordering of enum constants is the same as the
order in which they are listed in the definition of the enum. In [Link](e1,e2), e1 and
e2 must belong to the same enumerated type, and e1 must be less than or equal to e2.
If E is an enum, then [Link]([Link]) is a set that contains all values of
type E. [Link]([Link]) is an empty set , a set of type EnumSet<E> that
contains no elements at all. Note that in [Link]([Link]) and
[Link]([Link]), the odd-looking paramter represents the enumerated type
class itself. If eset is a set of type EnumSet<E>, then [Link](eset)
is a set that contains all the enum constants of E that are not in eset.
As an example, consider a program that keeps schedules of events. The program must
keep track of repeating events that happen on specified days of the week. For example, an
event might take place only on weekdays, or only on Wednesdays and Fridays. In other
words, associated with the event is the set of days of the week on which it takes place. This
information can be represented using the enumerated type
enum Day { SUNDAY, MONDAY, TUESDAY, WEDNESDAY, THURSDAY, FRIDAY, SATURDAY }

The days of the week on which an event takes place would then be a value of type
EnumSet<Day>. An object of type RepeatingEvent would have an instance variable of type
EnumSet<Day> to hold this information. An event that takes place on Wednesdays and
Fridays would have the associated set
504 CHAPTER 10. GENERIC PROGRAMMING AND COLLECTION CLASSES

[Link]( [Link], [Link] )

We could define some common sets of Days as

EnumSet<Day> weekday = [Link]( [Link], [Link] );
EnumSet<Day> weekend = [Link]( weekday );
EnumSet<Day> everyday = [Link]( [Link] );

EnumSets are often used to specify sets of “options” that are to be applied during some type
of processing. For example, a program that draws characters in fancy fonts might have various
options that can be applied. Let’s say that the options are bold, italic, underlined, strikethrough,
and boxed. Note that we are assuming that options can be combined in arbitrary ways. For
example, you can have italic, boxed, underlined characters. This just means that we need to
keep track of a set of options. If the options are represented by the enumerated type
enum FontOption { BOLD, ITALIC, UNDERLINED, STRIKETHROUGH, BOXED }

then a set of options is represented by a value of type EnumSet<FontOption>. Suppose that

options is a variable of this type that represents the set of options that are currently being
applied by the program. Then we can do things like:

options = [Link]( [Link] ) — Turn off all options.

options = [Link]( [Link] ) — Use bold, with no other options.
[Link]( [Link] ) — Add bold to any options that are already on.
[Link]( [Link] ) — Turn underlining off (if it’s on).

This is a nice, safe way to work with sets of options, and applications like this are one of the
major reasons that enumerated types were introduced.

10.3 Maps
An array of N elements can be thought of as a way of associating some item with each of the
integers 0, 1, . . . , N-1. If i is one of these integers, it’s possible to get the item associated
with i, and it’s possible to put a new item in the i-th position. These “get” and “put” operations
define what it means to be an array.
A map is a kind of generalized array. Like an array, a map is defined by “get” and “put”
operations. But in a map, these operations are defined not for integers 0, 1, . . . , N-1, but
for arbitrary objects of some specified type T. Associated to these objects of type T are
objects of some possibly different type S.
In fact, some programming languages use the term associative array instead of “map”
and use the same notation for associative arrays as for regular arrays. In those languages,
for example, you might see the notation A["fred"] used to indicate the item associated to the
string “fred” in the associative array A. Java does not use array notation for maps,
unfortunately, but the idea is the same: A map is like an array, but the indices for a map are
objects, not integers. In a map, an object that serves as an “index” is called a key . The
object that is associated with a key is called a value. Note that a key can have at most one
associated value, but the same value can be associated to several di fferent keys. A map
can be considered to be a set of “associations,” where each association is a key/value pair.
10.3. MAPS 505

10.3.1 The Map Interface

In Java, maps are defined by the interface [Link], which includes put and get
methods as well as other general methods for working with maps. The map interface,
Map<T,S>, is parameterized by two types. The first type parameter, T, specifies the type of
objects that are possible keys in the map; the second type parameter, S, specifies the type
of objects that are possible values in the map. For example, a map of type
Map<Date,JButton> would associate values of type JButton to keys of type Date. For a map
of type Map<String,String>, both the keys and the values are of type String.
Suppose that map is a variable of type Map<T,S> for some specific types T and S. Then
the following are some of the methods that are defined for map:

[Link](key) — returns the object of type S that is associated by the map to the key.
key can be any object; it does not have to be of type T. If the map does not associate any
value with obj, then the return value is null. Note that it’s also possible for the return
value to be null when the map explicitly associates the value null with the key.
Referring to “[Link](key)” is similar to referring to “A[key]” for an array A. (But note
that there is nothing like an IndexOutOfBoundsException for maps.)
[Link](key,value) — Associates the specified value with the specified key,
where key must be of type T and value must be of type S. If the map already
associated some other value with the key, then the new value replaces the old one.
This is similar to the command “A[key] = value” for an array.
[Link](map2) — if map2 is another map of type Map<T,S>, this copies all the
asso-ciations from map2 into map.
[Link](key) — if map associates a value to the specified key, that association is
removed from the map. key can be any object; it does not have to be of type T.
[Link](key) — returns a boolean value that is true if the map associates
some value to the specified key. key can be any object; it does not have to be of type T.
[Link](value) — returns a boolean value that is true if the map associates
the specified value to some key. value can be any object; it does not have to be of type S.
[Link]() — returns an int that gives the number of associations in the map.
[Link]() — returns a boolean value that is true if the map is empty, that is if it
contains no associations.
[Link]() — removes all associations from the map, leaving it empty.

The put and get methods are certainly the most commonly used of the methods in the
Map interface. In many applications, these are the only methods that are needed, and in
such cases a map is really no more difficult to use than a standard array.
Java includes two classes that implement the interface Map<T,S>: TreeMap<T,S> and
HashMap<T,S>. In a TreeMap, the key/value associations are stored in a sorted tree, in which
they are sorted according to their keys. For this to work, it must be possible to compare the
keys to one another. This means either that the keys must implement the interface Compara-
ble<T>, or that a Comparator must be provided for comparing keys. (The Comparator can be
provided as a parameter to the TreeMap constructor.) Note that in a TreeMap, as in a TreeSet,
the compareTo() method is used to decide whether two keys are to be considered the same.
This can have undesirable consequences if the compareTo() method does not agree with the
usual notion of equality, and you should keep this in mind when using TreeMaps.
506 CHAPTER 10. GENERIC PROGRAMMING AND COLLECTION CLASSES

A HashMap does not store associations in any particular order, so the keys that can be used
in a HashMap do not have to be comparable. However, the key class should have reasonable
definitions for the equals() method and for a hashCode() method that is discussed later in
this section; most of Java’s standard classes define these methods correctly. Most operations
are a little faster on HashMaps than they are on TreeMaps. In general, you should use a
HashMap unless you have some particular need for the ordering property of a TreeMap. In
particular, if you are only using the put and get operations, you can safely use a HashMap.
Let’s consider an example where maps would be useful. In Subsection 7.4.2, I presented a
simple PhoneDirectory class that associated phone numbers with names. That class defined
operations addEntry(name,number) and getNumber(name), where both name and
number are given as Strings. In fact, the phone directory is acting just like a map, with the
addEntry method playing the role of the put operation and getNumber playing the role of
get. In a real programming application, there would be no need to define a new class; we could
simply use a map of type Map<String,String>. A directory would be defined as
Map<String,String> directory = new Map<String,String>();

and then [Link](name,number) would record a phone number in the directory and
[Link](name) would retrieve the phone number associated with a given name.

10.3.2 Views, SubSets, and SubMaps

A Map is not a Collection, and maps do not implement all the operations defined on
collections. In particular, there are no iterators for maps. Sometimes, though, it’s useful to be
able to iterate through all the associations in a map. Java makes this possible is a
roundabout but clever way. If map is a variable of type Map<T,S>, then the method
[Link]()

returns the set of all objects that occur as keys for associations in the map. The value
returned by this method is an object that implements the interface Set<T>. The elements of
this set are the map’s keys. The obvious way to implement the keySet() method would be
to create a new set object, add all the keys from the map, and return that set. But that’s not
how it’s done. The value returned by [Link]() is not an independent object. It is
what is called a view of the actual objects that are stored in the map. This “view” of the map
implements the Set<T> interface, but it does it in such a way that the methods defined in the
interface refer directly to keys in the map. For example, if you remove a key from the view,
that key—along with its associated value—is actually removed from the map. It’s not legal to
add an object to the view, since it doesn’t make sense to add a key to a map without
specifying the value that should be associated to the key. Since [Link]() does not
create a new set, it’s very efficient, even for very large maps.
One of the things that you can do with a Set is get an Iterator for it and use the iterator to
visit each of the elements of the set in turn. We can use an iterator for the key set of a map
to traverse the map. For example, if map is of type Set<String,Double>, we could write:
Set<String> keys = [Link](); // The set of keys in the
map. Iterator<String> keyIter = [Link]();
[Link]("The map contains the following
associations:"); while ([Link]()) {
String key = [Link](); // Get the next key.
Double value = [Link](key); // Get the value for that key.
[Link]( " (" + key + "," + value + ")" );
10.3. MAPS 507

Or we could do the same thing more easily, avoiding the explicit use of an iterator, with a
for-each loop:
[Link]("The map contains the following associations:");
for ( String key : [Link]() ) { // "for each key in the map’s
key set" Double value = [Link](key);
[Link]( " (" + key + "," + value + ")" );
}

If the map is a TreeMap, then the key set of the map is a sorted set, and the iterator will
visit the keys in ascending order. For a HashMap, the keys are visited in an arbitrary,
unpredictable order.
The Map interface defines two other views. If map is a variable of type Map<T,S>, then
the method:
[Link]()

returns an object of type Collection<S> that contains all the values from the associations
that are stored in the map. The return value is a Collection rather than a Set because it can
contain duplicate elements (since a map can associate the same value to any number of
keys). The method:
[Link]()

returns a set that contains all the associations from the map. The elements in the set are objects
of type [Link]<T,S>. [Link]<T,S> is defined as a static nested interface inside the
interface Map<T,S>, so its full name contains a period. However, it can be used in the same way
as any other type name. (The return type of the method [Link]() is written as
Set<[Link]<T,S>>. The type parameter in this case is itself a parameterized type. Although
this might look confusing, it’s just Java’s way of saying that the elements of the set are of type
[Link]<T,S>.) The information in the set returned by [Link]() is actually no
different from the information in the map itself, but the set provides a di fferent view of this
information, with different operations. Each [Link] object contains one key/value pair, and
defines methods getKey() and getValue() for retrieving the key and the value. There is
also a method, setValue(value), for setting the value; calling this method for a [Link]
object will modify the map itself, just as if the map’s put method were called. As an example,
we can use the entry set of a map to print all the key/value pairs in the map. This is more
efficient than using the key set to print the same information, as I did in the above example,
since we don’t have to use the get() method to look up the value associated with each key.
Suppose again that map is of type Map<String,Double>. Then we can write:
Set<[Link]<String,Double>> entries = [Link]();
Iterator<[Link]<String,Double>> entryIter =
[Link](); [Link]("The map contains the
following associations:"); while ([Link]()) {
[Link]<String,Double> entry = [Link]();
String key = [Link](); // Get the key from the entry.
Double value = [Link](); // Get the value.
[Link]( " (" + key + "," + value + ")" );
}

or, using a for-each loop:

508 CHAPTER 10. GENERIC PROGRAMMING AND COLLECTION CLASSES

[Link]("The map contains the following associations:");

for ( [Link]<String,Double> entry : [Link]() )
[Link]( " (" + [Link]() + "," +
[Link]() + ")" );

∗∗∗
Maps are not the only place in Java’s generic programming framework where views are
used. For example, the interface List<T> defines a sublist as a view of a part of a list. If
list implements the interface List<T>, then the method:
[Link]( fromIndex, toIndex )

where fromIndex and toList are integers, returns a view of the part of the list
consisting of the list elements in positions between fromIndex and toIndex (including
fromIndex but excluding toIndex). This view lets you operate on the sublist using any of
the operations defined for lists, but the sublist is not an independent list. Changes made to
the sublist are actually made to the original list.
Similarly, it is possible to obtain views that represent certain subsets of a sorted set. If set is
of type TreeSet<T>, then [Link](fromElement,toElement) returns a Set<T> that
contains all the elements of set that are between fromElement and toElement (including
fromElement and excluding toElement). The parameters fromElement and toElement
must be objects of type T. For example, if words is a set of type TreeSet<String> in which all
the elements are strings of lower case letters, then [Link]("m","n") contains all the
ele-ments of words that begin with the letter ’m’. This subset is a view of part of the original set.
That is, creating the subset does not involve copying elements. And changes made to the
subset, such as adding or removing elements, are actually made to the original set. The view
[Link](toElement) consists of all elements from the set which are strictly less than
toElement, and [Link](fromElement) is a view that contains all elements from the
set that are greater than or equal to fromElement.
The class TreeMap<T,S> defines three submap views. A submap is similar to a subset. A
submap is a Map that contains a subset of the keys from the original Map, along with their associated
values. If map is a variable of type TreeMap<T,S>, and if fromKey and toKey are of type T, then
[Link](fromKey,toKey) returns a view that contains all key/value pairs from map whose
keys are between fromKey and toKey (including fromKey and excluding toKey). There are also
views [Link](toKey) and [Link](fromKey) which are defined analogously to
headSet and tailSet. Suppose, for example, that blackBook is a map of type
TreeMap<String,String> in which the keys are names and the values are phone numbers. We can
print out all the entries from blackBook where the name begins with “M” as follows:
Map<String,String> ems = [Link]("M","N");
This submap contains entries for which the key is greater
than or equal to "M" and strictly less than "N".

if ([Link]()) {
[Link]("No entries beginning with M.");
}
else {
[Link]("Entries beginning with M:");
for ( [Link]<String,String> entry : [Link]() )
[Link]( " " + [Link]() + ": " + [Link]() );
}
10.3. MAPS 509

Subsets and submaps are probably best thought of as generalized search operations
that make it possible to find all the items in a range of values, rather than just to find a single
value. Suppose, for example that a database of scheduled events is stored in a map of type
TreeMap<Date,Event> in which the keys are the times of the events, and suppose you want
a listing of all events that are scheduled for some time on July 4, 2007. Just make a submap
containing all keys in the range from 12:00 AM, July 4, 2007 to 12:00 AM, July 5, 2007, and
output all the entries from that submap. This type of search, which is known as a subrange
query is quite common.

10.3.3 Hash Tables and Hash Codes

HashSets and HashMaps are implemented using a data structure known as a hash table.
You don’t need to understand hash tables to use HashSets or HashMaps, but any computer
programmer should be familiar with hash tables and how they work.
Hash tables are an elegant solution to the search problem. A hash table, like a
HashMap, stores key/value pairs. Given a key, you have to search the table for the
corresponding key/value pair. When a hash table is used to implement a set, the values are
all null, and the only question is whether or not the key occurs in the set. You still have to
search for the key to check whether it is there or not.
In most search algorithms, in order to find the item you are interested in, you have to look
through a bunch of other items that don’t interest you. To find something in an unsorted list, you
have to go though the items one-by-one until you come to the one you are looking for. In a
binary sort tree, you have to start at the root and move down the tree until you find the item you
want. When you search for a key/value pair in a hash table, you can go directly to the location
that contains the item you want. You don’t have to look through any other items. (This is not
quite true, but it’s close.) The location of the key/value pair is computed from the key: You just
look at the key, and then you go directly to the location where it is stored.
How can this work? If the keys were integers in the range 0 to 99, we could store the
key/value pairs in an array, A, of 100 elements. The key/value pair with key K would be
stored in A[K]. The key takes us directly to the location of the key/value pair. The problem
is that there are usually far too many different possible keys for us to be able to use an array
with one location for each possible key. For example, if the key can be any value of type int,
then we would need an array with over four billion locations—quite a waste of space if we
are only going to store, say, a few thousand items! If the key can be a string of any length,
then the number of possible keys is infinite, and using an array with one location for each
possible key is simply impossible.
Nevertheless, hash tables store their data in an array, and the array index where a key is
stored is based on the key. The index is not equal to the key, but it is computed from the
key. The array index for a key is called the hash code for that key. A function that computes
a hash code, given a key, is called a hash function. To find a key in a hash table, you just
have to compute the hash code of the key and go directly to the array location given by that
hash code. If the hash code is 17, look in array location number 17.
Now, since there are fewer array locations than there are possible keys, it’s possible that we
might try to store two or more keys in the same array location. This is called a collision. A
collision is not an error. We can’t reject a key just because another key happened to have the
same hash code. A hash table must be able to handle collisions in some reasonable way. In the
type of hash table that is used in Java, each array location actually holds a linked list of
510 CHAPTER 10. GENERIC PROGRAMMING AND COLLECTION CLASSES

key/value pairs (possibly an empty list). When two items have the same hash code, they are
in the same linked list. The structure of the hash table looks something like this:

In this diagram, there is one item with hash code 0, no items with hash code 1, two items
with hash code 2, and so on. In a properly designed hash table, most of the linked lists are
of length zero or one, and the average length of the lists is less than one. Although the hash
code of a key doesn’t necessarily take you directly to that key, there are probably no more
than one or two other items that you have to look through before finding the key you want.
For this to work properly, the number of items in the hash table should be somewhat less
than the number of locations in the array. In Java’s implementation, whenever the number of
items exceeds 75% of the array size, the array is replaced by a larger one and all the items
in the old array are inserted into the new one. (This is why adding one new item will
sometimes cause the ordering of all the items in the hash table to change completely.)
There is still the question of where hash codes come from. Every object in Java has a hash
code. The Object class defines the method hashCode(), which returns a value of type int.
When an object, obj, is stored in a hash table that has N locations, a hash code in the range 0
to N-1 is needed. This hash code is computed as [Link]([Link]()) % N, the
remainder when the absolute value of [Link]() is divided by N. (The [Link] is
necessary because [Link]() can be a negative integer, and we need a non-negative
number to use as an array index.)
For hashing to work properly, two objects that are equal according to the equals() method must
have the same hash code. In the Object class, this condition is satisfied because both equals() and
hashCode() are based on the address of the memory location where the object is stored. However,
as noted in Subsection 10.1.6, many classes redefine the equals() method. If a class redefines the
equals() method, and if objects of that class will be used as keys in hash tables, then the class should
also redefine the hashCode() method. For example, in the String class, the equals() method is
redefined so that two objects of type String are considered to be equal if they contain the same
sequence of characters. The hashCode() method is also redefined in the String class, so that the
hash code of a string is computed from the characters in that string rather than from its location in
memory. For Java’s standard classes, you can expect equals() and hashCode() to be correctly defined.
However, you might need to define
10.4. PROGRAMMING WITH THE COLLECTION FRAMEWORK 511

these methods in classes that you write yourself.

10.4 Programming with the Collection Framework

In this section, we’ll look at some programming examples that use classes from the Java
Collection Framework. The Collection Framework is easy to use, especially compared to the
difficulty of programming new data structures from scratch.

10.4.1 Symbol Tables

We begin with a straightforward but important application of maps. When a compiler reads the
source code of a program, it encounters definitions of variables, subroutines, and classes. The
names of these things can be used later in the program. The compiler has to remember the
definition of each name, so that it can recognize the name and apply the definition when the
name is encountered later in the program. This is a natural application for a Map. The name can
be used as a key in the map. The value associated to the key is the definition of the name,
encoded somehow as an object. A map that is used in this way is called a symbol table.
In a compiler, the values in a symbol table can be quite complicated, since the compiler
has to deal with names for various sorts of things, and it needs a di fferent type of
information for each different type of name. We will keep things simple by looking at a
symbol table in another context. Suppose that we want a program that can evaluate
expressions entered by the user, and suppose that the expressions can contain variables, in
addition to operators, numbers, and parentheses. For this to make sense, we need some
way of assigning values to variables. When a variable is used in an expression, we need to
retrieve the variable’s value. A symbol table can be used to store the data that we need. The
keys for the symbol table are variable names. The value associated with a key is the value
of that variable, which is of type double. The symbol table will be an object of type
Map<String,Double>. (Remember that primitive types such as double can’t be used as type
parameters; a wrapper class such as Double must be used instead. See Subsection 10.1.7.)
To demonstrate the idea, we’ll use a rather simple-minded program in which the user
types commands such as:
let x = 3 + 12
print 2 + 2
print 10*x +17
let rate = 0.06
print 1000*(1+rate)

The program is an interpreter for a very simple language. The only two commands that
the program understands are “print” and “let”. When a “print” command is executed, the
computer evaluates the expression and displays the value. If the expression contains a
variable, the computer has to look up the value of that variable in the symbol table. A “let”
command is used to give a value to a variable. The computer has to store the value of the
variable in the symbol table. (Note: The “variables” I am talking about here are not variables
in the Java program. The Java program is executing a sort of program typed in by the user. I
am talking about variables in the user’s program. The user gets to make up variable names,
so there is no way for the Java program to know in advance what the variables will be.)
In Subsection 9.5.2, we saw how to write a program, [Link], that can evaluate
expressions that do not contain variables. Here, I will discuss another example program, Sim-
512 CHAPTER 10. GENERIC PROGRAMMING AND COLLECTION CLASSES

[Link], that is based on the older program. I will only talk about the parts that
are relevant to the symbol table.
The program uses a HashMap as the symbol table. A TreeMap could also be used, but
since the program does not need to access the variables in alphabetical order, we don’t
need to have the keys stored in sorted order. The symbol table in the program is
represented by a variable named symbolTable of type HashMap<String,Double>. At the
beginning of the program, the symbol table object is created with the command:
symbolTable = new HashMap<String,Double>();

This creates a map that initially contains no key/value associations. To execute a “let” com-
mand, the program uses the symbol table’s put() method to associate a value with the
variable name. Suppose that the name of the variable is given by a String, varName, and
the value of the variable is stored in a variable val of type double. The following command
would then set the value associated with the variable in the symbol table:
[Link]( varName, val );

In the program [Link], you’ll find this in the method named

doLetCommand(). The actual value that is stored in the symbol table is an object of type
Double. We can use the double value val in the call to put because Java does an
automatic conversion of type double to Double when necessary. The double value is
“wrapped” in an object of type Double, so that, in effect, the above statement is equivalent to
[Link]( varName, new Double(val) );

Just for fun, I decided to pre-define two variables named “pi” and “e” whose values are the
usual mathematical constants π and e. In Java, the values of these constants are given by
[Link] and Math.E. To make these variables available to the user of the program, they
are added to the symbol table with the commands:
[Link]( "pi", [Link] );
[Link]( "e", Math.E );

When the program encounters a variable while evaluating an expression, the symbol table’s
get() method is used to retrieve its value. The function [Link](varName)
returns a value of type Double. It is possible that the return value is null; this will happen if no
value has ever been assigned to varName in the symbol table. It’s important to check this
possibility. It indicates that the user is trying to use a variable that the user has not defined. The
program considers this to be an error, so the processing looks something like this:
Double val = [Link](varName);
if (val == null) {
... // Throw an exception: Undefined variable.
}
// The value associated to varName is [Link]()

You will find this code, more or less, in a method named primaryValue() in SimpleInter-
[Link].
As you can see from this example, Maps are very useful and are really quite easy to use.

10.4.2 Sets Inside a Map

The objects in a collection or map can be of any type. They can even be collections. Here’s
an example where it’s natural to store sets as the value objects in a map.
10.4. PROGRAMMING WITH THE COLLECTION FRAMEWORK 513

Consider the problem of making an index for a book. An index consists of a list of terms
that appear in the book. Next to each term is a list of the pages on which that term appears.
To represent an index in a program, we need a data structure that can hold a list of terms,
along with a list of pages for each term. Adding new data should be easy and e fficient.
When it’s time to print the index, it should be easy to access the terms in alphabetical order.
There are many ways this could be done, but I’d like to use Java’s generic data structures
and let them do as much of the work as possible.
We can think of an index as a Map that associates a list of page references to each term.
The terms are keys, and the value associated with a given key is the list of page references
for that term. A Map can be either a TreeMap or a HashMap, but only a TreeMap will make
it easy to access the terms in sorted order. The value associated with a term is a list of page
references. How can we represent such a value? If you think about it, you see that it’s not
really a list in the sense of Java’s generic classes. If you look in any index, you’ll see that a
list of page references has no duplicates, so it’s really a set rather than a list. Furthermore,
the page references for a given term are always printed in increasing order, so we want a
sorted set. This means that we should use a TreeSet to represent each list of page
references. The values that we really want to put in this set are of type int, but once again
we have to deal with the fact that generic data structures can only hold objects, so we must
use the wrapper class, Integer, for the objects in the set.
To summarize, an index will be represented by a TreeMap. The keys for the map will be
terms, which are of type String. The values in the map will be TreeSets that contain the
Integers which give the page numbers of every page on which a term appears. The
parameterized type that we should use for the sets is TreeSet<Integer>. For the TreeMap
that represents the index as a whole, the key type is String and the value type is
TreeSet<Integer>. This means that the index has type
TreeMap< String, TreeSet<Integer> >

This is just the usual TreeMap<T,S> with T=String and S=TreeSet<Integer>. A type name as
complicated as this one can look intimidating (especially, I think, when used in a constructor with the
new operator), but if you think about the data structure that we want to represent, it makes sense.
Given a little time and practice, you can get used to types like this one.
To make an index, we need to start with an empty TreeMap, look through the book,
inserting every reference that we want to be in the index into the map, and then print out the
data from the map. Let’s leave aside the question of how we find the references to put in the
index, and just look at how the TreeMap is used. It can be created with the commands:
TreeMap<String,TreeSet<Integer>> index; // Declare the
variable.
index = new TreeMap<String,TreeSet<Integer>>(); // Create the map
object.

Now, suppose that we find a reference to some term (of type String ) on some
pageNum (of type int). We need to insert this information into the index. To do this, we
should look up the term in the index, using [Link](term). The return value is either
null or is the set of page references that we have previously found for the term. If the
return value is null, then this is the first page reference for the term, so we should add the
term to the index, with a new set that contains the page reference we’ve just found. If the
return value is non-null, we already have a set of page references, and we should just add
the new page reference to the set. Here is a subroutine that does this:
/**
* Add a page reference to the index.
514 CHAPTER 10. GENERIC PROGRAMMING AND COLLECTION CLASSES

*/
void addReference(String term, int pageNum) {
TreeSet<Integer> references; // The set of page references that we
have so far for the term.
references = [Link](term);
if (references == null){
This is the first reference that we have
found for the term. Make a new set containing
the page number and add it to the index, with
the term as the key.
TreeSet<Integer> firstRef = new TreeSet<Integer>();
[Link]( pageNum ); // pageNum is "autoboxed" to give an
Integer!
[Link](term,firstRef);
}
else {
references is the set of page references
that we have found previously for the term.
Add the new page number to that set. This
set is already associated to term in the index.
[Link]( pageNum ); // pageNum is "autoboxed" to give an Integer!
}
}

The only other thing we need to do with the index is print it out. We want to iterate through
the index and print out each term, together with the set of page references for that term. We
could use an Iterator to iterate through the index, but it’s much easier to do it with a for-each
loop. The loop will iterate through the entry set of the map (see Subsection 10.3.2). Each “entry”
is a key/value pair from the map; the key is a term and the value is the associated set of page
references. Inside the for-each loop, we will have to print out a set of Integers, which can also be
done with a for-each loop. So, here we have an example of nested for-each loops. (You might try
to do the same thing entirely with iterators; doing so should give you some appreciation for the
for-each loop!). Here is a subroutine that will print the index:
/**
Print each entry in the
index. */
void printIndex() {
for ( [Link]<String,TreeSet<Integer>> entry :
[Link]() ) {

String term = [Link]();

TreeSet<Integer> pageSet = [Link]();
[Link]( term + " " );
for ( int page : pageSet ) {
[Link]( page + " " );
}
[Link]();
}
}

The hardest thing here is the name of the type [Link]<String,TreeSet<Integer>>! Re-member that
the entries in a map of type Map<T,S> have type [Link]<T,S>, so the type parameters in
[Link]<String,TreeSet<Integer>> are simply copied from the declaration
10.4. PROGRAMMING WITH THE COLLECTION FRAMEWORK 515

of index. Another thing to note is that I used a loop control variable, page, of type int to
iterate through the elements of pageSet, which is of type TreeSet<Integer>. You might
have expected page to be of type Integer, not int, and in fact Integer would have worked
just as well here. However, int does work, because of automatic type conversion: it’s legal to
assign a value of type Integer to a variable of type int. (To be honest, I was sort of surprised
that this worked when I first tried it!)
This is not a lot of code, considering the complexity of the operations. I have not written a
complete indexing program, but Exercise 10.5 presents a problem that is almost identical to
the indexing problem.
∗∗∗
By the way, in this example, I would prefer to print each list of page references with the
integers separated by commas. In the printIndex() method given above,they are separated
by spaces. There is an extra space after the last page reference in the list, but it does no harm
since it’s invisible in the printout. An extra comma at the end of the list would be annoying. The
lists should be in a form such as “17,42,105” and not “17,42,105,”. The problem is, how to
leave that last comma out. Unfortunately, this is not so easy to do with a for-each loop. It might
be fun to look at a few ways to solve this problem. One alternative is to use an iterator:
Iterator<Integer> iter = [Link]();
int firstPage = [Link](); // In this program, we know the set has at
least
one element. Note also that this statement
uses an auto-conversion from Integer to int.
[Link](firstPage);
while ( [Link]() ) {
int nextPage = [Link]();
[Link]("," + nextPage);
}

Another possibility is to use the fact that the TreeSet class defines a method first()
that returns the first item in the set, that is, the one that is smallest in terms of the ordering
that is used to compare items in the set. (It also defines the method last().) We can solve
our problem using this method and a for-each loop:
int firstPage = [Link](); // Find out the first page number
in the set. for ( int page : pageSet ) {
if ( page != firstPage )
[Link](","); // Output comma only if this is not the
first page. [Link](page);
}

Finally, here is an elegant solution using a subset view of the tree. (See Subsection 10.3.2.)
Actually, this solution might be a bit extreme:
int firstPage = [Link](); // Get first item, which we know exists.
[Link](firstPage); // Print first item, with no comma.
for ( int page : [Link]( firstPage+1 ) ) // Process
remaining items. [Link]( "," + page );

10.4.3 Using a Comparator

There is a potential problem with our solution to the indexing problem. If the terms in the index
can contain both upper case and lower case letters, then the terms will not be in alphabetical
516 CHAPTER 10. GENERIC PROGRAMMING AND COLLECTION CLASSES

order! The ordering on String is not alphabetical. It is based on the Unicode codes of the
characters in the string. The codes for all the upper case letters are less than the codes for
the lower case letters. So, for example, terms beginning with “Z” come before terms
beginning with “a”. If the terms are restricted to use lower case letters only (or upper case
only), then the ordering would be alphabetical. But suppose that we allow both upper and
lower case, and that we insist on alphabetical order. In that case, our index can’t use the
usual ordering for Strings. Fortunately, it’s possible to specify a different method to be
used for comparing the keys of a map. This is a typical use for a Comparator.
Recall that an object that implements the interface Comparator<T> defines a method for
comparing two objects of type T :
public int compare( T obj1, T obj2 )

This method should return an integer that is positive, zero, or negative, depending on
whether obj1 is less than, equal to, or greater than obj2. We need an object of type
Comparator<String> that will compare two Strings based on alphabetical order. The easiest
way to do this is to convert the Strings to lower case and use the default comparison on the
lower case Strings. The following class defines such a comparator:
/**
Represents a Comparator that can be used for comparing two
strings based on alphabetical order.
*/
class AlphabeticalOrder implements Comparator<String>
{ public int compare(String str1, String str2) {
String s1 = [Link](); // Convert to lower case.
String s2 = [Link]();
return [Link](s2); // Compare lower-case Strings.
}
}

To solve our indexing problem, we just need to tell our index to use an object of type
AlphabeticalOrder for comparing keys. This is done by providing a Comparator object as a
parameter to the constructor. We just have to create the index in our example with the
command:
index = new TreeMap<String,TreeSet<Integer>>( new AlphabeticalOrder() );

This does work. However, I’ve been concealing one technicality. Suppose, for exam-ple, that the
indexing program calls addReference("aardvark",56) and that it later calls
addReference("Aardvark",102). The words “aardvark” and “Aardvark” di ffer only in that one of
them begins with an upper case letter; when converted to lower case, they are the same. When
we insert them into the index, do they count as two di fferent terms or as one term? The answer
depends on the way that a TreeMap tests objects for equality. In fact, TreeMaps and TreeSets
always use a Comparator object or a compareTo method to test for equality. They do not use
the equals() method for this purpose. The Comparator that is used for the TreeMap in this
example returns the value zero when it is used to compare “aardvark” and “Aardvark”, so the
TreeMap considers them to be the same. Page references to “aardvark” and “Aardvark ” are
combined into a single list. This is probably the correct behavior in this example. If not, some other technique
must be used to sort the terms into alphabetical order.
10.4. PROGRAMMING WITH THE COLLECTION FRAMEWORK 517

10.4.4 Word Counting

The final example in this section also deals with storing information about words. The problem
here is to make a list of all the words that occur in a file, along with the number of times that
each word occurs. The file will be selected by the user. The output of the program will consist of
two lists. Each list contains all the words from the file, along with the number of times that the
word occurred. One list is sorted alphabetically, and the other is sorted according to the number
of occurrences, with the most common words at the top and the least common at the bottom.
The problem here is a generalization of Exercise 7.6, which asked you to make an alphabetical
list of all the words in a file, without counting the number of occurrences.
My word counting program can be found in the file [Link]. As the program
reads an input file, it must keep track of how many times it encounters each word. We could
simply throw all the words, with duplicates, into a list and count them later. But that would
require a lot of storage and would not be very efficient. A better method is to keep a counter
for each word. The first time the word is encountered, the counter is initialized to 1. On
subsequent encounters, the counter is incremented. To keep track of the data for one word,
the program uses a simple class that holds a word and the counter for that word. The class
is a static nested class:
/**
Represents the data we need about a word: the word and
the number of times it has been encountered.
*/
private static class WordData {
String word;
int count;
WordData(String w) {
Constructor for creating a WordData object when
we encounter a new word.
word = w;
count = 1; // The initial value of count is 1.
}
} // end class WordData

The program has to store all the WordData objects in some sort of data structure. We want to
be able to add new words efficiently. Given a word, we need to check whether a WordData
object already exists for that word, and if it does, we need to find that object so that we can
increment its counter. A Map can be used to implement these operations. Given a word, we want
to look up a WordData object in the Map. This means that the word is the key, and the
WordData object is the value. (It might seem strange that the key is also one of the instance
variables in the value object, but in fact this is probably the most common situation: The value
object contains all the information about some entity, and the key is one of those pieces of
information; the partial information in the key is used to retrieve the full information in the value
object.) After reading the file, we want to output the words in alphabetical order, so we should
use a TreeMap rather than a HashMap. This program converts all words to lower case so that
the default ordering on Strings will put the words in alphabetical order. The data is stored in a
variable named words of type TreeMap<String,WordData>. The variable is declared and the
map object is created with the statement:
TreeMap<String,WordData> words = new TreeMap<String,WordData>();
518 CHAPTER 10. GENERIC PROGRAMMING AND COLLECTION CLASSES

When the program reads a word from a file, it calls [Link](word) to find out if that
word is already in the map. If the return value is null, then this is the first time the word has
been encountered, so a new WordData object is created and inserted into the map with the
command [Link](word, new WordData(word)). If [Link](word) is not null,
then its value is the WordData object for this word, and the program only has to increment the
counter in that object. The program uses a method readNextWord(), which was given in
Exercise 7.6, to read one word from the file. This method returns null when the end of the file
is encountered. Here is the complete code segment that reads the file and collects the data:
String word = readNextWord();
while (word != null) {
word = [Link](); // convert word to
lower case WordData data = [Link](word); if
(data == null)
[Link]( word, new WordData(word) );
else
[Link]++;
word = readNextWord();
}

After reading the words and printing them out in alphabetical order, the program has to
sort the words by frequency and print them again. To do the sorting using a generic
algorithm, I defined a simple Comparator class for comparing two word objects according to
their frequency counts. The class implements the interface Comparator<WordData>, since it
will be used to compare two objects of type WordData:
/**
A comparator class for comparing objects of type WordData according to
their counts. This is used for sorting the list of words by
frequency. */
private static class CountCompare implements Comparator<WordData>
{ public int compare(WordData data1, WordData data2) {
return [Link] - [Link];
The return value is positive if [Link] > [Link].
I.E., data1 comes after data2 in the ordering if there
were more occurrences of [Link] than of [Link].
The words are sorted according to decreasing counts.
}
} // end class CountCompare

Given this class, we can sort the WordData objects according to frequency by first copying
them into a list and then using the generic method [Link](list,comparator).
The WordData objects that we need are the values in the map, words. Recall that
[Link]() returns a Collection that contains all the values from the map. The con-
structor for the ArrayList class lets you specify a collection to be copied into the list when it is
created. So, we can use the following commands to create a list of type ArrayList<WordData>
containing the word data and then sort that list according to frequency:
ArrayList<WordData> wordsByFrequency = new ArrayList<WordData>( [Link]() );
[Link]( wordsByFrequency, new CountCompare() );

You should notice that these two lines replace a lot of code! It requires some practice to think in terms of
generic data structures and algorithms, but the payoff is significant in terms of saved time and effort.
10.5. WRITING GENERIC CLASSES AND METHODS 519

The only remaining problem is to print the data. We have to print the data from all the
WordData objects twice, first in alphabetical order and then sorted according to frequency
count. The data is in alphabetical order in the TreeMap, or more precisely, in the values of
the TreeMap. We can use a for-each loop to print the data in the collection
[Link](), and the words will appear in alphabetical order. Another for-each loop
can be used to print the data in the list wordsByFrequency, and the words will be printed
in order of decreasing frequency. Here is the code that does it:
[Link]("List of words in alphabetical order"
" (with counts in parentheses):\n");
for ( WordData data : [Link]() )
[Link](" " + [Link] + " (" + [Link] + ")");

[Link]("\n\nList of words by frequency of

occurrence:\n"); for ( WordData data : wordsByFrequency )
[Link](" " + [Link] + " (" + [Link] + ")");

You can find the complete word-counting program in the file [Link]. Note that
for reading and writing files, it uses the file I/O capabilities of [Link], which were
discussed in Subsection 2.4.5.
By the way, if you run the WordCount program on a reasonably large file and take a look
at the output, it will illustrate something about the [Link]() method. The
second list of words in the output is ordered by frequency, but if you look at a group of words
that all have the same frequency, you will see that the words in that group are in
alphabetical order. The method [Link]() was applied to sort the words by
frequency, but before it was applied, the words were already in alphabetical order. When
[Link]() rearranged the words, it did not change the ordering of words that
have the same frequency, so they were still in alphabetical order within the group of words
with that frequency. This is because the algorithm used by [Link]() is a
stable sorting algorithm. A sorting algorithm is said to be stable if it satisfies the following
condition: When the algorithm is used to sort a list according to some property of the items
in the list, then the sort does not change the relative order of items that have the same value
of that property. That is, if item B comes after item A in the list before the sort, and if both
items have the same value for the property that is being used as the basis for sorting, then
item B will still come after item A after the sorting has been done. Neither SelectionSort nor
QuickSort are stable sorting algorithms. Insertion sort is stable, but is not very fast. The
sorting algorithm used by [Link]() is both stable and fast.
I hope that the programming examples in this section have convinced you of the
usefulness of the Java Collection Framework!

10.5 Writing Generic Classes and Methods

So far in this chapter, you have learned about using the generic classes and methods that are
part of the Java Collection Framework. Now, it’s time to learn how to write new generic classes
and methods from scratch. Generic programming produces highly general and reusable code—
it’s very useful for people who write reusable software libraries to know how to do generic
programming, since it enables them to write code that can be used in many di fferent situations.
Not every programmer needs to write reusable software libraries, but every programmer should
know at least a little about how to do it. In fact, just to read the JavaDoc documentation for
520 CHAPTER 10. GENERIC PROGRAMMING AND COLLECTION CLASSES

Java’s standard generic classes, you need to know some of the syntax that is introduced in
this section.
I will not cover every detail of generic programming in Java in this section, but the
material presented here should be sufficient to cover the most common cases.

10.5.1 Simple Generic Classes

Let’s start with an example that illustrates the motivation for generic programming. In
Subsec-tion 10.2.1, I remarked that it would be easy to use a LinkedList to implement a
queue. (Queues were introduced in Subsection 9.3.2.) To ensure that the only operations
that are performed on the list are the queue operations enqueue, dequeue, and
isEmpty, we can create a new class that contains the linked list as a private instance
variable. To implement queues of strings, for example, we can define the class:
class QueueOfStrings {
private LinkedList<String> items = new
LinkedList<String>(); public void enqueue(String item) {
[Link](item);
}
public String dequeue() {
return [Link]();
}
public boolean isEmpty() {
return ([Link]() == 0);
}
}

This is a fine and useful class. But, if this is how we write queue classes, and if we want
queues of Integers or Doubles or JButtons or any other type, then we will have to write a
different class for each type. The code for all of these classes will be almost identical, which
seems like a lot of redundant programming. To avoid the redundancy, we can write a
generic Queue class that can be used to define queues of any type of object.
The syntax for writing the generic class is straightforward: We replace the specific type
String with a type parameter such as T, and we add the type parameter to the name of the
class:
class Queue<T> {
private LinkedList<T> items = new
LinkedList<T>(); public void enqueue(T item) {
[Link](item);
}
public T dequeue() {
return [Link]();
}
public boolean isEmpty() {
return ([Link]() == 0);
}
}

Note that within the class, the type parameter T is used just like any regular type name. It’s used
to declare the return type for dequeue, as the type of the formal parameter item in enqueue, and even
as the actual type parameter in LinkedList<T>. Given this class definition, we can use parameterized
types such as Queue<String> and Queue<Integer> and Queue<JButton>.
10.5. WRITING GENERIC CLASSES AND METHODS 521

That is, the Queue class is used in exactly the same way as built-in generic classes like
LinkedList and HashSet.
Note that you don’t have to use “T” as the name of the type parameter in the definition of the
generic class. Type parameters are like formal parameters in subroutines. You can make up any
name you like in the definition of the class. The name in the definition will be replaced by an
actual type name when the class is used to declare variables or create objects. If you prefer to
use a more meaningful name for the type parameter, you might define the Queue class as:
class Queue<ItemType> {
private LinkedList<ItemType> items = new
LinkedList<ItemType>(); public void enqueue(ItemType item) {
[Link](item);
}
public ItemType dequeue() {
return [Link]();
}
public boolean isEmpty() {
return ([Link]() == 0);
}
}

Changing the name from “T” to “ItemType” has absolutely no effect on the meaning of the
class definition or on the way that Queue is used.
Generic interfaces can be defined in a similar way. It’s also easy to define generic
classes and interfaces that have two or more type parameters, as is done with the standard
interface Map<T,S>. A typical example is the definition of a “Pair” that contains two objects,
possibly of different types. A simple version of such a class can be defined as:
class Pair<T,S> {
public T first;
public S second;
public Pair( T a, S b ) { // Constructor.
first = a;
second = b;
}
}

This class can be used to declare variables and create objects such as:
Pair<String,Color> colorName = new Pair<String,Color>("Red", [Link]);
Pair<Double,Double> coordinates = new Pair<Double,Double>(17.3,42.8);

Note that in the definition of the constructor in this class, the name “Pair” does not have type
parameters. You might have expected “Pair<T,S>. However, the name of the class is “Pair”,
not “Pair<T,S>, and within the definition of the class, “T” and “S” are used as if they are the
names of specific, actual types. Note in any case that type parameters are never added to the
names of methods or constructors, only to the names of classes and interfaces.

10.5.2 Simple Generic Methods

In addition to generic classes, Java also has generic methods. An example is the method
[Link](), which can sort collections of objects of any type. To see how to
write generic methods, let’s start with a non-generic method for counting the number of
times that a given string occurs in an array of strings:
522 CHAPTER 10. GENERIC PROGRAMMING AND COLLECTION CLASSES

/**
Returns the number of times that itemToCount occurs in list. Items in the
list are tested for equality using [Link](), except in the
special case where itemToCount is null.
*/
public static int countOccurrences(String[] list, String
itemToCount) { int count = 0;
if (itemToCount == null) {
for ( String listItem : list )
if (listItem == null)
count++;
}
else {
for ( String listItem : list )
if ([Link](listItem))
count++;
}
return count;
}

Once again, we have some code that works for type String, and we can imagine writing
almost identical code to work with other types of objects. By writing a generic method, we
get to write a single method definition that will work for objects of any type. We need to
replace the specific type String in the definition of the method with a the name of a type
parameter, such as T. However, if that’s the only change we make, the compiler will think
that “T” is the name of an actual type, and it will mark it as an undeclared identifier. We need
some way of telling the compiler that “T” is a type parameter. That’s what the “<T>” does in
the definition of the generic class “class Queue<T> { ...”. For a generic method, the
“<T>” goes just before the name of the return type of the method:
public static <T> int countOccurrences(T[] list, T
itemToCount) { int count = 0;
if (itemToCount == null) {
for ( T listItem : list )
if (listItem == null)
count++;
}
else {
for ( T listItem : list )
if ([Link](listItem))
count++;
}
return count;
}

The “<T>” marks the method as being generic and specifies the name of the type parameter
that will be used in the definition. Of course, the name of the type parameter doesn’t have to
be “T”; it can be anything. (The “<T>” looks a little strange in that position, I know, but it had
to go somewhere and that’s just where the designers of Java decided to put it.)
Given the generic method definition, we can apply it to objects of any type. If wordList
is a variable of type String[ ] and word is a variable of type String, then
int ct = countOccurrences( wordList, word );
10.5. WRITING GENERIC CLASSES AND METHODS 523

will count the number of times that word occurs in wordList. If palette is a variable of
type Color[ ] and color is a variable of type Color, then
int ct = countOccurrences( palette, color );

will count the number of times that color occurs in palette. If numbers is a variable of
type Integer[ ], then
int ct = countOccurrences( numbers, 17 );

will count the number of times that 17 occurs in numbers. This last example uses au-
toboxing; the 17 is automatically converted to a value of type Integer, as if we had said
“countOccurrences( numbers, new Integer(17) )”. Note that, since generic
programming in Java applies only to objects, we cannot use countOccurrences to count
the number of occurrences of 17 in an array of type int[ ].
A generic method can have one or more type parameters, such as the “T” in
countOccurrences. Note that when a generic method is used, as in the function call
“countOccurrences(wordlist, word)”, there is no explicit mention of the type that is
sub-stituted for the type parameter. The compiler deduces the type from the types of the
actual parameters in the method call. Since wordlist is of type String[ ], the compiler can
tell that in “countOccurrences(wordlist, word)”, the type that replaces T is String.
This contrasts with the use of generic classes, as in “new Queue<String>()”, where the
type parameter is specified explicitly.
The countOccurrences method operates on an array. We could also write a similar
method to count occurrences of an object in any collection:
public static <T> int countOccurrences(Collection<T> collection, T
itemToCount) { int count = 0;
if (itemToCount == null) {
for ( T item : collection )
if (item == null)
count++;
}
else {
for ( T item : collection )
if ([Link](item))
count++;
}
return count;
}

Since Collection<T> is itself a generic type, this method is very general. It can operate
on an ArrayList of Integers, a TreeSet of Strings, a LinkedList of JButtons, . . . .

10.5.3 Type Wildcards

There is a limitation on the sort of generic classes and methods that we have looked at so far:
The type parameter in our examples, usually named T, can be any type at all. This is OK in
many cases, but it means that the only things that you can do with T are things that can be done
with every type, and the only things that you can do with objects of type T are things that you
can do with every object. With the techniques that we have covered so far, you can’t, for
example, write a generic method that compares objects with the compareTo() method, since
that method is not defined for all objects. The compareTo() method is defined
524 CHAPTER 10. GENERIC PROGRAMMING AND COLLECTION CLASSES

in the Comparable interface. What we need is a way of specifying that a generic class or method
only applies to objects of type Comparable and not to arbitrary objects. With that restriction, we
should be free to use compareTo() in the definition of the generic class or method.
There are two different but related syntaxes for putting restrictions on the types that are
used in generic programming. One of these is bounded type parameters, which are used
as formal type parameters in generic class and method definitions; a bounded type
parameter would be used in place of the simple type parameter T in “class
GenericClass<T> ...” or in “public static <T> void genericMethod(...”.
The second syntax is wildcard types, which are used as type parameters in the
declarations of variables and of formal method parameters; a wildcard type could be used in
place of the type parameter String in the declaration statement “List<String> list;” or
in the formal parameter list “void max(Collection<String> c)”. We will look at
wildcard types first, and we will return to the topic of bounded types later in this section.
Let’s start with a simple example in which a wildcard type is useful. Suppose that Shape
is a class that defines a method public void draw(), and suppose that Shape has
subclasses such as Rect and Oval. Suppose that we want a method that can draw all the
shapes in a collection of Shapes. We might try:
public static void drawAll(Collection<Shape>
shapes) { for ( Shape s : shapes )
[Link]();
}

This method works fine if we apply it to a variable of type Collection<Shape>, or Ar-

rayList<Shape>, or any other collection class with type parameter Shape. Suppose,
however, that you have list of Rects stored in a variable named rectangles of type
Collection<Rect>. Since Rects are Shapes, you might expect to be able to call
drawAll(rectangles). Unfortu-nately, this will not work; a collection of Rects is not
considered to be a collection of Shapes! The variable rectangles cannot be assigned to
the formal parameter shapes. The solution is to replace the type parameter “Shape” in the
declaration of shapes with the wildcard type “? extends Shape”:
public static void drawAll(Collection<? extends Shape>
shapes) { for ( Shape s : shapes )
[Link]();
}

The wildcard type “? extends Shape” means roughly “any type that is either equal to Shape
or that is a subclass of Shape”. When the parameter shapes is declared to be of type Collec-
tion<? extends Shape>, it becomes possible to call the drawAll method with an actual
parameter of type Collection<Rect> since Rect is a subclass of Shape and therefore matches
the wildcard “? extends Shape”. We could also pass actual parameters to drawAll of type
ArrayList<Rect> or Set<Oval> or List<Oval>. And we can still pass variables of type
Collection<Shape> or Ar-rayList<Shape>, since the class Shape itself matches “? extends
Shape”. We have greatly increased the usefulness of the method by using the wildcard type.
(Although it is not essential, you might be interested in knowing why Java does not allow a
collection of Rects to be used as a collection of Shapes, even though every Rect is considered
to be a Shape. Consider the rather silly but legal method that adds an oval to a list of shapes:
static void addOval(List<Shape> shapes, Oval
oval) { [Link](oval);
}
10.5. WRITING GENERIC CLASSES AND METHODS 525

Suppose that rectangles is of type List<Rect>. It’s illegal to call

addOval(rectangles,oval), because of the rule that a list of Rects is not a list of
Shapes. If we dropped that rule, then addOval(rectangles,oval) would be legal, and it
would add an Oval to a list of Rects. This would be bad: Since Oval is not a subclass of
Rect, an Oval is not a Rect, and a list of Rects should never be able to contain an Oval. The
method call addOval(rectangles,oval) does not make sense and should be illegal,
so the rule that a collection of Rects is not a collection of Shapes is a good rule.)
As another example, consider the method addAll() from the interface Collection<T>.
In my description of this method in Subsection 10.1.4, I say that for a collection, coll, of
type Collection<T>, [Link](coll2) “adds all the objects in coll2 to coll. The
parameter, coll2, can be any collection of type Collection<T>. However, it can also be
more general. For example, if T is a class and S is a sub-class of T, then coll2 can be of
type Collection<S>. This makes sense because any object of type S is automatically of type
T and so can legally be added to coll.” If you think for a moment, you’ll see that what I’m
describing here, a little awkwardly, is a use of wildcard types: We don’t want to require
coll2 to be a collection of of objects of type T ; we want to allow collections of any subclass
of T. To be more specific, let’s look at how a similar addAll() method could be added to
the generic Queue class that was defined earlier in this section:
class Queue<T> {
private LinkedList<T> items = new
LinkedList<T>(); public void enqueue(T item) {
[Link](item);
}
public T dequeue() {
return [Link]();
}
public boolean isEmpty() {
return ([Link]() == 0);
}
public void addAll(Collection<? extends T> collection) {
Add all the items from the collection to the end of the
queue for ( T item : collection )
enqueue(item);
}
}

Here, T is a type parameter in the generic class definition. We are combining wildcard
types with generic classes. Inside the generic class definition, “T” is used as if it is a specific,
though unknown, type. The wildcard type “? extends T” means some type that extends
that specific type. When we create a queue of type Queue<Shape>, “T” refers to “Shape”,
and the wildcard type “? extends T” in the class definition means “? extends Shape”,
meaning that the addAll method of the queue can be applied to collections of Rects and
Ovals as well as to collections of Shapes.
The for-each loop in the definition of addAll iterates through the collection using a variable,
item, of type T. Now, collection can be of type Collection<S>, where S is a subclass of T. Since
item is of type T, not S, do we have a problem here? No, no problem. As long as
is a subclass of T, a value of type S can be assigned to a variable of type T. The restriction
on the wildcard type makes everything work nicely.
526 CHAPTER 10. GENERIC PROGRAMMING AND COLLECTION CLASSES

The addAll method adds all the items from a collection to the queue. Suppose that we
wanted to do the opposite: Add all the items that are currently on the queue to a given
collection. An instance method defined as
public void addAllTo(Collection<T> collection)

would only work for collections whose base type is exactly the same as T. This is too restrictive.
We need some sort of wildcard. However, “? extends T” won’t work. Suppose we try it:
public void addAllTo(Collection<? extends T> collection) {
Remove all items currently on the queue and add them to
collection while ( ! isEmpty() ) {
T item = dequeue(); // Remove an item from the queue.
[Link]( item ); // Add it to the collection. ILLEGAL!!
}
}

The problem is that we can’t add an item of type T to a collection that might only be able to
hold items belonging to some subclass, S, of T. The containment is going in the wrong
direction: An item of type T is not necessarily of type S. For example, if we have a queue
of type Queue<Shape>, it doesn’t make sense to add items from the queue to a collection of
type Collection<Rect>, since not every Shape is a Rect. On the other hand, if we have a
Queue<Rect>, it would make sense to add items from that queue to a Collection<Shape> or
indeed to any collection Collection<S> where S is a superclass of Rect.
To express this type of relationship, we need a new kind of type wildcard: “? super T”.
This wildcard means, roughly, “either T itself or any class that is a superclass of T.” For
example, Collection<? super Rect> would match the types Collection<Shape>,
ArrayList<Object>, and Set<Rect>. This is what we need for our addAllTo method. With
this change, our complete generic queue class becomes:
class Queue<T> {
private LinkedList<T> items = new
LinkedList<T>(); public void enqueue(T item) {
[Link](item);
}
public T dequeue() {
return [Link]();
}
public boolean isEmpty() {
return ([Link]() == 0);
}
public void addAll(Collection<? extends T> collection) {
Add all the items from the collection to the end of the
queue for ( T item : collection )
enqueue(item);
}
public void addAllTo(Collection<? super T> collection) {
Remove all items currently on the queue and add them to
collection while ( ! isEmpty() ) {
T item = dequeue(); // Remove an item from the queue.
[Link]( item ); // Add it to the collection.
}
}
}
10.5. WRITING GENERIC CLASSES AND METHODS 527

In a wildcard type such as “? extends T”, T can be an interface instead of a class.

Note that the term “extends” (not “implements”) is used in the wildcard type, even if T is
an interface. For example, recall that Runnable is an interface that defines the method
public void run(). Runnable objects are usually associated with threads (see Section
8.5). Here is a method that runs all the objects in a collection of Runnables in parallel, by
creating a separate thread for each object:
public static runAllInParallel( Collection<? extends Runnable> runnables ) {
for ( Runnable runnable : runnables ) {
Thread runner; // A thread to run the method [Link]()
runner = new Thread( runnable ); // Create the thread.
[Link](); // Start the thread running.
}
}

∗∗∗
Wildcard types are used only as type parameters in parameterized types, such as
Collec-tion<? extends Runnable>. The place where a wildcard type is most likely to occur,
by far, is in a formal parameter list, where the wildcard type is used in the declaration of the
type of a formal parameter. However, they can also be used in a few other places. For
example, they can be used in the type specification in a variable declaration statement.
One final remark: The wildcard type “<?>” is equivalent to “<? extends Object>”.
That is, it matches any possible type. For example, the removeAll() method in the
generic interface Collections<T> is declared as
public boolean removeAll( Collection<?> c ) { ...

This just means that the removeAll method can be applied to any collection of any type of
object.

10.5.4 Bounded Types

Wildcard types don’t solve all of our problems. They allow us to generalize method
definitions so that they can work with collections of objects of various types, rather than just
a single type. However, they do not allow us to restrict the types that are allowed as type
parameters in a generic class or method definition. Bounded types exist for this purpose.
We start with a small, not very realistic example. Suppose that you would like to cre-ate
groups of GUI components using a generic class named ComponentGroup. For example,
the parameterized type ComponentGroup<JButton> would represent a group of JButtons,
while ComponentGroup<JPanel> would represent a group of JPanels. The class will include
methods that can be called to apply certain operations to all components in the group at
once. For example, there will be a instance method of the form
public void repaintAll() {
.
// Call the repaint() method of every component in the group.

The problem is that the repaint() method is defined in any JComponent object, but not for ob-
jects of arbitrary type. It wouldn’t make sense to allow types such as ComponentGroup<String> or
ComponentGroup<Integer>, since Strings and Integers don’t have repaint() methods. We
528 CHAPTER 10. GENERIC PROGRAMMING AND COLLECTION CLASSES

need some way to restrict the type parameter T in ComponentGroup<T> so that only
JCompo-nent and subclasses of JComponent are allowed as actual type parameters. We
can do this by using the bounded type “T extends JComponent” instead of a plain “T” in
the definition of the class:
public class ComponentGroup<T extends JComponent> {
private ArrayList<T> components; // For storing the components in
this group. public void repaintAll() {
for ( JComponent c : components )
if (c != null)
[Link]();
}
public void setAllEnabled( boolean enable )
{ for ( JComponent c : components )
if (c != null)
[Link](enable);
}
}
public void add( T c ) { // Add a value c, of type T, to the group.
[Link](c);
}
.
// Additional methods and constructors.

The restriction “extends JComponent” on T makes it illegal to create the

parameterized types ComponentGroup<String> and ComponentGroup<Integer>, since the
actual type parameter that replaces “T” is required to be either JComponent itself or a
subclass of JComponent. With this restriction, we know—and, more important, the compiler
knows—that the objects in the group are of type JComponent and the operations
[Link]() and [Link]() are defined for any c in the group.
In general, a bounded type parameter “T extends SomeType” means roughly “a type,
T, that is either equal to SomeType or is a subclass of SomeType”, and the upshot is that
any object of type T is also of type SomeType, and any operation that is defined for objects
of type SomeType is defined for objects of type T. The type SomeType doesn’t have to be
the name of a class. It can be anything that represents an actual type. For example, it can
be an interface or even a parameterized type.
Bounded types and wildcard types are clearly related. They are, however, used in very
different ways. A bounded type can be used only as a formal type parameter in the
definition of a generic method, class, or interface. A wildcard type is used most often to
declare the type of a formal parameter in a method and cannot be used as a formal type
parameter. One other difference, by the way, is that, in contrast to wildcard types, bounded
type parameters can only use “extends”, never “super”.
Bounded type parameters can be used when declaring generic methods. For example,
as an alternative to the generic ComponentGroup class, one could write a free-standing
generic static method that can repaint any collection of JComponents as follows:
public static <T extends JComponent> void
repaintAll(Collection<T> comps) { for ( JComponent c : comps )
if (c != null)
[Link]();
10.5. WRITING GENERIC CLASSES AND METHODS 529

Using “<T extends JComponent>” as the formal type parameter means that the method
can only be called for collections whose base type is JComponent or some subclass of
JComponent. Thus, it is legal to call repaintAll(coll) where coll is of type
List<JPanel> but not where coll is of type Set<String>.
Note that we don’t really need a generic type parameter in this case. We can write an
equivalent method using a wildcard type:
public static void repaintAll(Collection<? extends
JComponent> comps) { for ( JComponent c : comps )
if (c != null)
[Link]();
}

In this situation, the version that uses the wildcard type is to be preferred, since the
implemen-tation is simpler. However, there are some situations where a generic method
with a bounded type parameter cannot be rewritten using a wildcard type. Note that a
generic type parameter gives a name, such as T, to the unknown type, while a wildcard type
does not give a name to the unknown type. The name makes it possible to refer to the
unknown type in the body of the method that is being defined. If a generic method definition
uses the generic type name more than once or uses it outside the formal parameter list of
the method, then the generic type cannot be replaced with a wildcard type.
Let’s look at a generic method in which a bounded type parameter is essential. In
Subsec-tion 10.2.1, I presented a code segment for inserting a string into a sorted list of
strings, in such a way that the modified list is still in sorted order. Here is the same code, but
this time in the form of a method definition (and without the comments):
static void sortedInsert(List<String> sortedList, String newItem)
{ ListIterator<String> iter = [Link]();
while ([Link]()) {
String item = [Link]();
if ([Link](item) <= 0) {
[Link]();
break;
}
}
[Link](newItem);
}

This method works fine for lists of strings, but it would be nice to have a generic method
that can be applied to lists of other types of objects. The problem, of course, is that the code
assumes that the compareTo() method is defined for objects in the list, so the method can
only work for lists of objects that implement the Comparable interface. We can’t simply use a
wildcard type to enforce this restriction. Suppose we try to do it, by replacing List<String>
with List<? extends Comparable>:
static void sortedInsert(List<? extends Comparable> sortedList, ????
newItem) { ListIterator<????> iter = [Link]();
...

We immediately run into a problem, because we have no name for the unknown type represented by
the wildcard. We need a name for that type because the type of newItem and of iter should be
the same as the type of the items in the list. The problem is solved if we write a generic
530 CHAPTER 10. GENERIC PROGRAMMING AND COLLECTION CLASSES

method with a bounded type parameter, since then we have a name for the unknown type,
and we can write a valid generic method:
static <T extends Comparable> void sortedInsert(List<T> sortedList, T
newItem) { ListIterator<T> iter = [Link]();
while ([Link]()) {
T item = [Link]();
if ([Link](item) <= 0) {
[Link]();
break;
}
}
[Link](newItem);
}

There is still one technicality to cover in this example. Comparable is itself a parameterized
type, but I have used it here without a type parameter. This is legal but the compiler might give
you a warning about using a “raw type.” In fact, the objects in the list should implement the
parameterized interface Comparable<T>, since they are being compared to items of type T. This
just means that instead of using Comparable as the type bound, we should use Comparable<T>:
static <T extends Comparable<T>> void sortedInsert(List<T> sortedList, ...

∗∗∗
With this example, I will leave the topic of generic types and generic programming. In this
chapter, I have occasionally used terms such as “strange” and “weird” to talk about generic
programming in Java. I will confess that I have some affection for the more simple-minded
generic programming style of Smalltalk. Nevertheless, I recognize the power and increased
robustness of generics in Java. I hope that I have convinced you that using the Java Collection
Framework is reasonably natural and straightforward, and that using it can save you a lot of time
and effort compared to repeatedly recoding the same data structures and algorithms from
scratch. Things become a little more technical when you start writing new generic classes and
methods of your own, and the syntax is (as I’ve said) a little strange. But with some practice,
you’ll get used to the syntax and will find that it’s not that difficult after all.
Exercises 531

Exercises for Chapter 10

Rewrite the PhoneDirectory class from Subsection 7.4.2 so that it uses a TreeMap to store
directory entries, instead of an array. (Doing this was suggested in Subsection 10.3.1.)

In mathematics, several operations are defined on sets. The union of two sets A and B is
a set that contains all the elements that are in A together with all the elements that are
in B. The intersection of A and B is the set that contains elements that are in both A
and B. The difference of A and B is the set that contains all the elements of A except
for those elements that are also in B.
Suppose that A and B are variables of type set in Java. The mathematical opera-
tions on A and B can be computed using methods from the Set interface. In particular:
[Link](B) computes the union of A and B; [Link](B) computes the
intersection of A and B; and [Link](B) computes the difference of A and B.
(These operations change the contents of the set A, while the mathematical operations
create a new set without changing A, but that difference is not relevant to this exercise.)
For this exercise, you should write a program that can be used as a “set calcula-tor”
for simple operations on sets of non-negative integers. (Negative integers are not
allowed.) A set of such integers will be represented as a list of integers, separated by
commas and, optionally, spaces and enclosed in square brackets. For example:
[1,2,3] or [17, 42, 9, 53,108]. The characters +, *, and - will be used for
the union, intersection, and difference operations. The user of the program will type in
lines of input containing two sets, separated by an operator. The program should
perform the operation and print the resulting set. Here are some examples:
Input Output
------------------------- -------------------
[1, 2, 3] + [3, 5, 7] [1, 2, 3, 5, 7]
[10,9,8,7] * [2,4,6,8] [8]
[ 5, 10, 15, 20 ]-[0,10,20] [5, 15]

To represent sets of non-negative integers, use sets of type TreeSet<Integer>. Read

the user’s input, create two TreeSets, and use the appropriate TreeSet method to perform
the requested operation on the two sets. Your program should be able to read and process
any number of lines of input. If a line contains a syntax error, your program should not
crash. It should report the error and move on to the next line of input. (Note: To print out a
Set, A, of Integers, you can just say [Link](A). I’ve chosen the syntax
for sets to be the same as that used by the system for outputting a set.)

The fact that Java has a HashMap class means that no Java programmer has to write an
implementation of hash tables from scratch—unless, of course, you are a computer
science student.
For this exercise, you should write a hash table in which both the keys and the values are of
type String. (This is not an exercise in generic programming; do not try to write a generic class.)
Write an implementation of hash tables from scratch. Define the following methods: get(key),
put(key,value), remove(key), containsKey(key), and size(). Remember that
every object, obj, has a method [Link]() that can be used for computing a hash
code for the object, so at least you don’t have to define your own hash function. Do not use any
of Java’s built-in generic types; create your own linked lists
532 CHAPTER 10. GENERIC PROGRAMMING AND COLLECTION CLASSES

using nodes as covered in Subsection 9.2.2. However, you do not have to worry about
increasing the size of the table when it becomes too full.
You should also write a short program to test your solution.

A predicate is a boolean-valued function with one parameter. Some languages use pred-
icates in generic programming. Java doesn’t, but this exercise looks at how predicates
might work in Java.
In Java, we could implement “predicate objects” by defining a generic interface:
public interface Predicate<T> {
public boolean test( T obj );
}

The idea is that an object that implements this interface knows how to “test” objects
of type T in some way. Define a class that contains the following generic static methods
for working with predicate objects. The name of the class should be Predicates, in
analogy with the standard class Collections that provides various static methods for
working with collections.
public static <T> void remove(Collection<T> coll, Predicate<T> pred)
Remove every object, obj, from coll for which
[Link](obj) is true.
public static <T> void retain(Collection<T> coll, Predicate<T> pred)
Remove every object, obj, from coll for which
[Link](obj) is false. (That is, retain the
objects for which the predicate is true.)
public static <T> List<T> collect(Collection<T> coll, Predicate<T> pred)
Return a List that contains all the objects, obj,
from the collection, coll, such that [Link](obj)
is true.
public static <T> int find(ArrayList<T> list, Predicate<T> pred)
Return the index of the first item in list
for which the predicate is true, if any.
If there is no such item, return -1.

(In C++, methods similar to these are included as a standard part of the generic pro-
gramming framework.)

An example in Subsection 10.4.2 concerns the problem of making an index for a book. A
related problem is making a concordance for a document. A concordance lists every
word that occurs in the document, and for each word it gives the line number of every
line in the document where the word occurs. All the subroutines for creating an index
that were presented in Subsection 10.4.2 can also be used to create a concordance.
The only real difference is that the integers in a concordance are line numbers rather
than page numbers.
Write a program that can create a concordance. The document should be read from an
input file, and the concordance data should be written to an output file. You can use the
indexing subroutines from Subsection 10.4.2, modified to write the data to TextIO instead of
to [Link]. (You will need to make these subroutines static .) The input and output files
should be selected by the user when the program is run. The sample
Exercises 533

program [Link], from Subsection 10.4.4, can be used as a model of how to

use files. That program also has a useful subroutine that reads one word from input.
As you read the file, you want to take each word that you encounter and add it to
the concordance along with the current line number. Keeping track of the line numbers
is one of the trickiest parts of the problem. In an input file, the end of each line in the file
is marked by the newline character, ’\n’. Every time you encounter this character, you
have to add one to the line number. [Link] ignores ends of lines. Because
you need to find and count the end-of-line characters, your program cannot process
the input file in exactly the same way as does [Link]. Also, you will need to
detect the end of the file. The function [Link](), which is used to look ahead
at the next character in the input, returns the value [Link] at end-of-file, after all
the characters in the file have been read.
Because it is so common, don’t include the word “the” in your concordance. Also,
do not include words that have length less than 3.

The sample program [Link] from Subsection 10.4.1 can carry out com-
mands of the form “let variable = expression” or “print expression”. That program can
handle expressions that contain variables, numbers, operators, and parentheses.
Extend the program so that it can also handle the standard mathematical functions
sin, cos, tan, abs, sqrt, and log. For example, the program should be able to
evaluate an expres-sion such as sin(3*x-7)+log(sqrt(y)), assuming that the
variables x and y have been given values. Note that the name of a function must be
followed by an expression that is enclosed in parentheses.
In the original program, a symbol table holds a value for each variable that has
been defined. In your program, you should add another type of symbol to the table to
represent standard functions. You can use the following nested enumerated type and
class for this purpose:
private enum Functions { SIN, COS, TAN, ABS, SQRT, LOG }
/**
An object of this class represents one of the standard
functions. */
private static class StandardFunction {
/**
Tells which function this is.
*/
Functions functionCode;
/**
Constructor creates an object to represent one of
the standard functions
@param code which function is represented.
*/
StandardFunction(Functions code) {
functionCode = code;
}
/**
Finds the value of this function for the specified
parameter value, x.
534 CHAPTER 10. GENERIC PROGRAMMING AND COLLECTION CLASSES

*/
double evaluate(double x) {
switch(functionCode) {
case SIN:
return [Link](x);
case COS:
return [Link](x);
case TAN:
return [Link](x);
case ABS:
return [Link](x);
case SQRT:
return [Link](x);
default:
return [Link](x);
}
}
} // end class StandardFunction

Add a symbol to the symbol table to represent each function. The key is the name
of the function and the value is an object of type StandardFunction that represents the
function. For example:
[Link]("sin", new StandardFunction([Link]));

In [Link], the symbol table is a map of type HashMap<String,Double>. It’s

not legal to use a StandardFunction as the value in such a map, so you will have to change
the type of the map. The map has to hold two di fferent types of objects. The easy way to
make this possible is to create a map of type HashMap<String,Object>. (A better way is to
create a general type to represent objects that can be values in the symbol table, and to
define two subclasses of that class, one to represent variables and one to represent
standard functions, but for this exercise, you should do it the easy way.)
In your parser, when you encounter a word, you have to be able
to tell whether it’s a variable or a standard function. Look up the
word in the symbol table. If the associated object is non-null and
is of type Double, then the word is a variable. If it is of type
StandardFunction, then the word is a function. Remember that you
can test the type of an object using the instanceof operator. For
example: if (obj instanceof Double)
Quiz 535

Quiz on Chapter 10

What is meant by generic programming and what is the alternative?

Why can’t you make an object of type LinkedList<int>? What should you do instead?

What is an iterator and why are iterators necessary for generic programming?

Suppose that integers is a variable of type Collection<Integer>. Write a code segment that
uses an iterator to compute the sum of all the integer values in the collection. Write a
second code segment that does the same thing using a for-each loop.

Interfaces such as List, Set, and Map define abstract data types. Explain what this means.

What is the fundamental property that distinguishes Sets from other types of Collections ?

What is the essential difference in functionality between a TreeMap and a HashMap?

Explain what is meant by a hash code.

Modify the following Date class so that it implements the interface Comparable<Date>.
The ordering on objects of type Date should be the natural, chronological ordering.
class Date {
int month; // Month number in range 1 to 12.
int day; // Day number in range 1 to 31.
int year; // Year number.
Date(int m, int d, int y) { // Convenience constructor.
month = m;
day = d;
year = y;
}
}

Suppose that syllabus is a variable of type TreeMap<Date,String>, where Date is the

class from the preceding exercise. Write a code segment that will write out the value
string for every key that is in the month of December, 2006.

Write a generic class Stack<T> that can be used to represent stacks of objects of type T.
The class should include methods push(), pop(), and isEmpty(). Inside the
class, use an ArrayList to hold the items on the stack.

Write a generic method, using a generic type parameter <T>, that replaces every
occurrence in a ArrayList<T> of a specified item with a specified replacement item. The
list and the two items are parameters to the method. Both items are of type T. Take into
account the fact that the item that is being replaced might be null. For a non-null
item, use equals() to do the comparison.
536 CHAPTER 10. GENERIC PROGRAMMING AND COLLECTION CLASSES
Chapter 11

Files and Networking

Computer programs are only useful if they interact with the rest of the world in some way. This
interaction is referred to as input/output, or I/O. Up until now, this book has concentrated on just
one type of interaction: interaction with the user, through either a graph-ical user interface or a
command-line interface. But the user is only one possible source of information and only one
possible destination for information. We have already encountered one other type of
input/output, since TextIO can read data from files and write data to files. However, Java has an
input/output framework that provides much more power and flexibility than does TextIO, and that
covers other kinds of I/O in addition to files. Most importantly, it supports communication over
network connections. In Java, input/output involving files and networks is based on streams,
which are objects that support I/O commands that are similar to those that you have already
used. In fact, standard output ([Link]) and standard input ([Link]) are examples of
streams.
Working with files and networks requires familiarity with exceptions, which were covered
in Chapter 8. Many of the subroutines that are used can throw exceptions that require
mandatory exception handling. This generally means calling the subroutine in a
try..catch statement that can deal with the exception if one occurs.

11.1 Streams, Readers, and Writers

Without the ability to interact with the rest of the world, a program would be useless. The
interaction of a program with the rest of the world is referred to as input/output or I/O.
Historically, one of the hardest parts of programming language design has been coming up with
good facilities for doing input and output. A computer can be connected to many di fferent types
of input and output devices. If a programming language had to deal with each type of device as a
special case, the complexity would be overwhelming. One of the major achievements in the
history of programming has been to come up with good abstractions for representing I/O
devices. In Java, the main I/O abstractions are called streams. Other I/O abstractions, such as
“files” and “channels” also exist, but in this section we will look only at streams. Every stream
represents either a source of input or a destination to which output can be sent.

11.1.1 Character and Byte Streams

When dealing with input/output, you have to keep in mind that there are two broad categories of
data: machine-formatted data and human-readable data. Machine-formatted data is repre-
sented in binary form, the same way that data is represented inside the computer, that is, as

537
538 CHAPTER 11. FILES AND NETWORKING

strings of zeros and ones. Human-readable data is in the form of characters. When you read
a number such as 3.141592654, you are reading a sequence of characters and
interpreting them as a number. The same number would be represented in the computer as
a bit-string that you would find unrecognizable.
To deal with the two broad categories of data representation, Java has two broad categories
of streams: byte streams for machine-formatted data and character streams for human-
readable data. There are many predefined classes that represent streams of each type.
An object that outputs data to a byte stream belongs to one of the subclasses of the
abstract class OutputStream. Objects that read data from a byte stream belong to
subclasses of InputStream. If you write numbers to an OutputStream, you won’t be able to
read the resulting data yourself. But the data can be read back into the computer with an
InputStream. The writing and reading of the data will be very e fficient, since there is no
translation involved: the bits that are used to represent the data inside the computer are
simply copied to and from the streams.
For reading and writing human-readable character data, the main classes are the
abstract classes Reader and Writer. All character stream classes are subclasses of one of
these. If a number is to be written to a Writer stream, the computer must translate it into a
human-readable sequence of characters that represents that number. Reading a number
from a Reader stream into a numeric variable also involves a translation, from a character
sequence into the appropriate bit string. (Even if the data you are working with consists of
characters in the first place, such as words from a text editor, there might still be some
translation. Characters are stored in the computer as 16-bit Unicode values. For people who
use Western alphabets, character data is generally stored in files in ASCII code, which uses
only 8 bits per character. The Reader and Writer classes take care of this translation, and
can also handle non-western alphabets in countries that use them.)
Byte streams can be useful for direct machine-to-machine communication, and they can
sometimes be useful for storing data in files, especially when large amounts of data need to
be stored efficiently, such as in large databases. However, binary data is fragile in the
sense that its meaning is not self-evident. When faced with a long series of zeros and ones,
you have to know what information it is meant to represent and how that information is
encoded before you will be able to interpret it. Of course, the same is true to some extent for
character data, which is itself coded into binary form. But the binary encoding of character
data has been standardized and is well understood, and data expressed in character form
can be made meaningful to human readers. The current trend seems to be towards
increased use of character data, represented in a way that will make its meaning as self-
evident as possible. We’ll look at how this is done in Section 11.6.
I should note that the original version of Java did not have character streams, and that
for ASCII-encoded character data, byte streams are largely interchangeable with character
streams. In fact, the standard input and output streams, [Link] and [Link],
are byte streams rather than character streams. However, you should use Readers and
Writers rather than InputStreams and OutputStreams when working with character data.
The standard stream classes discussed in this section are defined in the package [Link],
along with several supporting classes. You must import the classes from this package if you
want to use them in your program. That means either importing individual classes or putting the
directive “import [Link].*;” at the beginning of your source file. Streams are necessary for working with files
and for doing communication over a network. They can be also used for communication between two
concurrently running threads, and there are stream classes for
11.1. STREAMS, READERS, AND WRITERS 539

reading and writing data stored in the computer’s memory.

The beauty of the stream abstraction is that it is as easy to write data to a file or to send
data over a network as it is to print information on the screen.
∗∗∗
The basic I/O classes Reader, Writer, InputStream, and OutputStream provide only very
primitive I/O operations. For example, the InputStream class declares the instance method
public int read() throws IOException

for reading one byte of data, as a number in the range 0 to 255, from an input stream. If the
end of the input stream is encountered, the read() method will return the value -1 instead.
If some error occurs during the input attempt, an exception of type IOException is thrown.
Since IOException is an exception class that requires mandatory exception-handling, this
means that you can’t use the read() method except inside a try statement or in a
subroutine that is itself declared with a “throws IOException” clause. (Mandatory
exception handling was covered in Subsection 8.3.4.)
The InputStream class also defines methods for reading several bytes of data in one
step into an array of bytes. However, InputStream provides no convenient methods for
reading other types of data, such as int or double, from a stream. This is not a problem
because you’ll never use an object of type InputStream itself. Instead, you’ll use subclasses
of InputStream that add more convenient input methods to InputStream’s rather primitive
capabilities. Similarly, the OutputStream class defines a primitive output method for writing
one byte of data to an output stream. The method is defined as:
public void write(int b) throws IOException

The parameter is of type int rather than byte, but the parameter value is type-cast to type
byte before it is written; this effectively discards all but the eight low order bytes of b. Again,
in practice, you will almost always use higher-level output operations defined in some
subclass of OutputStream.
The Reader and Writer classes provide identical low-level read and write methods. As in
the byte stream classes, the parameter of the write(c) method in Writer and the return value
of the read() method in Reader are of type int, but in these character-oriented classes, the I/O
operations read and write characters rather than bytes. The return value of read() is -1 if the
end of the input stream has been reached. Otherwise, the return value must be type-cast to type
char to obtain the character that was read. In practice, you will use ordinarily use higher level I/O
operations provided by sub-classes of Reader and Writer, as discussed below.

11.1.2 PrintWriter
One of the neat things about Java’s I/O package is that it lets you add capabilities to a
stream by “wrapping” it in another stream object that provides those capabilities. The
wrapper object is also a stream, so you can read from or write to it—but you can do so using
fancier operations than those available for basic streams.
For example, PrintWriter is a subclass of Writer that provides convenient methods for out-
putting human-readable character representations of all of Java’s basic data types. If you have
an object belonging to the Writer class, or any of its subclasses, and you would like to use
PrintWriter methods to output data to that Writer, all you have to do is wrap the Writer in a
PrintWriter object. You do this by constructing a new PrintWriter object, using the Writer as input
to the constructor. For example, if charSink is of type Writer, then you could say
540 CHAPTER 11. FILES AND NETWORKING

PrintWriter printableCharSink = new PrintWriter(charSink);

When you output data to printableCharSink, using the high-level output methods in Print-
Writer, that data will go to exactly the same place as data written directly to charSink. You’ve
just provided a better interface to the same output stream. For example, this allows you to use
PrintWriter methods to send data to a file or over a network connection.
For the record, if out is a variable of type PrintWriter, then the following methods are
defined:

[Link](x) — prints the value of x, represented in the form of a string of

characters, to the output stream; x can be an expression of any type, including both
primitive types and object types. An object is converted to string form using its
toString() method. A null value is represented by the string “null”.
[Link]() — outputs an end-of-line to the output stream.
[Link](x) — outputs the value of x, followed by an end-of-line; this is
equivalent to [Link](x) followed by [Link]().
[Link](formatString, x1, x2, ...) — does formated output of x1,
x2, ... to the output stream. The first parameter is a string that specifies the format of
the output. There can be any number of additional parameters, of any type, but the
types of the parameters must match the formatting directives in the format string.
Formatted output for the standard output stream, [Link], was introduced in
Subsection 2.4.4, and [Link] has the same functionality.

Note that none of these methods will ever throw an IOException. Instead, the PrintWriter
class includes the method
public boolean checkError()

which will return true if any error has been encountered while writing to the stream. The
PrintWriter class catches any IOExceptions internally, and sets the value of an internal error
flag if one occurs. The checkError() method can be used to check the error flag. This
allows you to use PrintWriter methods without worrying about catching exceptions. On the
other hand, to write a fully robust program, you should call checkError() to test for
possible errors whenever you used a PrintWriter.

11.1.3 Data Streams

When you use a PrintWriter to output data to a stream, the data is converted into the sequence
of characters that represents the data in human-readable form. Suppose you want to output the
data in byte-oriented, machine-formatted form? The [Link] package includes a byte-stream
class, DataOutputStream that can be used for writing data values to streams in internal, binary-
number format. DataOutputStream bears the same relationship to OutputStream that PrintWriter
bears to Writer. That is, whereas OutputStream only has methods for outputting bytes,
DataOutputStream has methods writeDouble(double x) for outputting values of type
double, writeInt(int x) for outputting values of type int, and so on. Furthermore, you can
wrap any OutputStream in a DataOutputStream so that you can use the higher level output
methods on it. For example, if byteSink is of type OutputStream, you could say

DataOutputStream dataSink = new DataOutputStream(byteSink);

11.1. STREAMS, READERS, AND WRITERS 541

to wrap byteSink in a DataOutputStream, dataSink.

For input of machine-readable data, such as that created by writing to a DataOutputStream,
[Link] provides the class DataInputStream. You can wrap any InputStream in a DataIn-
putStream object to provide it with the ability to read data of various types from the byte-stream.
The methods in the DataInputStream for reading binary data are called readDouble(),
readInt(), and so on. Data written by a DataOutputStream is guaranteed to be in a format
that can be read by a DataInputStream. This is true even if the data stream is created on one
type of computer and read on another type of computer. The cross-platform compatibility of
binary data is a major aspect of Java’s platform independence.
In some circumstances, you might need to read character data from an InputStream or
write character data to an OutputStream. This is not a problem, since characters, like all
data, are represented as binary numbers. However, for character data, it is convenient to
use Reader and Writer instead of InputStream and OutputStream. To make this possible,
you can wrap a byte stream in a character stream. If byteSource is a variable of type
InputStream and byteSink is of type OutputStream, then the statements
Reader charSource = new InputStreamReader( byteSource );
Writer charSink = new OutputStreamWriter( byteSink );

create character streams that can be used to read character data from and write character
data to the byte streams. In particular, the standard input stream [Link], which is of
type InputStream for historical reasons, can be wrapped in a Reader to make it easier to
read character data from standard input:
Reader charIn = new InputStreamReader( [Link] );

As another application, the input and output streams that are associated with a network
connection are byte streams rather than character streams, but the byte streams can be
wrapped in character streams to make it easy to send and receive character data over the
network. We will encounter network I/O in Section 11.4.

11.1.4 Reading Text

Still, the fact remains that much I/O is done in the form of human-readable characters. In
view of this, it is surprising that Java does not provide a standard character input class that
can read character data in a manner that is reasonably symmetrical with the character
output capabilities of PrintWriter. There is one basic case that is easily handled by a
standard class. The BufferedReader class has a method
public String readLine() throws IOException

that reads one line of text from its input source. If the end of the stream has been reached,
the return value is null. When a line of text is read, the end-of-line marker is read from the
input stream, but it is not part of the string that is returned. Di fferent input streams use
different characters as end-of-line markers, but the readLine method can deal with all the
common cases. (Traditionally, Unix computers, including Linux and Mac OS X, use a line
feed character, ’\n’, to mark an end of line; classic Macintosh used a carriage return
character, ’\r’; and Windows uses the two-character sequence “\r\n”. In general,
modern computers can deal correctly with all of these possibilities.)
Line-by-line processing is very common. Any Reader can be wrapped in a
BufferedReader to make it easy to read full lines of text. If reader is of type Reader, then
a BufferedReader wrapper can be created for reader with
542 CHAPTER 11. FILES AND NETWORKING

BufferedReader in = new BufferedReader( reader );

This can be combined with the InputStreamReader class that was mentioned above to read
lines of text from an InputStream. For example, we can apply this to [Link]:
BufferedReader in; // BufferedReader for reading from standard input.
in = new BufferedReader( new InputStreamReader( [Link] ) );
try {
String line = [Link]();
while ( line != null && [Link]() >
0 ) { processOneLineOfInput( line );
line = [Link]();
}
}
catch (IOException e) {
}

This code segment reads and processes lines from standard input until either an empty line or
an end-of-stream is encountered. (An end-of-stream is possible even for interactive input. For
example, on at least some computers, typing a Control-D generates an end-of-stream on the
standard input stream.) The try..catch statement is necessary because the readLine
method can throw an exception of type IOException, which requires mandatory exception
handling; an alternative to try..catch would be to declare that the method that contains the
code “throws IOException”. Also, remember that BufferedReader, InputStreamReader, and
IOException must be imported from the package [Link].
∗∗∗
Previously in this book, we have used the non-standard class TextIO for input both from
users and from files. The advantage of TextIO is that it makes it fairly easy to read data
values of any of the primitive types. Disadvantages include the fact that TextIO can only
read from one file at a time, that it can’t do I/O operations on network connections, and that
it does not follow the same pattern as Java’s built-in input/output classes.
I have written a class named TextReader to fix some of these disadvantages, while
providing input capabilities similar to those of TextIO. Like TextIO, TextReader is a non-
standard class, so you have to be careful to make it available to any program that uses it.
The source code for the class can be found in the file [Link]
Just as for many of Java’s stream classes, an object of type TextReader can be used as
a wrapper for an existing input stream, which becomes the source of the characters that will
be read by the TextReader. (Unlike the standard classes, however, a TextReader is not
itself a stream and cannot be wrapped inside other stream classes.) The constructors
public TextReader(Reader characterSource)

and
public TextReader(InputStream byteSource)

create objects that can be used to read human-readable data from the given Reader or In-
putStream using the convenient input methods of the TextReader class. In TextIO, the input
methods were static members of the class. The input methods in the TextReader class are
instance methods. The instance methods in a TextReader object read from the data source
that was specified in the object’s constructor. This makes it possible for several TextReader
objects to exist at the same time, reading from different streams; as a result, TextReader can
be used to read data from more than one file at the same time.
11.1. STREAMS, READERS, AND WRITERS 543

A TextReader object has essentially the same set of input methods as the TextIO class. One
big difference is how errors are handled. When a TextReader encounters an error in the input, it
throws an exception of type IOException. This follows the standard pattern that is used by Java’s
standard input streams. IOExceptions require mandatory exception handling, so TextReader
methods are generally called inside try..catch statements. If an IOException is thrown by
the input stream that is wrapped inside a TextReader, that IOException is simply passed along.
However, other types of errors can also occur. One such possible error is an attempt to read
data from the input stream when there is no more data left in the stream. A TextReader throws
an exception of type [Link] when this happens. The exception
class in this case is a nested class in the TextReader class; it is a subclass of IOException, so a
try..catch statement that handles IOExceptions will also handle end-of-stream exceptions.
However, having a class to represent end-of-stream errors makes it possible to detect such
errors and provide special handling for them. Another type of error occurs when a TextReader
tries to read a data value of a certain type, and the next item in the input stream is not of the
correct type. In this case, the TextReader throws an exception of type
[Link], which is another subclass of IOException.
For reference, here is a list of some of the more useful instance methods in the
TextReader class. All of these methods can throw exceptions of type IOException:
public char peek() — looks ahead at the next character in the input stream, and
returns that character. The character is not removed from the stream. If the next
character is an end-of-line, the return value is ’\n’. It is legal to call this method even if
there is no more data left in the stream; in that case, the return value is the constant
[Link]. (“EOF” stands for “End-Of-File,” a term that is more commonly
used than “End-Of-Stream”, even though not all streams are files.)
public boolean eoln() and public boolean eof()— convenience methods
for testing whether the next thing in the file is an end-of-line or an end-of-file. Note that
these methods do not skip whitespace. If eof() is false, you know that there is still at
least one character to be read, but there might not be any more non-blank characters
in the stream.
public void skipBlanks() and public void skipWhiteSpace() — skip past
whites-pace characters in the input stream; skipWhiteSpace() skips all whitespace
characters, including end-of-line while skipBlanks() only skips spaces and tabs.
public String getln() — reads characters up to the next end-of-line (or end-of-
stream), and returns those characters in a string. The end-of-line marker is read but it
not part of the returned string. This will throw an exception if there are no more
characters in the stream.
public char getAnyChar() — reads and returns the next character from the stream.
The character can be a whitespace character such as a blank or end-of-line. If this method
is called after all the characters in the stream have been read, an exception is thrown.
public int getlnInt(), public double getlnDouble(), public char
getlnChar(), etc. — skip any whitespace characters in the stream, including end-of-
lines, then read a value of the specified type, which will be the return value of the
method. Any remaining characters on the line are then discarded, including the end-of-
line marker. There is a method for each primitive type. An exception occurs if it’s not
possible to read a data value of the requested type.
public int getInt(), public double getDouble(), public char getChar(), etc. —
544 CHAPTER 11. FILES AND NETWORKING

skip any whitespace characters in the stream, including end-of-lines, then read and return a
value of the specified type. Extra characters on the line are not discarded and are still
available to be read by subsequent input methods. There is a method for each primitive
type. An exception occurs if it’s not possible to read a data value of the requested type.

11.1.5 The Scanner Class

Since its introduction, Java has been notable for its lack of built-in support for basic input, and for
its reliance on fairly advanced techniques for the support that it does o ffer. (This is my opinion,
at least.) The Scanner class was introduced in Java 5.0 to make it easier to read basic data
types from a character input source. It does not (again, in my opinion) solve the problem
completely, but it is a big improvement. The Scanner class is in the package [Link].
Input routines are defined as instance methods in the Scanner class, so to use the class, you
need to create a Scanner object. The constructor specifies the source of the characters that the
Scanner will read. The scanner acts as a wrapper for the input source. The source can be a
Reader, an InputStream, a String, or a File. (If a String is used as the input source, the Scanner
will simply read the characters in the string from beginning to end, in the same way that it would
process the same sequence of characters from a stream. The File class will be covered in the
next section.) For example, you can use a Scanner to read from standard input by saying:
Scanner standardInputScanner = new Scanner( [Link] );

and if charSource is of type Reader, you can create a Scanner for reading from
charSource with:
Scanner scanner = new Scanner( charSource );

When processing input, a scanner usually works with tokens. A token is a meaningful string
of characters that cannot, for the purposes at hand, be further broken down into smaller
meaningful pieces. A token can, for example, be an individual word or a string of characters that
represents a value of type double. In the case of a scanner, tokens must be separated by
“delimiters.” By default, the delimiters are whitespace characters such as spaces and end-of-line
markers. In normal processing, whitespace characters serve simply to separate tokens and are
discarded by the scanner. A scanner has instance methods for reading tokens of various types.
Suppose that scanner is an object of type Scanner. Then we have:
[Link]() — reads the next token from the input source and returns it as a String.
[Link](), [Link](), and so on — reads the next token
from the input source and tries to convert it to a value of type int, double, and so on.
There are methods for reading values of any of the primitive types.
[Link]() — reads an entire line from the input source, up to the next
end-of-line and returns the line as a value of type String. The end-of-line marker is read
but is not part of the return value. Note that this method is not based on tokens. An
entire line is read and returned, including any whitespace characters in the line.

All of these methods can generate exceptions. If an attempt is made to read past the end of
input, an exception of type NoSuchElementException is thrown. Methods such as
[Link]() will throw an exception of type InputMismatchException if the next to- ken in
the input does not represent a value of the requested type. The exceptions that can be generated do not
require mandatory exception handling.
11.1. STREAMS, READERS, AND WRITERS 545

The Scanner class has very nice look-ahead capabilities. You can query a scanner to
de-termine whether more tokens are available and whether the next token is of a given type.
If scanner is of type Scanner :

[Link]() — returns a boolean value that is true if there is at least one

more token in the input source.
[Link](), [Link](), and so on — returns a
boolean value that is true if there is at least one more token in the input source and that
token represents a value of the requested type.
[Link]() — returns a boolean value that is true if there is at least one
more line in the input source.

Although the insistence on defining tokens only in terms of delimiters limits the usability
of scanners to some extent, they are easy to use and are suitable for many applications.

11.1.6 Serialized Object I/O

The classes PrintWriter, TextReader, Scanner, DataInputStream, and DataOutputStream allow
you to easily input and output all of Java’s primitive data types. But what happens when you
want to read and write objects? Traditionally, you would have to come up with some way of
encoding your object as a sequence of data values belonging to the primitive types, which can
then be output as bytes or characters. This is called serializing the object. On input, you have to
read the serialized data and somehow reconstitute a copy of the original object. For complex
objects, this can all be a major chore. However, you can get Java to do all the work for you by
using the classes ObjectInputStream and ObjectOutputStream. These are subclasses of
InputStream and Outputstream that can be used for writing and reading serialized objects.
ObjectInputStream and ObjectOutputStream are wrapper classes that can be wrapped
around arbitrary InputStreams and OutputStreams. This makes it possible to do object input
and output on any byte stream. The methods for object I/O are readObject(), in
ObjectInputStream, and writeObject(Object obj), in ObjectOutputStream. Both of
these methods can throw IOExceptions. Note that readObject() returns a value of type
Object, which generally has to be type-cast to a more useful type.
ObjectOutputStream also has methods writeInt(), writeDouble(), and so on, for
out-putting primitive type values to the stream, and ObjectInputStream has corresponding
methods for reading primitive type values.
Object streams are byte streams. The objects are represented in binary, machine-
readable form. This is good for efficiency, but it does suffer from the fragility that is often
seen in binary data. They suffer from the additional problem that the binary format of Java
objects is very specific to Java, so the data in object streams is not easily available to
programs written in other programming languages. For these reasons, object streams are
appropriate mostly for short-term storage of objects and for transmitting objects over a
network connection from one Java program to another. For long-term storage and for
communication with non-Java programs, other approaches to object serialization are usually
better. (See Subsection 11.6.2 for a character-based approach.)
ObjectInputStream and ObjectOutputStream only work with objects that implement an in-
terface named Serializable. Furthermore, all of the instance variables in the object must be
serializable. However, there is little work involved in making an object serializable, since the
Serializable interface does not declare any methods. It exists only as a marker for the compiler,
546 CHAPTER 11. FILES AND NETWORKING

to tell it that the object is meant to be writable and readable. You only need to add the words
“implements Serializable” to your class definitions. Many of Java’s standard classes are
already declared to be serializable, including all the component classes and many other classes
in Swing and in the AWT. One of the programming examples in Section 11.3 uses object IO.

11.2 Files
The data and programs in a computer’s main memory survive only as long as the power is on.
For more permanent storage, computers use files, which are collections of data stored on a hard
disk, on a USB memory stick, on a CD-ROM, or on some other type of storage device. Files are
organized into directories (sometimes called folders). A directory can hold other directories, as
well as files. Both directories and files have names that are used to identify them.
Programs can read data from existing files. They can create new files and can write data
to files. In Java, such input and output can be done using streams. Human-readable
character data is read from a file using an object belonging to the class FileReader, which is
a subclass of Reader. Similarly, data is written to a file in human-readable format through an
object of type FileWriter, a subclass of Writer. For files that store data in machine format, the
appropriate I/O classes are FileInputStream and FileOutputStream. In this section, I will only
discuss character-oriented file I/O using the FileReader and FileWriter classes. However,
FileInputStream and FileOutputStream are used in an exactly parallel fashion. All these
classes are defined in the [Link] package.
It’s worth noting right at the start that applets which are downloaded over a network
connection are not allowed to access files (unless you have made a very foolish change to
your web browser’s configuration). This is a security consideration. You can download and
run an applet just by visiting a Web page with your browser. If downloaded applets had
access to the files on your computer, it would be easy to write an applet that would destroy
all the data on a computer that downloads it. To prevent such possibilities, there are a
number of things that downloaded applets are not allowed to do. Accessing files is one of
those forbidden things. Standalone programs written in Java, however, have the same
access to your files as any other program. When you write a standalone Java application,
you can use all the file operations described in this section.

11.2.1 Reading and Writing Files

The FileReader class has a constructor which takes the name of a file as a parameter and
creates an input stream that can be used for reading from that file. This constructor will
throw an exception of type FileNotFoundException if the file doesn’t exist. It requires
mandatory exception handling, so you have to call the constructor in a try..catch
statement (or inside a routine that is declared to throw the exception). For example, suppose
you have a file named “[Link]”, and you want your program to read data from that file.
You could do the following to create an input stream for the file:
FileReader data; // (Declare the variable before the
try statement, or else the variable
is local to the try block and you won’t
be able to use it later in the program.)
try {
data = new FileReader("[Link]"); // create the stream
11.2. FILES 547

}
catch (FileNotFoundException e) {
... // do something to handle the error---maybe, end the program
}

The FileNotFoundException class is a subclass of IOException, so it would be

acceptable to catch IOExceptions in the above try...catch statement. More generally,
just about any error that can occur during input/output operations can be caught by a
catch clause that handles IOException.
Once you have successfully created a FileReader, you can start reading data from it. But
since FileReaders have only the primitive input methods inherited from the basic Reader
class, you will probably want to wrap your FileReader in a Scanner, in a TextReader, or in
some other wrapper class. (The TextReader class is not a standard part of Java; it is
described in Subsection 11.1.4. Scanner is discussed in Subsection 11.1.5.) To create a
TextReader for reading from a file named [Link], you could say:
TextReader data;
try {
data = new TextReader( new FileReader("[Link]") );
}
catch (FileNotFoundException e) {
... // handle the exception
}

Once you have a TextReader named data, you can read from it using such methods as
[Link]() and [Link](), exactly as you would from any other TextReader.
Working with output files is no more difficult than this. You simply create an object belonging
to the class FileWriter. You will probably want to wrap this output stream in an object of type
PrintWriter. For example, suppose you want to write data to a file named “[Link]”. Since
the constructor for FileWriter can throw an exception of type IOException, you should use
try..catch statement:
PrintWriter result;
try {
result = new PrintWriter(new FileWriter("[Link]"));
}
catch (IOException e) {
... // handle the exception
}

If no file named [Link] exists, a new file will be created. If the file already exists,
then the current contents of the file will be erased and replaced with the data that your
program writes to the file. This will be done without any warning. To avoid overwriting a file
that already exists, you can check whether a file of the same name already exists before
trying to create the stream, as discussed later in this section. An IOException might occur in
the PrintWriter constructor if, for example, you are trying to create a file on a disk that is
“write-protected,” meaning that it cannot be modified.
After you are finished using a file, it’s a good idea to close the file, to tell the operating
system that you are finished using it. You can close a file by calling the close() method of the
associated stream. Once a file has been closed, it is no longer possible to read data from it or
write data to it, unless you open it again as a new stream. (Note that for most stream
548 CHAPTER 11. FILES AND NETWORKING

classes, the close() method can throw an IOException, which must be handled; however,
both PrintWriter and TextReader override this method so that it cannot throw such exceptions.) If
you forget to close a file, the file will ordinarily be closed automatically when the program
terminates or when the file object is garbage collected, but in the case of an output file, some of
the data that has been written to the file might be lost. This can occur because data that is
written to a file can be buffered ; that is, the data is not sent immediately to the file but is
retained in main memory (in a “buffer”) until a larger chunk of data is ready to be written. This is
done for efficiency. The close() method of an output stream will cause all the data in the
buffer to be sent to the file. Every output stream also has a flush() method that can be called
to force any data in the buffer to be written to the file without closing the file.
As a complete example, here is a program that will read numbers from a file named
[Link], and will then write out the same numbers in reverse order to another file named
[Link]. It is assumed that [Link] contains only one number on each line.
Exception-handling is used to check for problems along the way. Although the application is
not a particularly useful one, this program demonstrates the basics of working with files. (By
the way, at the end of this program, you’ll find our first useful example of a finally clause
in a try statement. When the computer executes a try statement, the commands in its
finally clause are guaranteed to be executed, no matter what.)
import [Link].*;
import [Link];
/**
Reads numbers from a file named [Link] and writes them to a file
named [Link] in reverse order. The input file should contain
exactly one real number per line.
*/
public class ReverseFile {
public static void main(String[] args) {
TextReader data; // Character input stream for reading data.
PrintWriter result; // Character output stream for writing data.
ArrayList<Double> numbers; // An ArrayList for holding the data.

numbers = new ArrayList<Double>();

try { // Create the input stream.
data = new TextReader(new FileReader("[Link]"));
}
catch (FileNotFoundException e)
{ [Link]("Can’t find file [Link]!");
return; // End the program by returning from main().
}
try { // Create the output stream.
result = new PrintWriter(new FileWriter("[Link]"));
}
catch (IOException e) {
[Link]("Can’t open file [Link]!");
[Link]("Error: " + e);
[Link](); // Close the input file.
return; // End the program.
}
11.2. FILES 549

try {
// Read numbers from the input file, adding them to the ArrayList.

while ( [Link]() == false ) { // Read until end-

of-file. double inputNumber =
[Link](); [Link]( inputNumber );

}
// Output the numbers in reverse order.
for (int i = [Link]()-1; i >= 0; i--)
[Link]([Link](i));
[Link]("Done!");
}
catch (IOException e) {
Some problem reading the data from the input file.
[Link]("Input Error: " + [Link]());
}
finally {
Finish by closing the files, whatever else may have
happened. [Link]();
[Link]();
}

} // end of main()
} // end of class

11.2.2 Files and Directories

The subject of file names is actually more complicated than I’ve let on so far. To fully specify
a file, you have to give both the name of the file and the name of the directory where that file
is located. A simple file name like “[Link]” or “[Link]” is taken to refer to a file in a
directory that is called the current directory (also known as the “default directory” or
“working directory”). The current directory is not a permanent thing. It can be changed by the
user or by a program. Files not in the current directory must be referred to by a path name,
which includes both the name of the file and information about the directory where it can be
found.
To complicate matters even further, there are two types of path names, absolute path
names and relative path names. An absolute path name uniquely identifies one file among
all the files available to the computer. It contains full information about which directory the
file is in and what the file’s name is. A relative path name tells the computer how to locate
the file starting from the current directory.
Unfortunately, the syntax for file names and path names varies somewhat from one type
of computer to another. Here are some examples:
[Link] — on any computer, this would be a file named “[Link]” in the current
directory.
/home/eck/java/examples/[Link] — This is an absolute path name in a UNIX
op-erating system, including Linux and Mac OS X. It refers to a file named [Link] in a
directory named examples, which is in turn in a directory named java, . . . .
550 CHAPTER 11. FILES AND NETWORKING

C:\eck\java\examples\[Link] — An absolute path name on a Windows computer.

Hard Drive:java:examples:[Link] — Assuming that “Hard Drive” is the name

of a disk drive, this would be an absolute path name on a computer using a classic
Macintosh operating system such as Mac OS 9.
examples/[Link] — a relative path name under UNIX. “Examples” is the name of a
directory that is contained within the current directory, and [Link] is a file in that direc-
tory. The corresponding relative path name for Windows would be examples\[Link].
../examples/[Link] — a relative path name in UNIX that means “go to the
directory that contains the current directory, then go into a directory named examples
inside that directory, and look there for a file named [Link].” In general, “..” means
“go up one directory.”

It’s reasonably safe to say, though, that if you stick to using simple file names only, and if
the files are stored in the same directory with the program that will use them, then you will
be OK. Later in this section, we’ll look at a convenient way of letting the user specify a file in
a GUI program, which allows you to avoid the issue of path names altogether.
It is possible for a Java program to find out the absolute path names for two important
directories, the current directory and the user’s home directory. The names of these
directories are system properties, and they can be read using the function calls:

[Link]("[Link]") — returns the absolute path name of the

current directory as a String.
[Link]("[Link]") — returns the absolute path name of the
user’s home directory as a String.

To avoid some of the problems caused by differences in path names between platforms,
Java has the class [Link]. An object belonging to this class represents a file. More
precisely, an object of type File represents a file name rather than a file as such. The file to
which the name refers might or might not exist. Directories are treated in the same way as files,
so a File object can represent a directory just as easily as it can represent a file.
A File object has a constructor, new File(String), that creates a File object from a
path name. The name can be a simple name, a relative path, or an absolute path. For
example, new File("[Link]") creates a File object that refers to a file named
[Link], in the current directory. Another constructor, new File(File,String), has
two parameters. The first is a File object that refers to the directory that contains the file. The
second can be the name of the file or a relative path from the directory to the file.
File objects contain several useful instance methods. Assuming that file is a variable
of type File, here are some of the methods that are available:

[Link]() — This boolean-valued function returns true if the file named by the
File object already exists. You can use this method if you want to avoid overwriting the
contents of an existing file when you create a new FileWriter.
[Link]() — This boolean-valued function returns true if the File object
refers to a directory. It returns false if it refers to a regular file or if no file with the
given name exists.
[Link]() — Deletes the file, if it exists. Returns a boolean value to indicate whether
the file was successfully deleted.
11.2. FILES 551

[Link]() — If the File object refers to a directory, this function returns an array
of type String[] containing the names of the files in that directory. Otherwise, it
returns null.

Here, for example, is a program that will list the names of all the files in a directory specified
by the user. Just for fun, I have used a Scanner (Subsection 11.1.5) to read the user’s input:
import [Link];
import [Link];

/**
This program lists the files in a directory specified by
the user. The user is asked to type in a directory name.
If the name entered by the user is not a directory, a
message is printed and the program ends.
*/
public class DirectoryList {

public static void main(String[] args) {

String directoryName; // Directory name entered by the user.

File directory; // File object referring to the directory.
String[] files; // Array of file names in the directory.
Scanner scanner; // For reading a line of input from the user.

scanner = new Scanner([Link]); // scanner reads from standard

input.

[Link]("Enter a directory name: ");

directoryName = [Link]().trim();
directory = new File(directoryName);

if ([Link]() == false) {
if ([Link]() == false)
[Link]("There is no such
directory!"); else
[Link]("That file is not a directory.");
}
else {
files = [Link]();
[Link]("Files in directory \"" + directory
+ "\":"); for (int i = 0; i < [Link]; i++)
[Link](" " + files[i]);
}

} // end main()

} // end class DirectoryList

All the classes that are used for reading data from files and writing data to files have
constructors that take a File object as a parameter. For example, if file is a variable of
type File, and you want to read character data from that file, you can create a FileReader to
do so by saying new FileReader(file). If you want to use a TextReader to read from
the file, you could say:
552 CHAPTER 11. FILES AND NETWORKING

TextReader data;
try {
data = new TextReader( new FileReader(file) );
}
catch (FileNotFoundException e) {
... // handle the exception
}

11.2.3 File Dialog Boxes

In many programs, you want the user to be able to select the file that is going to be used for
input or output. If your program lets the user type in the file name, you will just have to
assume that the user understands how to work with files and directories. But in a graphical
user interface, the user expects to be able to select files using a file dialog box , which is a
window that a program can open when it wants the user to select a file for input or output.
Swing includes a platform-independent technique for using file dialog boxes in the form of a
class called JFileChooser. This class is part of the package [Link]. We looked at
using some basic dialog boxes in Subsection 6.8.2. File dialog boxes are similar to those,
but are a little more complicated to use.
A file dialog box shows the user a list of files and sub-directories in some directory, and
makes it easy for the user to specify a file in that directory. The user can also navigate easily
from one directory to another. The most common constructor for JFileChooser has no
parameter and sets the starting directory in the dialog box to be the user’s home directory.
There are also constructors that specify the starting directory explicitly:
new JFileChooser( File startDirectory )
new JFileChooser( String pathToStartDirectory )

Constructing a JFileChooser object does not make the dialog box appear on the screen. You
have to call a method in the object to do that. There are two di fferent methods that can be used
because there are two types of file dialog: An open file dialog allows the user to specify an
existing file to be opened for reading data into the program; a save file dialog lets the user
specify a file, which might or might not already exist, to be opened for writing data from the
program. File dialogs of these two types are opened using the showOpenDialog and
showSaveDialog methods. These methods make the dialog box appear on the screen; the
methods do not end until the user selects a file or cancels the dialog.
A file dialog box always has a parent , another component which is associated with the dialog
box. The parent is specified as a parameter to the showOpenDialog or showSaveDialog
methods. The parent is a GUI component, and can often be specified as “this” in prac-tice, since file
dialogs are often used in instance methods of GUI component classes. (The parameter can also be
null, in which case an invisible component is created to be used as the parent.) Both
showOpenDialog and showSaveDialog have a return value, which will be one of the constants
[Link] OPTION, [Link] OPTION, or
[Link] OPTION. If the return value is [Link] OPTION, then
the user has selected a file. If the return value is something else, then the user did not select a file.
The user might have clicked a “Cancel” button, for example. You should always check the return
value, to make sure that the user has, in fact, selected a file. If that is the case, then you can find out
which file was selected by calling the JFileChooser ’s getSelectedFile() method, which returns
an object of type File that represents the selected file.
11.2. FILES 553

Putting all this together, we can look at a typical subroutine that reads data from a file
that is selected using a JFileChooser :
public void readFile() {
if (fileDialog == null) // (fileDialog is an instance variable)
fileDialog = new JFileChooser();
[Link]("Select File for Reading");
[Link](null); // No file is initially selected.
int option = [Link](this);
(Using "this" as a parameter to showOpenDialog() assumes that the
readFile() method is an instance method in a GUI component
class.) if (option != [Link] OPTION)
return; // User canceled or clicked the dialog’s close
box. File selectedFile = [Link]();
TextReader in; // (or use some other wrapper
class) try {
FileReader stream = new FileReader(selectedFile); // (or a
FileInputStream) in = new TextReader( stream );
}
catch (Exception e)
{ [Link](this
,
"Sorry, but an error occurred while trying to open the
file:\n" + e); return;
}
try {
.
. // Read and process the data from the input stream, in.
.
[Link]();
}
catch (Exception e)
{ [Link](this
,
"Sorry, but an error occurred while trying to read the data:\n" + e);
}
}

One fine point here is that the variable fileDialog is an instance variable of type
JFileChoser. This allows the file dialog to continue to exist between calls to readFile().
The main effect of this is that the dialog box will keep the same selected directory from one
call of readFile() to the next. When the dialog reappears, it will show the same directory
that the user selected the previous time it appeared. This is probably what the user expects.
Note that it’s common to do some configuration of a JFileChooser before
calling showOpenDialog or showSaveDialog. For example, the instance method
setDialogTitle(String) is used to specify a title to appear in the title bar of the
window. And setSelectedFile(File) is used to set the file that is selected in the
dialog box when it appears. This can be used to provide a default file choice for the user. In
the readFile() method, above, [Link](null) specifies
that no file is pre-selected when the dialog box appears.
Writing data to a file is similar, but it’s a good idea to add a check to determine whether
the output file that is selected by the user already exists. In that case, ask the user whether
to replace the file. Here is a typical subroutine for writing to a user-selected file:
554 CHAPTER 11. FILES AND NETWORKING

public void writeFile() {

if (fileDialog == null)
fileDialog = new JFileChooser(); // (fileDialog is an instance
variable) File selectedFile = new File("(default file name)");
[Link](selectedFile); // Specify a default
file name. [Link]("Select File for Writing");
int option = [Link](this);
if (option != [Link] OPTION)
return; // User canceled or clicked the dialog’s close box.
selectedFile = [Link]();
if ([Link]()) { // Ask the user whether to replace
the file. int response = [Link]( this,
"The file \"" + [Link]()
"\" already exists.\nDo you want to replace
it?", "Confirm Save",
[Link] NO OPTION,
[Link] MESSAGE );
if (response == [Link] OPTION)
return; // User does not want to replace the file.
}
PrintWriter out; // (or use some other wrapper class)
try {
FileWriter stream = new FileWriter(selectedFile); // (or
FileOutputStream) out = new PrintWriter( stream );
}
catch (Exception e) {
[Link](this,
"Sorry, but an error occurred while trying to open the
file:\n" + e); return;
}
try {
.
// Write data to the output stream, out.

[Link]();
if ([Link]()) // (need to check for errors in PrintWriter)
throw new IOException("Error check failed.");
}
catch (Exception e) {
[Link](this,
"Sorry, but an error occurred while trying to write the data:\n" + e);
}
}

The readFile() and writeFile() routines presented here can be used, with just a
few changes, when you need to read or write a file in a GUI program. We’ll look at some
more complete examples of using files and file dialogs in the next section.

11.3 Programming With Files

In this section, we look at several programming examples that work with files, using the
techniques that were introduced in Section 11.1 and Section 11.2.
11.3. PROGRAMMING WITH FILES 555

11.3.1 Copying a File

As a first example, we look at a simple command-line program that can make a copy of a
file. Copying a file is a pretty common operation, and every operating system already has a
command for doing it. However, it is still instructive to look at a Java program that does the
same thing. Many file operations are similar to copying a file, except that the data from the
input file is processed in some way before it is written to the output file. All such operations
can be done by programs with the same general form.
Since the program should be able to copy any file, we can’t assume that the data in the
file is in human-readable form. So, we have to use InputStream and OutputStream to
operate on the file rather than Reader and Writer. The program simply copies all the data
from the InputStream to the OutputStream, one byte at a time. If source is the variable that
refers to the InputStream, then the function [Link]() can be used to read one
byte. This function returns the value -1 when all the bytes in the input file have been read.
Similarly, if copy refers to the OutputStream, then [Link](b) writes one byte to the
output file. So, the heart of the program is a simple while loop. As usual, the I/O
operations can throw exceptions, so this must be done in a try..catch statement:
while(true) {
int data = [Link]();
if (data < 0)
break;
[Link](data);
}

The file-copy command in an operating system such as UNIX uses command line argu-
ments to specify the names of the files. For example, the user might say “copy [Link]
[Link]” to copy an existing file, [Link], to a file named [Link].
Command-line arguments can also be used in Java programs. The command line arguments are
stored in the array of strings, args, which is a parameter to the main() routine. The program
can retrieve the command-line arguments from this array. (See Subsection 7.2.3.) For example,
if the pro-gram is named CopyFile and if the user runs the program with the command “java
CopyFile [Link] [Link]”, then in the program, args[0] will be the string
"[Link]" and args[1] will be the string "[Link]". The value of [Link]
tells the program how many command-line arguments were specified by the user.
My CopyFile program gets the names of the files from the command-line arguments. It
prints an error message and exits if the file names are not specified. To add a little interest, there
are two ways to use the program. The command line can simply specify the two file names. In
that case, if the output file already exists, the program will print an error message and end. This
is to make sure that the user won’t accidently overwrite an important file. However, if the
command line has three arguments, then the first argument must be “-f” while the second and
third arguments are file names. The -f is a command-line option , which is meant to modify
the behavior of the program. The program interprets the -f to mean that it’s OK to overwrite an
existing program. (The “f” stands for “force,” since it forces the file to be copied in spite of what
would otherwise have been considered an error.) You can see in the source code how the
command line arguments are interpreted by the program:
import [Link].*;
/**
* Makes a copy of a file. The original file and the name of the
556 CHAPTER 11. FILES AND NETWORKING

copy must be given as command-line arguments. In addition, the

first command-line argument can be "-f"; if present, the program
will overwrite an existing file; if not, the program will report
an error and end if the output file already exists. The number
of bytes that are copied is reported.
*/
public class CopyFile {
public static void main(String[] args) {
String sourceName; // Name of the source file,
as specified on the command line.
String copyName; // Name of the copy,
as specified on the command line.
InputStream source; // Stream for reading from the source file.
OutputStream copy; // Stream for writing the copy. boolean
force; // This is set to true if the "-f" option
is specified on the command line.
int byteCount; // Number of bytes copied from the source file.

/* Get file names from the command line and check for
the presence of the -f option. If the command line
is not one of the two possible legal forms, print
an error message and end this program. */

if ([Link] == 3 && args[0].equalsIgnoreCase("-

f")) { sourceName = args[1];
copyName = args[2];
force = true;
}
else if ([Link] == 2) {
sourceName = args[0];
copyName = args[1];
force = false;
}
else {
[Link](
"Usage: java CopyFile <source-file> <copy-
name>"); [Link](
" or java CopyFile -f <source-file> <copy-name>");
return;
}
/* Create the input stream. If an error occurs, end the program. */

try {
source = new FileInputStream(sourceName);
}
catch (FileNotFoundException e) {
[Link]("Can’t find file \"" + sourceName + "\".");
return;
}

/* If the output file already exists and the -f option was not
specified, print an error message and end the program. */

File file = new File(copyName);

11.3. PROGRAMMING WITH FILES 557

if ([Link]() && force == false) {

[Link](
"Output file exists. Use the -f option to replace
it."); return;
}
/* Create the output stream. If an error occurs, end the
program. */

try {
copy = new FileOutputStream(copyName);
}
catch (IOException e) {
[Link]("Can’t open output file \"" + copyName
+ "\"."); return;
}
/* Copy one byte at a time from the input stream to the output
stream, ending when the read() method returns -1 (which is
the signal that the end of the stream has been reached).
If any error occurs, print an error message. Also print a
message if the file has been copied successfully. */
byteCount = 0;
try {
while (true) {
int data = [Link]();
if (data < 0)
break;
[Link](data);
byteCount++;
}
[Link]();
[Link]();
[Link]("Successfully copied " + byteCount + " bytes.");
}
catch (Exception e) {
[Link]("Error occurred while copying. "
byteCount + " bytes copied.");
[Link]("Error: " + e);
}
} // end main()

} // end class CopyFile

11.3.2 Persistent Data

Once a program ends, any data that was stored in variables and objects in the program is
gone. In many cases, it would be useful to have some of that data stick around so that it will
be available when the program is run again. The problem is, how to make the data
persistent between runs of the program? The answer, of course, is to store the data in a file
(or, for some applications, in a database—but the data in a database is itself stored in files).
Consider a “phone book” program that allows the user to keep track of a list of names and
associated phone numbers. The program would make no sense at all if the user had to create
558 CHAPTER 11. FILES AND NETWORKING

the whole list from scratch each time the program is run. It would make more sense to think
of the phone book as a persistent collection of data, and to think of the program as an
interface to that collection of data. The program would allow the user to look up names in
the phone book and to add new entries. Any changes that are made should be preserved
after the program ends.
The sample program [Link] is a very simple implementation of this
idea. It is meant only as an example of file use; the phone book that it implements is a “toy”
version that is not meant to taken seriously. This program stores the phone book data in a file
named “.phone book demo” in the user’s home directory. To find the user’s home directory, it
uses the [Link]() method that was mentioned in Subsection 11.2.2. When
the program starts, it checks whether the file already exists. If it does, it should contain the user’s
phone book, which was saved in a previous run of the program, so the data from the file is read
and entered into a TreeMap named phoneBook that represents the phone book while the
program is running. (See Subsection 10.3.1.) In order to store the phone book in a file, some
decision must be made about how the data in the phone book will be represented. For this
example, I chose a simple representation in which each line of the file contains one entry
consisting of a name and the associated phone number. A percent sign (’%’) separates the
name from the number. The following code at the beginning of the program will read the phone
book data file, if it exists and has the correct format:
File userHomeDirectory = new File( [Link]("[Link]") );
File dataFile = new File( userHomeDirectory, ".phone book data" );

if ( ! [Link]() ) {
[Link]("No phone book data file found.");
[Link]("A new one will be created.");
[Link]("File name: " + [Link]());
}
else {
[Link]("Reading phone book
data..."); try {
Scanner scanner = new Scanner( dataFile );
while ([Link]()) {
Read one line from the file, containing one name/number
pair. String phoneEntry = [Link]();
int separatorPosition = [Link](’%’);
if (separatorPosition == -1)
throw new IOException("File is not a phonebook data
file."); name = [Link](0, separatorPosition);
number = [Link](separatorPosition+1);
[Link](name,number);
}
}
catch (IOException e) {
[Link]("Error in phone book data file.");
[Link]("File name: " +
[Link]()); [Link]("This
program cannot continue."); [Link](1);
}
}
11.3. PROGRAMMING WITH FILES 559

The program then lets the user do various things with the phone book, including making
modifications. Any changes that are made are made only to the TreeMap that holds the
data. When the program ends, the phone book data is written to the file (if any changes
have been made while the program was running), using the following code:
if (changed) {
[Link]("Saving phone directory changes to
file " + [Link]() + " ...");
PrintWriter out;
try {
out = new PrintWriter( new FileWriter(dataFile) );
}
catch (IOException e) {
[Link]("ERROR: Can’t open data file for
output."); return;
}
for ( [Link]<String,String> entry : [Link]() )
[Link]([Link]() + "%" + [Link]() );
[Link]();
if ([Link]())
[Link]("ERROR: Some error occurred while writing
data file."); else
[Link]("Done.");
}

The net effect of this is that all the data, including the changes, will be there the next time
the program is run. I’ve shown you all the file-handling code from the program. If you would
like to see the rest of the program, including an example of using a Scanner to read integer-
valued responses from the user, see the source code file, [Link].

11.3.3 Files in GUI Programs

The previous examples in this section use a command-line interface, but graphical user
interface programs can also manipulate files. Programs typically have an “Open” command
that reads the data from a file and displays it in a window and a “Save” command that writes
the data from the window into a file. We can illustrate this in Java with a simple text editor
program, [Link]. The window for this program uses a JTextArea component to
display some text that the user can edit. It also has a menu bar, with a “File” menu that
includes “Open” and “Save” commands. These commands are implemented using the
techniques for reading and writing files that were covered in Section 11.2.
When the user selects the Open command from the File menu in the TrivialEdit
program, the program pops up a file dialog box where the user specifies the file. It is assumed
that the file is a text file. A limit of 10000 characters is put on the size of the file, since a
JTextArea is not meant for editing large amounts of text. The program reads the text contained
in the specified file, and sets that text to be the content of the JTextArea. In this case, I decided
to use a BufferedReader to read the file line-by-line. The program also sets the title bar of the
window to show the name of the file that was opened. All this is done in the following method,
which is just a variation of the readFile() method presented in Section 11.2:
/**
Carry out the Open command by letting the user specify a file to be opened
and reading up to 10000 characters from that file. If the file is read
560 CHAPTER 11. FILES AND NETWORKING

successfully and is not too long, then the text from the file replaces the
text in the JTextArea.
*/
public void doOpen() {
if (fileDialog == null)
fileDialog = new JFileChooser();
[Link]("Select File to be Opened");
[Link](null); // No file is initially selected.
int option = [Link](this);
if (option != [Link] OPTION)
return; // User canceled or clicked the dialog’s close box.
File selectedFile = [Link]();
BufferedReader in;
try {
FileReader stream = new FileReader(selectedFile);
in = new BufferedReader( stream );
}
catch (Exception e) {
[Link](this,
"Sorry, but an error occurred while trying to open the
file:\n" + e); return;
}
try {
String input = "";
while (true) {
String lineFromFile = [Link]();
if (lineFromFile == null)
break; // End-of-file has been reached.
input = input + lineFromFile + ’\n’;
if ([Link]() > 10000)
throw new IOException("Input file is too large for this program.");
}
[Link]();
[Link](input);
editFile = selectedFile;
setTitle("TrivialEdit: " + [Link]());
}
catch (Exception e) {
[Link](this,
"Sorry, but an error occurred while trying to read the data:\n" + e);
}
}

In this program, the instance variable editFile is used to keep track of the file that is
currently being edited, if any, and the setTitle() method (from class JFrame) is used to
set the title of the window to show the name of the file.
Similarly, the response to the Save command is a minor variation on the writeFile()
method from Section 11.2. I will not repeat it here. If you would like to see the entire
program, you will find the source code in the file [Link].
11.3. PROGRAMMING WITH FILES 561

11.3.4 Storing Objects in Files

Whenever data is stored in files, some definite format must be adopted for representing the data.
As long as the output routine that writes the data and the input routine that reads the data use
the same format, the files will be usable. However, as usual, correctness is not the end of the
story. The representation that is used for data in files should also be robust. (See Section 8.1) To
see what this means, we will look at several different ways of representing the same data. This
example builds on the example [Link] from Subsection 7.3.4. In that program, the
user could use the mouse to draw simple sketches. Now, we will add file input/output capabilities
to that program. This will allow the user to save a sketch to a file and later read the sketch back
from the file into the program so that the user can continue to work on the sketch. The basic
requirement is that all relevant data about the sketch must be saved in the file, so that the sketch
can be exactly restored when the file is read by the program.
The new version of the program can be found in the source code file SimplePaintWith-
[Link]. A “File” menu has been added to the new version. It contains two sets of
Save/Open commands, one for saving and reloading sketch data in text form and one for
data in binary form. We will consider both possibilities here, in some detail.
The data for a sketch consists of the background color of the picture and a list of the
curves that were drawn by the user. A curve consists of a list of Points. (Point is a standard
class in package [Link]; a Point pt has instance variables x and y of type int that
represent the coordinates of a point on the xy-plane.) Each curve can be a di fferent color.
Furthermore, a curve can be “symmetric,” which means that in addition to the curve itself,
the horizontal and vertical reflections of the curve are also drawn.) The data for each curve
is stored in an object of type CurveData, which is defined in the program as:
/**
An object of type CurveData represents the data required to redraw one
of the curves that have been sketched by the user.
*/
private static class CurveData implements Serializable
{ Color color; // The color of the curve.
boolean symmetric; // Are horizontal and vertical reflections
also drawn? ArrayList<Point> points; // The points on the curve.
}

Note that this class has been declared to “implement Serializable”. This allows objects of
type CurveData to be written in binary form to an ObjectOutputStream. See Subsection 11.1.6.
Let’s think about how the data for a sketch could be saved to an ObjectOuputStream. The
sketch is displayed on the screen in an object of type SimplePaintPanel, which is a subclass of
JPanel. All the data needed for the sketch is stored in instance variables of that object. One
possibility would be to simply write the entire SimplePaintPanel component as a single object to
the stream. The could be done in a method in the SimplePaintPanel class with the statement
[Link](this);

where outputStream is the ObjectOutputStream and “this” refers to the

SimplePaintPanel itself. This statement saves the entire current state of the panel. To read
the data back into the program, you would create an ObjectInputStream for reading the
object from the file, and you would retrieve the object from the file with the statement
SimplePaintPanel newPanel = (SimplePaintPanel)[Link]();
562 CHAPTER 11. FILES AND NETWORKING

where in is the ObjectInputStream. Note that the type-cast is necessary because the
method [Link]() returns a value of type Object. (To get the saved sketch to
appear on the screen, the newPanel must replace the current content pane in the
program’s window; further-more, the menu bar of the window must be replaced, because
the menus are associated with a particular SimplePaintPanel object.)
It might look tempting to be able to save data and restore it with a single command, but
in this case, it’s not a good idea. The main problem with doing things this way is that the
serialized form of objects that represent Swing components can change from one
version of Java to the next. This means that data files that contain serialized components
such as a SimplePaintPanel might become unusable in the future, and the data that they
contain will be effectively lost. This is an important consideration for any serious application.
Taking this into consideration, my program uses a different format when it creates a binary
file. The data written to the file consists of (1) the background color of the sketch, (2) the number
of curves in the sketch, and (3) all the CurveData objects that describe the individual curves. The
method that saves the data is similar to the writeFile() method from Subsec-tion 11.2.3.
Here is the complete doSaveAsBinary() from SimplePaintWithFiles, with the changes
from the generic readFile() method shown in italic:
/**
Save the user’s sketch to a file in binary form as serialized
objects, using an ObjectOutputStream. Files created by this method
can be read back into the program using the doOpenAsBinary()
method. */
private void doSaveAsBinary() {
if (fileDialog == null)
fileDialog = new JFileChooser();
File selectedFile; //Initially selected file name in the dialog.
if (editFile == null)
selectedFile = new
File("[Link]"); else
selectedFile = new File([Link]());
[Link](selectedFile);
[Link]("Select File to be Saved");
int option = [Link](this); if
(option != [Link] OPTION)
return; // User canceled or clicked the dialog’s close box.
selectedFile = [Link]();
if ([Link]()) { // Ask the user whether to replace
the file. int response = [Link]( this,
"The file \"" + [Link]()
"\" already exists.\nDo you want to replace
it?", "Confirm Save",
[Link] NO OPTION,
[Link] MESSAGE );
if (response == [Link] OPTION)
return; // User does not want to replace the file.
}
ObjectOutputStream out;
try {
FileOutputStream stream = new FileOutputStream(selectedFile);
out = new ObjectOutputStream( stream );
}
11.3. PROGRAMMING WITH FILES 563

catch (Exception e) {
[Link](this,
"Sorry, but an error occurred while trying to open the
file:\n" + e); return;
}
try {
[Link](getBackground());
[Link]([Link]());
for ( CurveData curve : curves )
[Link](curve);
[Link]();
editFile = selectedFile; setTitle("SimplePaint:
" + [Link]());
}
catch (Exception e) {
[Link](this,
"Sorry, but an error occurred while trying to write the text:\n" + e);
}
}

The heart of this method consists of the following lines, which do the actual writing of the
data to the file:
[Link](getBackground()); // Writes the panel’s background color.
[Link]([Link]()); // Writes the number of curves.
for ( CurveData curve : curves ) // For each curve...
[Link](curve); // write the corresponding CurveData object.

The doOpenAsBinary() method, which is responsible for reading sketch data back into the
program from an ObjectInputStream, has to read exactly the same data that was written, in the
same order, and use that data to build the data structures that will represent the sketch while the
program is running. Once the data structures have been successfully built, they replace the data
structures that describe the previous contents of the panel. This is done as follows:
/* Read data from the file into local variables */

Color newBackgroundColor = (Color)[Link]();

int curveCount = [Link]();
ArrayList<CurveData> newCurves = new ArrayList<CurveData>();
for (int i = 0; i < curveCount; i++)
[Link]( (CurveData)[Link]() );
[Link]();

/* Copy the data that was read into the instance variables that
describe the sketch that is displayed by the program.*/

curves = newCurves;
setBackground(newBackgroundColor);
repaint();

This is only a little harder than saving the entire SimplePaintPanel component to the file in
one step, and it is more robust since the serialized form of the objects that are saved to file is
unlikely to change in the future. But it still suffers from the general fragility of binary data.
∗∗∗
564 CHAPTER 11. FILES AND NETWORKING

An alternative to using object streams is to save the data in human-readable, character

form. The basic idea is the same: All the data necessary to reconstitute a sketch must be
saved to the output file in some definite format. The method that reads the file must follow
exactly the same format as it reads the data, and it must use the data to rebuild the data
structures that represent the sketch while the program is running.
When writing character data, we can’t write out entire objects in one step. All the data
has to be expressed, ultimately, in terms of simple data values such as strings and primitive
type values. A color, for example, can be expressed in terms of three integers giving the red,
green, and blue components of the color. The first (not very good) idea that comes to mind
might be to just dump all the necessary data, in some definite order, into the file. Suppose
that out is a PrintWriter that is used to write to the file. We could then say:
Color bgColor = getBackground(); // Write the background color to the file.
[Link]( [Link]() );
[Link]( [Link]() );
[Link]( [Link]() );
[Link]( [Link]() ); // Write the number of curves.

for ( CurveData curve : curves ) { // For each curve, write...

[Link]( [Link]() ); // the color of the curve
[Link]( [Link]() );
[Link]( [Link]() );
[Link]( [Link] ? 0 : 1 ); // the curve’s symmetry property
[Link]( [Link]() ); // the number of points on curve
for ( Point pt : [Link] ) { // the coordinates of each point
[Link]( pt.x );
[Link]( pt.y );
}
}

This works in the sense that the file-reading method can read the data and rebuild the data
structures. Suppose that the input method uses a Scanner named scanner to read the
data file (see Subsection 11.1.5). Then it could say:
Color newBackgroundColor; // Read the background Color.
int red = [Link]();
int green = [Link](); int blue =
[Link](); newBackgroundColor =
new Color(red,green,blue);
ArrayList<CurveData> newCurves = new ArrayList<CurveData>();

int curveCount = [Link](); for The number of curves to be read.

(int i = 0; i < curveCount; i++) {
CurveData curve = new CurveData();
int r = [Link](); Read the curve’s color.
int g = [Link](); int
b = [Link]();
[Link] = new Color(r,g,b);
int symmetryCode = [Link](); // Read the curve’s symmetry property.
[Link] = (symmetryCode == 1);
[Link] = new ArrayList<Point>();
int pointCount = [Link](); // The number of points on
this curve. for (int j = 0; j < pointCount; j++) {
11.3. PROGRAMMING WITH FILES 565

int x = [Link](); // Read the coordinates of the point.

int y = [Link]();
[Link](new Point(x,y));
}
[Link](curve);
}

curves = newCurves; // Install the new data structures.

setBackground(newBackgroundColor);

Note how every piece of data that was written by the output method is read, in the same order,
by the input method. While this does work, the data file is just a long string of numbers. It doesn’t
make much more sense to a human reader than a binary-format file would. Furthermore, it is still
fragile in the sense that any small change made to the data representation in the program, such
as adding a new property to curves, will render the data file useless (unless you happen to
remember exactly which version of the program created the file).
So, I decided to use a more complex, more meaningful data format for the text files
created by my program. Instead of just writing numbers, I add words to say what the
numbers mean. Here is a short but complete data file for the program; just by looking at it,
you can probably tell what is going on:
SimplePaintWithFiles 1.0
background 110 110 180
startcurve
color 255 255 255
symmetry true
coords 10 10
coords 200 250
coords 300 10
endcurve
startcurve
color 0 255 255
symmetry false
coords 10 400
coords 590 400
endcurve

The first line of the file identifies the program that created the data file; when the user
selects a file to be opened, the program can check the first word in the file as a simple test
to make sure the the file is of the correct type. The first line also contains a version number,
1.0. If the file format changes in a later version of the program, a higher version number
would be used; if the program sees a version number of 1.2 in a file, but the program only
understands version 1.0, the program can explain to the user that a newer version of the
program is needed to read the data file.
The second line of the file specifies the background color of the picture. The three integers
specify the red, green, and blue components of the color. The word “background” at the
beginning of the line makes the meaning clear. The remainder of the file consists of data for the
curves that appear in the picture. The data for each curve is clearly marked with “startcurve” and
“endcurve.” The data consists of the color and symmetry properties of the curve and the xy-
coordinates of each point on the curve. Again, the meaning is clear. Files in this format can
easily be created or edited by hand. In fact, the data file shown above was actually created in
566 CHAPTER 11. FILES AND NETWORKING

a text editor rather than by the program. Furthermore, it’s easy to extend the format to allow
for additional options. Future versions of the program could add a “thickness” property to the
curves to make it possible to have curves that are more than one pixel wide. Shapes such
as rectangles and ovals could easily be added.
Outputting data in this format is easy. Suppose that out is a PrintWriter that is being
used to write the sketch data to a file. Then the output can be done with:
[Link]("SimplePaintWithFiles 1.0"); // Version number.
Color bgColor = getBackground();
[Link]( "background " + [Link]() + " "
+ [Link]() + " " + [Link]() );
for ( CurveData curve : curves ) {
[Link]();
[Link]("startcurve");
[Link](" color " + [Link]() + " " +
[Link]() + " " + [Link]() );
[Link]( " symmetry " + [Link] );
for ( Point pt : [Link] )
[Link]( " coords " + pt.x + " " +
pt.y ); [Link]("endcurve");
}

Reading the data is somewhat harder, since the input routine has to deal with all the
extra words in the data. In my input routine, I decided to allow some variation in the order in
which the data occurs in the file. For example, the background color can be specified at the
end of the file, instead of at the beginning. It can even be left out altogether, in which case
white will be used as the default background color. This is possible because each item of
data is labeled with a word that describes its meaning; the labels can be used to drive the
processing of the input. Here is the complete method from [Link] that
reads data files in text format. It uses a Scanner to read items from the file:
private void doOpenAsText() {
if (fileDialog == null)
fileDialog = new JFileChooser();
[Link]("Select File to be Opened");
[Link](null); // No file is initially selected.
int option = [Link](this);
if (option != [Link] OPTION)
return; // User canceled or clicked the dialog’s close box.
File selectedFile = [Link]();
Scanner scanner; // For reading from the data file.
try {
Reader stream = new BufferedReader(new
FileReader(selectedFile)); scanner = new Scanner( stream );
}
catch (Exception e) {
[Link](this,
"Sorry, but an error occurred while trying to open the
file:\n" + e); return;
}
try { // Read the contents of the file.
String programName = [Link]();
11.3. PROGRAMMING WITH FILES 567

if ( ! [Link]("SimplePaintWithFiles") )
throw new IOException("File is not a SimplePaintWithFiles data
file."); double version = [Link](); if (version >
1.0)
throw new IOException("File requires newer version of this
program."); Color newBackgroundColor = [Link];
ArrayList<CurveData> newCurves = new
ArrayList<CurveData>(); while ([Link]()) {
String itemName = [Link]();
if ([Link]("background"))
{ int red = [Link]();
int green = [Link](); int blue =
[Link](); newBackgroundColor =
new Color(red,green,blue);
}
else if ([Link]("startcurve"))
{ CurveData curve = new CurveData();
[Link] = [Link];
[Link] = false;
[Link] = new ArrayList<Point>();
itemName = [Link]();
while ( ! [Link]("endcurve") )
{ if ([Link]("color")) {
int r = [Link]();
int g = [Link]();
int b = [Link]();
[Link] = new Color(r,g,b);
}
else if ([Link]("symmetry"))
{ [Link] = [Link]();
}
else if ([Link]("coords"))
{ int x = [Link]();
int y = [Link]();
[Link]( new Point(x,y) );
}
else {
throw new Exception("Unknown term in input.");
}
itemName = [Link]();
}
[Link](curve);
}
else {
throw new Exception("Unknown term in input.");
}
}
[Link]();
setBackground(newBackgroundColor); // Install the new picture
data.
curves = newCurves;
repaint();
editFile = selectedFile; setTitle("SimplePaint:
" + [Link]());
568 CHAPTER 11. FILES AND NETWORKING

}
catch (Exception e) {
[Link](this,
"Sorry, but an error occurred while trying to read the data:\n" + e);
}
}

The main reason for this long discussion of file formats has been to get you to think
about the problem of representing complex data in a form suitable for storing the data in a
file. The same problem arises when data must be transmitted over a network. There is no
one correct solution to the problem, but some solutions are certainly better than others. In
Section 11.6, we will look at one solution to the data representation problem that has
become increasingly common.
∗∗∗
In addition to being able to save sketch data in both text form and binary form,
SimplePaintWithFiles can also save the picture itself as an image file that could be, for
example, printed or put on a web page. This is a preview of image-handling techniques that
will be covered in Chapter 12.

11.4 Networking
As far as a program is concerned, a network is just another possible source of input data, and
another place where data can be output. That does oversimplify things, because networks are
not as easy to work with as files are. But in Java, you can do network communication using input
streams and output streams, just as you can use such streams to communicate with the user or
to work with files. Nevertheless, opening a network connection between two computers is a bit
tricky, since there are two computers involved and they have to somehow agree to open a
connection. And when each computer can send data to the other, synchronizing communication
can be a problem. But the fundamentals are the same as for other forms of I/O.
One of the standard Java packages is called [Link]. This package includes several
classes that can be used for networking. Two different styles of network I/O are supported. One
of these, which is fairly high-level, is based on the World-Wide Web, and provides the sort of
network communication capability that is used by a Web browser when it downloads pages for
you to view. The main classes for this style of networking are [Link] and
[Link]. An object of type URL is an abstract representation of a Univer-
sal Resource Locator , which is an address for an HTML document or other resource on the
Web. A URLConnection represents a network connection to such a resource.
The second style of I/O, which is more general and much more important, views the
network at a lower level. It is based on the idea of a socket . A socket is used by a program
to establish a connection with another program on a network. Communication over a
network involves two sockets, one on each of the computers involved in the communication.
Java uses a class called [Link] to represent sockets that are used for network
communication. The term “socket” presumably comes from an image of physically plugging
a wire into a computer to establish a connection to a network, but it is important to
understand that a socket, as the term is used here, is simply an object belonging to the
class Socket. In particular, a program can have several sockets at the same time, each connecting it to
another program running on some other computer on the network. All these connections use the same
physical network connection.
11.4. NETWORKING 569

This section gives a brief introduction to these basic networking classes, and shows how
they relate to input and output streams.

11.4.1 URLs and URLConnections

The URL class is used to represent resources on the World-Wide Web. Every resource has
an address, which identifies it uniquely and contains enough information for a Web browser
to find the resource on the network and retrieve it. The address is called a “url” or “universal
resource locator.”
An object belonging to the URL class represents such an address. Once you have a URL
object, you can use it to open a URLConnection to the resource at that address. A url is
ordinarily specified as a string, such as “[Link] There
are also relative url’s. A relative url specifies the location of a resource relative to the location of
another url, which is called the base or context for the relative url. For example, if the context is
given by the url [Link] then the incomplete, relative url
“[Link]” would really refer to [Link]
An object of the class URL is not simply a string, but it can be constructed from a string
representation of a url. A URL object can also be constructed from another URL object,
repre-senting a context, and a string that specifies a url relative to that context. These
constructors have prototypes
public URL(String urlName) throws MalformedURLException

and
public URL(URL context, String relativeName) throws MalformedURLException

Note that these constructors will throw an exception of type MalformedURLException if the
specified strings don’t represent legal url’s. The MalformedURLException class is a subclass
of IOException, and it requires mandatory exception handling. That is, you must call the
constructor inside a try..catch statement that handles the exception or in a subroutine
that is declared to throw the exception.
The second constructor is especially convenient when writing applets. In an applet, two
methods are available that provide useful URL contexts. The method
getDocumentBase(), defined in the Applet and JApplet classes, returns an object of type
URL. This URL represents the location from which the HTML page that contains the applet
was downloaded. This allows the applet to go back and retrieve other files that are stored in
the same location as that document. For example,
URL url = new URL(getDocumentBase(), "[Link]");

constructs a URL that refers to a file named [Link] on the same computer and in the
same directory as the source file for the web page on which the applet is running. Another
method, getCodeBase(), returns a URL that gives the location of the applet class file
(which is not necessarily the same as the location of the document).
Once you have a valid URL object, you can call its openConnection() method to set
up a connection. This method returns a URLConnection. The URLConnection object can, in
turn, be used to create an InputStream for reading data from the resource represented by
the URL. This is done by calling its getInputStream() method. For example:
URL url = new URL(urlAddressString);
URLConnection connection = [Link]();
InputStream in = [Link]();
570 CHAPTER 11. FILES AND NETWORKING

The openConnection() and getInputStream() methods can both throw exceptions

of type IOException. Once the InputStream has been created, you can read from it in the
usual way, including wrapping it in another input steam type, such as TextReader, or using a
Scanner. Reading from the stream can, of course, generate exceptions.
One of the other useful instance methods in the URLConnection class is
getContentType(), which returns a String that describes the type of information available
from the URL. The return value can be null if the type of information is not yet known or if it is
not possi-ble to determine the type. The type might not be available until after the input stream
has been created, so you should generally call getContentType() after
getInputStream(). The string returned by getContentType() is in a format called a mime
type. Mime types include “text/plain”, “text/html”, “image/jpeg”, “image/gif”, and many others. All
mime types con-tain two parts: a general type, such as “text” or “image”, and a more specific
type within that general category, such as “html” or “gif”. If you are only interested in text data, for
example, you can check whether the string returned by getContentType() starts with “text”.
(Mime types were first introduced to describe the content of email messages. The name stands
for “Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions.” They are now used almost universally to specify the
type of information in a file or other resource.)
Let’s look at a short example that uses all this to read the data from a URL. This subroutine
opens a connection to a specified URL, checks that the type of data at the URL is text, and then
copies the text onto the screen. Many of the operations in this subroutine can throw exceptions.
They are handled by declaring that the subroutine “throws IOException” and leaving it up to
the main program to decide what to do when an error occurs.
static void readTextFromURL( String urlString ) throws IOException {

/* Open a connection to the URL, and get an

input stream for reading data from the URL. */
URL url = new URL(urlString);
URLConnection connection = [Link]();
InputStream urlData = [Link]();

/* Check that the content is some type of text. */

String contentType = [Link]();
if (contentType == null || [Link]("text") == false)
throw new IOException("URL does not seem to refer to a text file.");

/* Copy lines of text from the input stream to the screen,

until end-of-file is encountered (or an error occurs). */

BufferedReader in; // For reading from the connection’s input stream.

in = new BufferedReader( new InputStreamReader(urlData) );
while (true) {
String line = [Link]();
if (line == null)
break;
[Link](line);
}
} // end readTextFromURL()

A complete program that uses this subroutine can be found in the file [Link]. When
using the program, note that you have to specify a complete url, including the “http:// ” at
11.4. NETWORKING 571

the beginning. There is also an applet version of the program, which you can find in the on-
line version of this section.

11.4.2 TCP/IP and Client/Server

Communication over the Internet is based on a pair of protocols called the Transmission
Control Protocol and the Internet Protocol , which are collectively referred to as TCP/IP . (In
fact, there is a more basic communication protocol called UDP that can be used instead of TCP
in certain applications. UDP is supported in Java, but for this discussion, I’ll stick to the full
TCP/IP, which provides reliable two-way communication between networked computers.)
For two programs to communicate using TCP/IP, each program must create a socket, as
discussed earlier in this section, and those sockets must be connected. Once such a
connection is made, communication takes place using input streams and output streams.
Each program has its own input stream and its own output stream. Data written by one
program to its output stream is transmitted to the other computer. There, it enters the input
stream of the program at the other end of the network connection. When that program reads
data from its input stream, it is receiving the data that was transmitted to it over the network.
The hard part, then, is making a network connection in the first place. Two sockets are
involved. To get things started, one program must create a socket that will wait passively
until a connection request comes in from another socket. The waiting socket is said to be
listening for a connection. On the other side of the connection-to-be, another program
creates a socket that sends out a connection request to the listening socket. When the
listening socket receives the connection request, it responds, and the connection is
established. Once that is done, each program can obtain an input stream and an output
stream for sending data over the connection. Communication takes place through these
streams until one program or the other closes the connection.
A program that creates a listening socket is sometimes said to be a server , and the socket
is called a server socket . A program that connects to a server is called a client , and the
socket that it uses to make a connection is called a client socket . The idea is that the server is
out there somewhere on the network, waiting for a connection request from some client. The
server can be thought of as offering some kind of service, and the client gets access to that
service by connecting to the server. This is called the client/server model of network
communication. In many actual applications, a server program can provide connections to
several clients at the same time. When a client connects to a server’s listening socket, that
socket does not stop listening. Instead, it continues listening for additional client connections at
the same time that the first client is being serviced. To do this, it is necessary to use threads
(Section 8.5). We’ll look at how it works in the next section.
The URL class that was discussed at the beginning of this section uses a client socket
behind the scenes to do any necessary network communication. On the other side of that
connection is a server program that accepts a connection request from the URL object,
reads a request from that object for some particular file on the server computer, and
responds by transmitting the contents of that file over the network back to the URL object.
After transmitting the data, the server closes the connection.
∗∗∗
A client program has to have some way to specify which computer, among all those on the
network, it wants to communicate with. Every computer on the Internet has an IP address which
identifies it uniquely among all the computers on the net. Many computers can also
572 CHAPTER 11. FILES AND NETWORKING

be referred to by domain names such as [Link] or [Link]. (See Sec-

tion 1.7.) Traditional (or IPv4 ) IP addresses are 32-bit integers. They are usually written in
the so-called “dotted decimal” form, such as [Link], where each of the four
numbers in the address represents an 8-bit integer in the range 0 through 255. A new
version of the Internet Protocol, IPv6 , is currently being introduced. IPv6 addresses are
128-bit integers and are usually written in hexadecimal form (with some colons and maybe
some extra information thrown in). In actual use, IPv6 addresses are still farily rare.
A computer can have several IP addresses, and can have both IPv4 and IPv6
addresses. Usually, one of these is the loopback address, which can be used when a
program wants to communicate with another program on the same computer. The
loopback address has IPv4 address [Link] and can also, in general, be referred to using
the domain name localhost . In addition, there can be one or more IP addresses associated
with physical network connections. Your computer probably has some utility for displaying
your computer’s IP addresses. I have written a small Java program, [Link],
that does the same thing. When I run ShowMyNetwork on my computer, the output is:
en1 : /[Link] /fe80:0:0:0:211:24ff:fe9c:5271%5
lo0 : /[Link] /fe80:0:0:0:0:0:0:1%1 /0:0:0:0:0:0:0:1%0

The first thing on each line is a network interface name, which is really meaningful only to
the computer’s operating system. The output also contains the IP addresses for that
interface. In this example, lo0 refers to the loopback address, which has IPv4 address
[Link] as usual. The most important number here is [Link], which is the IPv4
address that can be used for communication over the network.
Now, a single computer might have several programs doing network communication at the
same time, or one program communicating with several other computers. To allow for this
possibility, a network connection is actually identified by a port number in combination with an
IP address. A port number is just a 16-bit integer. A server does not simply listen for connections
—it listens for connections on a particular port. A potential client must know both the Internet
address (or domain name) of the computer on which the server is running and the port number
on which the server is listening. A Web server, for example, generally listens for connections on
port 80; other standard Internet services also have standard port numbers. (The standard port
numbers are all less than 1024, and are reserved for particular services. If you create your own
server programs, you should use port numbers greater than 1024.)

11.4.3 Sockets

To implement TCP/IP connections, the [Link] package provides two classes,

ServerSocket and Socket. A ServerSocket represents a listening socket that waits for
connection requests from clients. A Socket represents one endpoint of an actual network
connection. A Socket can be a client socket that sends a connection request to a server. But
a Socket can also be created by a server to handle a connection request from a client. This
allows the server to create multiple sockets and handle multiple connections. A
ServerSocket does not itself participate in connections; it just listens for connection requests
and creates Sockets to handle the actual connections.
When you construct a ServerSocket object, you have to specify the port number on
which the server will listen. The specification for the constructor is

public ServerSocket(int port) throws IOException

11.4. NETWORKING 573

The port number must be in the range 0 through 65535, and should generally be greater
than 1024. (A value of 0 tells the server socket to listen on any available port.) The
constructor might throw a SecurityException if a smaller port number is specified. An
IOException can occur if, for example, the specified port number is already in use.
As soon as a ServerSocket is created, it starts listening for connection requests. The
accept() method in the ServerSocket class accepts such a request, establishes a
connection with the client, and returns a Socket that can be used for communication with
the client. The accept() method has the form
public Socket accept() throws IOException

When you call the accept() method, it will not return until a connection request is
received (or until some error occurs). The method is said to block while waiting for the
connection. (While the method is blocked, the thread that called the method can’t do
anything else. However, other threads in the same program can proceed.) You can call
accept() repeatedly to accept multiple connection requests. The ServerSocket will
continue listening for connections until it is closed, using its close() method, or until some
error occurs, or until the program is terminated in some way.
Suppose that you want a server to listen on port 1728, and suppose that you’ve written a
method provideService(Socket) to handle the communication with one client. Then
the basic form of the server program would be:
try {
ServerSocket server = new
ServerSocket(1728); while (true) {
Socket connection = [Link]();
provideService(connection);
}
}
catch (IOException e) {
[Link]("Server shut down with error: " + e);
}

On the client side, a client socket is created using a constructor in the Socket class. To
connect to a server on a known computer and port, you would use the constructor
public Socket(String computer, int port) throws IOException

The first parameter can be either an IP number or a domain name. This constructor will
block until the connection is established or until an error occurs.
Once you have a connected socket, no matter how it was created, you can use the
Socket methods getInputStream() and getOutputStream() to obtain streams that
can be used for communication over the connection. These methods return objects of type
InputStream and OutputStream, respectively. Keeping all this in mind, here is the outline of
a method for working with a client connection:
/**
Open a client connection to a specified server computer and
port number on the server, and then do communication through
the connection.
*/
void doClientConnection(String computerName, int
serverPort) { Socket connection;
InputStream in;
574 CHAPTER 11. FILES AND NETWORKING

OutputStream out;
try {
connection = new Socket(computerName,serverPort);
in = [Link](); out =
[Link]();
}
catch (IOException e) {
[Link](
"Attempt to create connection failed with error:
" + e); return;
}
.
// Use the streams, in and out, to communicate with server.

try {
[Link]();
(Alternatively, you might depend on the server
to close the connection.)
}
catch (IOException e) {
}
} // end doClientConnection()

All this makes network communication sound easier than it really is. (And if you think it
sounded hard, then it’s even harder.) If networks were completely reliable, things would be
almost as easy as I’ve described. The problem, though, is to write robust programs that can deal
with network and human error. I won’t go into detail here. However, what I’ve covered here
should give you the basic ideas of network programming, and it is enough to write some simple
network applications. Let’s look at a few working examples of client/server programming.

11.4.4 A Trivial Client/Server

The first example consists of two programs. The source code files for the programs are
[Link] and [Link]. One is a simple network client and the other is a
matching server. The client makes a connection to the server, reads one line of text from the
server, and displays that text on the screen. The text sent by the server consists of the
current date and time on the computer where the server is running. In order to open a
connection, the client must know the computer on which the server is running and the port
on which it is listening. The server listens on port number 32007. The port number could be
anything between 1025 and 65535, as long the server and the client use the same port. Port
numbers between 1 and 1024 are reserved for standard services and should not be used for
other servers. The name or IP number of the computer on which the server is running must
be specified as a command-line argument For example, if the server is running on a
computer named [Link], then you would typically run the client with the command
“java DateClient [Link]”. Here is the complete client program:
import [Link].*;
import [Link].*;
/**
This program opens a connection to a computer specified
as the first command-line argument. The connection is made to
the port specified by LISTENING PORT. The program reads one
11.4. NETWORKING 575

line of text from the connection and then closes the

connection. It displays the text that it read on
standard output. This program is meant to be used with
the server program, DateServer, which sends the current
date and time on the computer where the server is
running. */
public class DateClient {
public static final int LISTENING PORT = 32007;
public static void main(String[] args) {
String hostName; // Name of the server computer to connect to.
Socket connection; // A socket for communicating with server.
BufferedReader incoming; // For reading data from the connection.
/* Get computer name from command line. */
if ([Link] > 0)
hostName = args[0];
else {
No computer name was given. Print a message and exit.
[Link]("Usage: java DateClient <server host
name>"); return;
}
/* Make the connection, then read and display a line of text. */
try {
connection = new Socket( hostName, LISTENING
PORT ); incoming = new BufferedReader(
new
InputStreamReader([Link]()) ); String
lineFromServer = [Link](); if (lineFromServer == null) {
A null from [Link]() indicates that
end-of-stream was encountered.
throw new IOException("Connection was opened, " +
"but server did not send any data.");
}
[Link]();
[Link](lineFromServer);
[Link]();
[Link]();
}
catch (Exception e) {
[Link]("Error: " + e);
}
} // end main()

} //end class DateClient

Note that all the communication with the server is done in a try..catch statement.
This will catch the IOExceptions that can be generated when the connection is opened or
closed and when data is read from the input stream. The connection’s input stream is
wrapped in a BufferedReader, which has a readLine() method that makes it easy to
read one line of text. (See Subsection 11.1.4.)
576 CHAPTER 11. FILES AND NETWORKING

In order for this program to run without error, the server program must be running on the
computer to which the client tries to connect. By the way, it’s possible to run the client and the
server program on the same computer. For example, you can open two command windows, start
the server in one window and then run the client in the other window. To make things like this
easier, most computers will recognize the domain name localhost and the IP number
[Link] as referring to “this computer.” This means that the command “java DateClient
localhost” will tell the DateClient program to connect to a server running on the same
computer. If that command doesn’t work, try “java DateClient [Link]”.
The server program that corresponds to the DateClient client program is called DateServer.
The DateServer program creates a ServerSocket to listen for connection requests on port
32007. After the listening socket is created, the server will enter an infinite loop in which it
accepts and processes connections. This will continue until the program is killed in some way—
for example by typing a CONTROL-C in the command window where the server is running.
When a connection is received from a client, the server calls a subroutine to handle the
connection. In the subroutine, any Exception that occurs is caught, so that it will not crash the
server. Just because a connection to one client has failed for some reason, it does not mean that
the server should be shut down; the error might have been the fault of the client. The
connection-handling subroutine creates a PrintWriter for sending data over the connection. It
writes the current date and time to this stream and then closes the connection. (The standard
class [Link] is used to obtain the current time. An object of type Date represents a
particular date and time. The default constructor, “new Date()”, creates an object that
represents the time when the object is created.) The complete server program is as follows:
import [Link].*;
import [Link].*;
import [Link];
/**
This program is a server that takes connection requests on
the port specified by the constant LISTENING PORT. When a
connection is opened, the program sends the current time to
the connected socket. The program will continue to receive
and process connections until it is killed (by a CONTROL-C,
for example). Note that this server processes each connection
as it is received, rather than creating a separate thread
to process the connection.
*/
public class DateServer {
public static final int LISTENING PORT = 32007;
public static void main(String[] args) {
ServerSocket listener; // Listens for incoming connections.
Socket connection; // For communication with the connecting program.

/* Accept and process connections forever, or until some error occurs.

(Note that errors that occur while communicating with a connected
program are caught and handled in the sendDate() routine, so
they will not crash the server.) */
try {
listener = new ServerSocket(LISTENING PORT);
[Link]("Listening on port " + LISTENING PORT);
11.4. NETWORKING 577

while (true) {
Accept next connection request and handle
it. connection = [Link]();
sendDate(connection);
}
}
catch (Exception e) {
[Link]("Sorry, the server has shut
down."); [Link]("Error: " + e);
return;
}
} // end main()

/**
The parameter, client, is a socket that is already connected to another
program. Get an output stream for the connection, send the current time,
and close the connection.
*/
private static void sendDate(Socket
client) { try {
[Link]("Connection from " +
[Link]().toString() );
Date now = new Date(); // The current date and time.
PrintWriter outgoing; // Stream for sending data.
outgoing = new PrintWriter( [Link]() );
[Link]( [Link]() );
[Link](); // Make sure the data is actually sent!
[Link]();
}
catch (Exception e){
[Link]("Error: " + e);
}
} // end sendDate() }

//end class DateServer

When you run DateServer in a command-line interface, it will sit and wait for connection
requests and report them as they are received. To make the DateServer service permanently
available on a computer, the program really should be run as a daemon . A daeman is a
program that runs continually on a computer, independently of any user. The computer can be
configured to start the daemon automatically as soon as the computer boots up. It then runs in
the background, even while the computer is being used for other purposes. For example, a
computer that makes pages available on the World Wide Web runs a daemon that listens for
requests for pages and responds by transmitting the pages. It’s just a souped-up analog of the
DateServer program! However, the question of how to set up a program as a daemon is not one
I want to go into here. For testing purposes, it’s easy enough to start the program by hand, and,
in any case, my examples are not really robust enough or full-featured enough to be run as
serious servers. (By the way, the word “daemon” is just an alternative spelling of “demon” and is
usually pronounced the same way.)
Note that after calling [Link]() to send a line of data to the client, the server program
calls [Link](). The flush() method is available in every output stream class. Calling it
578 CHAPTER 11. FILES AND NETWORKING

ensures that data that has been written to the stream is actually sent to its destination. You
should generally call this function every time you use an output stream to send data over a
network connection. If you don’t do so, it’s possible that the stream will collect data until it has a
large batch of data to send. This is done for e fficiency, but it can impose unacceptable delays
when the client is waiting for the transmission. It is even possible that some of the data might
remain untransmitted when the socket is closed, so it is especially important to call flush()
before closing the connection. This is one of those unfortunate cases where di fferent
implementations of Java can behave differently. If you fail to flush your output streams, it is
possible that your network application will work on some types of computers but not on others.

11.4.5 A Simple Network Chat

In the DateServer example, the server transmits information and the client reads it. It’s also
possible to have two-way communication between client and server. As a first example, we’ll
look at a client and server that allow a user on each end of the connection to send messages to
the other user. The program works in a command-line interface where the users type in their
messages. In this example, the server waits for a connection from a single client and then closes
down its listener so that no other clients can connect. After the client and server are connected,
both ends of the connection work in much the same way. The user on the client end types a
message, and it is transmitted to the server, which displays it to the user on that end. Then the
user of the server types a message that is transmitted to the client. Then the client user types
another message, and so on. This continues until one user or the other enters “quit” when
prompted for a message. When that happens, the connection is closed and both programs
terminate. The client program and the server program are very similar. The techniques for
opening the connections differ, and the client is programmed to send the first message while the
server is programmed to receive the first message. The client and server programs can be found
in the files [Link] and [Link]. (The name “CLChat” stands for
“command-line chat.”) Here is the source code for the server:
import [Link].*;
import [Link].*;
/**
This program is one end of a simple command-line interface chat program.
It acts as a server which waits for a connection from the CLChatClient
program. The port on which the server listens can be specified as a
command-line argument. If it is not, then the port specified by the
* constant DEFAULT PORT is used. Note that if a port number of zero is
specified, then the server will listen on any available port.
This program only supports one connection. As soon as a connection is
opened, the listening socket is closed down. The two ends of the connection
each send a HANDSHAKE string to the other, so that both ends can verify
that the program on the other end is of the right type. Then the connected
programs alternate sending messages to each other. The client always sends
the first message. The user on either end can close the connection by
entering the string "quit" when prompted for a message. Note that the first
character of any string sent over the connection must be 0 or 1; this
character is interpreted as a command.
*/
public class CLChatServer {
/**
11.4. NETWORKING 579

Port to listen on, if none is specified on the command

line. */
static final int DEFAULT PORT = 1728;
/**
Handshake string. Each end of the connection sends this string to the
other just after the connection is opened. This is done to confirm that
the program on the other side of the connection is a CLChat program.
*/
static final String HANDSHAKE = "CLChat";
/**
This character is prepended to every message that is
sent. */
static final char MESSAGE = ’0’;
/**
This character is sent to the connected program when the user
quits. */
static final char CLOSE = ’1’;

public static void main(String[] args) {

int port; // The port on which the server listens.
ServerSocket listener; // Listens for a connection request.
Socket connection; // For communication with the client.

BufferedReader incoming; // Stream for receiving data from client.

PrintWriter outgoing; // Stream for sending data to client.
String messageOut; // A message to be sent to the client.
String messageIn; // A message received from the client.

BufferedReader userInput; // A wrapper for [Link], for

reading // lines of input from the user.

/* First, get the port number from the command line,

or use the default port if none is specified. */

if ([Link] == 0)
port = DEFAULT PORT;
else {
try {
port= [Link](args[0]);
if (port < 0 || port > 65535)
throw new NumberFormatException();
}
catch (NumberFormatException e)
{ [Link]("Illegal port number, " +
args[0]); return;
}
}

/* Wait for a connection request. When it arrives,

close down the listener. Create streams for
communication and exchange the handshake. */
try {
580 CHAPTER 11. FILES AND NETWORKING

listener = new ServerSocket(port);

[Link]("Listening on port " + [Link]());
connection = [Link]();
[Link]();
incoming = new BufferedReader(
new InputStreamReader([Link]()) );
outgoing = new PrintWriter([Link]());
[Link](HANDSHAKE); // Send handshake to client.
[Link]();
messageIn = [Link](); // Receive handshake from client.
if (! [Link](messageIn) ) {
throw new Exception("Connected program is not a CLChat!");
}
[Link]("Connected. Waiting for the first message.");
}
catch (Exception e) {
[Link]("An error occurred while opening
connection."); [Link]([Link]()); return;

}
/* Exchange messages with the other end of the connection until one side
or the other closes the connection. This server program
waits for the first message from the client. After that,
messages alternate strictly back and forth. */
try {
userInput = new BufferedReader(new
InputStreamReader([Link])); [Link]("NOTE:
Enter ’quit’ to end the program.\n"); while (true) {
[Link]("WAITING...");
messageIn = [Link]();
if ([Link]() > 0) {
The first character of the message is a command. If
the command is CLOSE, then the connection is closed.
Otherwise, remove the command character from the
message and proceed.
if ([Link](0) == CLOSE)
{ [Link]("Connection closed at
other end."); [Link]();
break;
}
messageIn = [Link](1);
}
[Link]("RECEIVED: " + messageIn);
[Link]("SEND: ");
messageOut = [Link]();
if ([Link]("quit")) {
User wants to quit. Inform the other side
of the connection, then close the
connection. [Link](CLOSE);
[Link](); // Make sure the data is sent!
[Link](); [Link]("Connection closed.");
11.5. NETWORK PROGRAMMING AND THREADS 581

break;
}
[Link](MESSAGE + messageOut);
[Link](); // Make sure the data
is sent! if ([Link]()) {
throw new IOException("Error occurred while transmitting message.");
}
}
}
catch (Exception e) {
[Link]("Sorry, an error has occurred. Connection
lost.");
[Link]("Error: " + e);
[Link](1);
}
} // end main()

} //end class CLChatServer

This program is a little more robust than DateServer. For one thing, it uses a handshake
to make sure that a client who is trying to connect is really a CLChatClient program. A
handshake is simply information sent between client and server as part of setting up the
connection, before any actual data is sent. In this case, each side of the connection sends a
string to the other side to identify itself. The handshake is part of the protocol that I made
up for communication between CLChatClient and CLChatServer. A protocol is a detailed
specification of what data and messages can be exchanged over a connection, how they
must be represented, and what order they can be sent in. When you design a client/server
application, the design of the protocol is an important consideration. Another aspect of the
CLChat protocol is that after the handshake, every line of text that is sent over the
connection begins with a character that acts as a command. If the character is 0, the rest of
the line is a message from one user to the other. If the character is 1, the line indicates that
a user has entered the “quit” command, and the connection is to be shut down.
Remember that if you want to try out this program on a single computer, you can use two
command-line windows. In one, give the command “java CLChatServer” to start the
server. Then, in the other, use the command “java CLChatClient localhost” to
connect to the server that is running on the same machine.

11.5 Network Programming and Threads

In the previous section, we looked at several examples of network programming. Those
examples showed how to create network connections and communicate through them, but they
didn’t deal with one of the fundamental characteristics of network programming, the fact that
network communication is fundamentally asynchronous. From the point of view of a program on
one end of a network connection, messages can arrive from the other side of the connection at
any time; the arrival of a message is an event that is not under the control of the program that is
receiving the message. Certainly, it is possible to design a network communication protocol that
proceeds in a synchronous, step-by-step process from beginning to end—but whenever the
process gets to a point in the protocol where it needs to read a message from the other side of
the connection, it has to wait for that message to arrive. Essentially, the process has to wait
582 CHAPTER 11. FILES AND NETWORKING

for a message-arrival event to occur before it can proceed. While it is waiting for the
message, we say that the process is blocked .
Perhaps an event-oriented networking API would be a good approach to dealing with the
asynchronous nature of network communication, but that is not the approach that is taken in
Java (or, typically, in other languages). Instead, a serious network program in Java uses
threads. Threads were introduced in Section 8.5. A thread is a separate computational
process that can run in parallel with other threads. When a program uses threads to do
network communication, it is possible that some threads will be blocked, waiting for
incoming messages, but other threads will still be able to continue performing useful work.

11.5.1 A Threaded GUI Chat Program.

The command-line chat programs, [Link] and [Link], from the previ-
ous section use a straight-through, step-by-step protocol for communication. After a user on one
side of a connection enters a message, the user must wait for a reply from the other side of the
connection. An asynchronous chat program would be much nicer. In such a program, a user
could just keep typing lines and sending messages without waiting for any response. Messages
that arrive—asynchronously—from the other side would be displayed as soon as they arrive. It’s
not easy to do this in a command-line interface, but it’s a natural application for a graphical user
interface. The basic ides for a GUI chat program is to create a thread whose job is to read
messages that arrive from the other side of the connection. As soon as the message arrives, it is
displayed to the user; then, the message-reading thread blocks until the next incoming message
arrives. While it is blocked, however, other threads can continue to run. In particular, the GUI
event-handling thread that responds to user actions keeps running; that thread can send
outgoing messages as soon as the user generates them.
The sample program [Link] is an example of this. GUIChat is a two-way
network chat program that allows two users to send messages to each other over the
network. In this chat program, each user can send messages at any time, and incoming
messages are displayed as soon as they are received.
The GUIChat program can act as both the client end and the server end of a connection.
When GUIChat is started, a window appears on the screen. This window has a “Listen” button
that the user can click to create a server socket that will listen for an incoming connection
request; this makes the program act as a server. It also has a “Connect” button that the the user
can click to send a connection request; this makes the program act as a client. As usual, the
server listens on a specified port number. The client needs to know the computer on which the
server is running and the port on which the server is listening. There are input boxes in the
GUIChat window where the user can enter this information. Once a connection has been
established between two GUIChat windows, each user can send messages to the other. The
window has an input box where the user types the message. Pressing return while typing in this
box sends the message. This means that the sending of the message is handled by the usual
event-handling thread, in response to an event generated by a user action. Messages are
received by a separate thread that just sits around waiting for incoming messages. This thread
blocks while waiting for a message to arrive; when a message does arrive, it displays that
message to the user. The window contains a large transcript area that displays both incoming
and outgoing messages, along with other information about the network connection.
I urge you to compile the source code, [Link], and try the program. To make it easy
to try it on a single computer, you can make a connection between one window and another
window on the same computer, using “localhost” or “[Link]” as the name of the computer.
11.5. NETWORK PROGRAMMING AND THREADS 583

(Once you have one GUIChat window open, you can open a second one by clicking the
“New” button.) I also urge you to read the source code. I will discuss only parts of it here.
The program uses a nested class, ConnectionHandler, to handle most network-related tasks.
ConnectionHandler is a subclass of Thread. The ConnectionHandler thread is responsible for
opening the network connection and then for reading incoming messages once the connection
has been opened. (By putting the connection-opening code in a separate thread, we make sure
that the GUI is not blocked while the connection is being opened. Like reading incoming
messages, opening a connection is a blocking operation that can take some time to complete.) A
ConnectionHandler is created when the user clicks the “Listen” or “Connect” button. The “Listen”
button should make the thread act as a server, while “Connect” should make it act as a client. To
distinguish these two cases, the ConnectionHandler class has two constructors:
/**
Listen for a connection on a specified port. The constructor
does not perform any network operations; it just sets some
instance variables and starts the thread. Note that the
thread will only listen for one connection, and then will
close its server socket.
*/
ConnectionHandler(int port) {
state = [Link];
[Link] = port;
postMessage("\nLISTENING ON PORT " + port +
"\n"); start();
}
/**
Open a connection to specified computer and port. The constructor
does not perform any network operations; it just sets some
instance variables and starts the thread.
*/
ConnectionHandler(String remoteHost, int port)
{ state = [Link];
[Link] = remoteHost;
[Link] = port;
postMessage("\nCONNECTING TO " + remoteHost + " ON PORT " +
port + "\n"); start();
}

Here, state is an instance variable whose type is defined by an enumerated type

enum ConnectionState { LISTENING, CONNECTING, CONNECTED, CLOSED };

The values of this enum represent different possible states of the network connection. It is
often useful to treat a network connection as a state machine (see Subsection 6.5.4), since
the response to various events can depend on the state of the connection when the event
occurs. Setting the state variable to LISTENING or CONNECTING tells the thread whether
it should act as a server or as a client. Note that the postMessage() method posts a
message to the transcript area of the window, where it will be visible to the user.
Once the thread has been started, it executes the following run() method:
/**
The run() method that is executed by the thread. It opens a
connection as a client or as a server (depending on which
584 CHAPTER 11. FILES AND NETWORKING

constructor was
used). */
public void run() {
try {
if (state == [Link]) {
Open a connection as a server.
listener = new ServerSocket(port);
socket = [Link]();
[Link]();
}
else if (state == [Link]) {
Open a connection as a client.
socket = new Socket(remoteHost,port);
}
connectionOpened(); // Sets up to use the connection (including
creating a BufferedReader, in, for reading
incoming messages).
while (state == [Link]) {
Read one line of text from the other side of
the connection, and report it to the
user. String input = [Link]();
if (input == null)
connectionClosedFromOtherSide();
else
received(input); // Report message to user.
}
}
catch (Exception e) {
An error occurred. Report it to the user, but not
if the connection has been closed (since the error
might be the expected error that is generated when
a socket is closed).
if (state != [Link])
postMessage("\n\n ERROR: " +
e);
}
finally { // Clean up before terminating the thread.
cleanUp();
}
}

This method calls several other methods to do some of its work, but you can see the general outline
of how it works. After opening the connection as either a server or client, the run() method enters a
while loop in which it receives and processes messages from the other side of the connection until
the connection is closed. It is important to understand how the connection can be closed. The
GUIChat window has a “Disconnect” button that the user can click to close the connection. The
program responds to this event by closing the socket that represents the connection. It is likely that
when this happens, the connection-handling thread is blocked in the [Link]() method, waiting for
an incoming message. When the socket is closed by another thread, this method will fail and will
throw an exception; this exception causes the thread to terminate. (If the connection-handling thread
happens to be between calls to [Link]() when the socket is closed, the while loop will terminate
because the connection state changes
11.5. NETWORK PROGRAMMING AND THREADS 585

from CONNECTED to CLOSED.) Note that closing the window will also close the connection
in the same way.
It is also possible for the user on the other side of the connection to close the connection.
When that happens, the stream of incoming messages ends, and the [Link]() on
this side of the connection returns the value null, which indicates end-of-stream and acts
as a signal that the connection has been closed by the remote user.
For a final look into the GUIChat code, consider the methods that send and receive messages.
These methods are called from different threads. The send() method is called by the event-
handling thread in response to a user action. It’s purpose is to transmit a message to the remote user.
It uses a PrintWriter, out, that writes to the socket’s output stream. Synchronization of this method
prevents the connection state from changing in the middle of the send operation:
/**
Send a message to the other side of the connection, and post the
message to the transcript. This should only be called when the
connection state is [Link]; if it is called at
other times, it is ignored.
*/
synchronized void send(String message) {
if (state == [Link]) {
postMessage("SEND: " + message);
[Link](message);
[Link]();
if ([Link]()) {
postMessage("\nERROR OCCURRED WHILE TRYING TO SEND
DATA."); close(); // Closes the connection.
}
}
}

The received() method is called by the connection-handling thread after a message has
been read from the remote user. Its only job is to display the message to the user, but again
it is synchronized to avoid the race condition that could occur if the connection state were
changed by another thread while this method is being executed:
/**
This is called by the run() method when a message is received from
the other side of the connection. The message is posted to the
transcript, but only if the connection state is CONNECTED. (This
is because a message might be received after the user has clicked
the "Disconnect" button; that message should not be seen by the
user.)
*/
synchronized private void received(String message)
{ if (state == [Link])
postMessage("RECEIVE: " + message);
}

11.5.2 A Multithreaded Server

There is still one big problem with the GUIChat program. In order to open a connection to
another computer, a user must know that there is a GUIChat program listening on some
586 CHAPTER 11. FILES AND NETWORKING

particular port on some particular computer. Except in rather contrived situations, there is no
way for a user to know that. It would be nice if it were possible to discover, somehow, who’s
out there on the Internet waiting for a connection. Unfortunately, this is not possible. And
yet, applications such as AOL Instant Messenger seem to do just that—they can show you a
list of users who are available to receive messages. How can they do that?
I don’t know the details of instant messenger protocols, but it has to work something like
this: When you start the client program, that program contacts a server program that runs
constantly on some particular computer and on some particular port. Since the server is
always available at the same computer and port, the information needed to contact it can be
built into the client program or otherwise made available to the users of the program. The
purpose of the server is to keep a list of available users. When your client program contacts
the server, it gets a list of available users, along with whatever information is necessary to
send messages to those users. At the same time, your client program registers you with the
server, so that the server can tell other users that you are on-line. When you shut down the
client program, you are removed from the server’s list of users, and other users can be
informed that you have gone off-line.
Of course, in an application like AOL server, you only get to see a list of available users from
your “buddy list,” a list of your friends who are also AOL users. To implement this, you need to
have an account on the AOL server. The server needs to keep a database of information about
all user accounts, including the buddy list for each user. This makes the server program rather
complicated, and I won’t consider that aspect of its functionality here. However, it is not very
difficult to write a scaled-down application that uses the network in a similar way. I call my
scaled-down version “BuddyChat.” It doesn’t keep separate buddy lists for each user; it
assumes that you’re willing to be buddies with anyone who happens to connect to the server. In
this application, the server keeps a list of connected users and makes that list available to each
connected user. A user can connect to another user and chat with that user, using a window that
is very similar to the chat window in GUIChat. BuddyChat is still just a toy, compared to
serious network applications, but it does illustrate some core ideas.
The BuddyChat application comes in several pieces. [Link] is the
server program, which keeps the list of available users and makes that list available to
clients. Ideally, the server program would run constantly (as a daemon) on a computer and
port that are known to all the possible client users. For testing, of course, it can simply be
stated like any other program. The client program is [Link]. This program is to be
run by any user who wants to use the BuddyChat service. When a user starts the client
program, it connects to the server, and it gets from the server a list of other users who are
currently connected. The list is displayed to the user of the client program, who can send a
request for a chat connection with any user on the list. The client can also receive incoming
chat connection requests from other users. The window that is used for chatting is defined
by [Link], which is not itself a program but just a subclass of JFrame that
defines the chat window. (There is also a fourth piece, [Link].
This is a program that can be run to shut down the BuddyChatServer gracefully. I will not
discuss it further here. See the source code for more information, if you are interested.)
I urge you to compile the programs and try them out. For testing, you can try them on a
single computer (although all the windows can get a little confusing). First, start
BuddyChatServer. The server has no GUI interface, but it does print some information to
standard output as it runs. Then start the BuddyChat client program. When BuddyChat starts up, it
presents a window where you can enter the name and port number for the server and your
11.5. NETWORK PROGRAMMING AND THREADS 587

“handle,” which is just a name that will identify you in the server’s list of users. The server
info is already set up to connect to a server on the same machine. When you hit the
“Connect” button, a new window will open with a list, currently empty, of other users
connected to the server. Now, start another copy of the BuddyChat client program. When
you click “Connect”, you’ll have two client list windows, one for each copy of the client
program that you’ve started. (One of these windows will be exactly on top of the other, so
you’ll have to move it to see the second window.) Each client window will display the other
client in its list of users. You can run additional copies of the client program, if you want, and
you might want to try connecting from another computer if one is available.
At this point, there is a network connection in place between the server and each client.
Whenever a client connects to or disconnects from the server, the server sends a
notification of the event to each connected client, so that the client can modify its own list of
connected users. The server also maintains a listening socket that listens for connection
requests from new clients. In order to manage all this, the server is running several threads.
One thread waits for connection requests on the listening socket. In addition to this, there
are two threads for each connected client—one thread for sending messages to the client
and one thread for reading messages sent by the client to the server.
Back to trying out the program. Remember that the whole point was to provide each user
with a list of potential chat partners. Click on a user in one of the client user lists, and then
click the “Connect to Selected Buddy” button. When you do this, your BuddyChat program
sends a connection request to the BuddyChat program that is being run by the selected
user. Each BuddyChat program, one on each side of the connection, opens a chat window
(of type BuddyChatWindow ). A network connection between these two windows is set up
without any further action on the part of the two users, and the users can use the windows to
send messages back and forth to each other. The BuddyChatServer program has nothing to
do with opening, closing, or using the connection between its two clients (although a
different design might have had the messages go through the server).
In order to open the chat connection from one program to another, the second program
must be listening for connection requests and the first program must know the computer and
port on which the first user is listening. In the BuddyChat system, the BuddyChatServer
knows this information and provides it to each BuddyChat client program. The users of the
client programs never have to be aware of this information.
How does the server know about the clients’ computers and port numbers? When a Bud-
dyChat client program is run, in addition to opening a connection to the BuddyChatServer,
the client also creates a listening socket to accept connection requests from other users.
When the client registers with the server, it tells the server the port number of the client’s
listening socket. The server also knows the IP address of the computer on which the client is
running, since it has a network connection to that computer. This means that the
BuddyChatServer knows the IP address and listening socket port number of every
BuddyChat client. A copy of this information is provided (along with the users’ handles) to
each connected client program. The net result is that every BuddyChat client program has
the information that it needs to contact all the other clients.
The basic techniques used in the BuddyChat system are the same as those used in previous
networking examples: server sockets, client sockets, input and output streams for sending messages
over the network, and threads to handle the communication. The important difference is how these
basic building blocks are combined to build a more complex application. I have tried to explain the
logic of that application here. I will not discuss the BuddyChat source code
588 CHAPTER 11. FILES AND NETWORKING

here, since it is locally similar to examples that we have already looked at, but I encourage
you to study the source code if you are interested in network programming.
BuddyChat seems to have a lot of functionality, yet I said it was still a “toy” program. What
exactly makes it a toy? There are at least two big problems. First of all, it is not scalable. A
network program is scalable if it will work well for a large number of simultaneous users.
BuddyChat would have problems with a large number of users because it uses so many
threads (two for each user). It takes a certain amount of processing for a computer to switch its
attention from one thread to another. On a very busy server, the constant switching between
threads would soon start to degrade the performance. One solution to this is to use a more
advanced network API. Java has a class SelectableChannel that makes it possible for one
thread to manage communication over a large number of network connections. This class is part
of the package [Link] that provides a number of advanced I/O capabilities for working with
files and networking. However, I will not cover those capabilities in this book.
But the biggest problem is that BuddyChat offers absolutely no defense against denial of
service attacks. In a denial of service, a malicious user attacks a network server in some way
that prevents other users from accessing the service or severely degrades the performance of
the service for those users. It would be simple to launch a denial of service attack on
BuddyChat by making a huge number of connections to the server. The server would then
spend most of its time servicing those bogus connections. The server could guard against this to
some extent by putting a limit on the number of simultaneous connections that it will accept from
a given IP address. It would also be helpful to add some security to the server by requiring users
to know a password in order to connect. However, neither of these measures would fully solve
the problem, and it is very difficult to find a complete defense against denial of service attacks.

11.5.3 Distributed Computing

In Section 8.5, we saw how threads can be used to do parallel processing, where a number
of processors work together to complete some task. In that section, it was assumed that all
the processors were inside one multi-processor computer. But parallel processing can also
be done using processors that are in different computers, as long as those computers are
connected to a network over which they can communicate. This type of parallel processing
—in which a number of computers work together on a task and communicate over a network
—is called distributed computing .
In some sense, the whole Internet is an immense distributed computation, but here I am
interested in how computers on a network can cooperate to solve some computational problem.
There are several approaches to distributed computing that are supported in Java. RMI and
CORBA are standards that enable a program running on one computer to call methods in
objects that exist on other computers. This makes it possible to design an object-oriented
program in which different parts of the program are executed on di fferent computers. RMI
(Remote Method Invocation) only supports communication between Java objects. CORBA
(Common Object Request Broker Architecture) is a more general standard that allows objects
written in various programming languages, including Java, to communicate with each other. As
is commonly the case in networking, there is the problem of locating services (where in this
case, a “service” means an object that is available to be called over the network). That is, how
can one computer know which computer a service is located on and what port it is listening on?
RMI and CORBA solve this problem using something like our little BuddyChatServer example —a
server running at a known location keeps a list of services that are available on other computers. Computers
that offer services register those services with the server; computers that
11.5. NETWORK PROGRAMMING AND THREADS 589

need services contact the server to find out where they are located.
RMI and CORBA are complex systems that are not very easy to use. I mention them
here because they are part of Java’s standard network API, but I will not discuss them
further. Instead, we will look at a relatively simple demonstration of distributed computing
that is uses only basic networking.
The problem that we will look at uses the simplest type of parallel programming, in which the
problem can be broken down into tasks that can be performed independently, with no
communication between the tasks. To apply distributed computing to this type of problem, we
can use one “master” program that divides the problem into tasks and sends those tasks over
the network to “worker” programs that do the actual work. The worker programs send their
results back to the master program, which combines the results from all the tasks into a solution
of the overall problem. In this context, the worker programs are often called “slaves,” and the
program uses the so-called master/slave approach to distributed computing.
The demonstration program is defined by three source code files: [Link]
defines the master program; [Link] defines the worker programs; and
[Link] defines the class, CLMandelbrotTask, that represents an individ-ual task
that is performed by the workers. To run the demonstration, you must start the
CLMandelbrotWorker program on several computers (probably by running it on the command
line). This program uses CLMandelbrotTask, so both class files, [Link]
and [Link], must be present on the worker computers. You can then run
CLMandelbrotMaster on the master computer. Note that this program also requires the class
CLMandelbrotTask. You must specify the host name or IP address of each of the worker com-puters
as command line arguments for CLMandelbrotMaster. A worker programs listens for connection
requests from the master program, and the master program must be told where to send those
requests. For example, if the worker program is running on three comput-ers with IP addresses
[Link], [Link], and [Link], then you can run CLMandelbrotMaster with
the command
java CLMandelbrotMaster [Link] [Link]
[Link]

The master will make a network connection to the worker at each IP address; these
connections will be used for communication between the master program and the workers.
It is possible to run several copies of CLMandelbrotWorker on the same computer,
but they must listen for network connections on different ports. It is also possible to run
CLMandelbrotWorker on the same computer as CLMandelbrotMaster. You might
even see some speed-up when you do this, if your computer has several processors. See
the comments in the program source code files for more information, but here are some
commands that you can use to run the master program and two copies of the worker
program on the same computer. Give these commands in separate command windows:
java CLMandelbrotWorker (Listens on default port)
java CLMandelbrotWorker 1501 (Listens on port 1501)

java CLMandelbrotMaster localhost localhost:1501

Every time CLMandelbrotMaster is run, it solves exactly the same problem. (For this
demonstration, the nature of the problem is not important, but the problem is to compute the data
needed for a picture of a small piece of the famous “Mandelbrot Set.” If you are interested in
seeing the picture that is produced, uncomment the call to the saveImage() method at the
590 CHAPTER 11. FILES AND NETWORKING

end of the main() routine in [Link]. We will encounter the Mandelbrot

Set again as an example in Chapter 12.)
You can run CLMandelbrotMaster with different numbers of worker programs to see how
the time required to solve the problem depends on the number of workers. (Note that the worker
programs continue to run after the master program exists, so you can run the mas-ter program
several times without having to restart the workers.) In addition, if you run
CLMandelbrotMaster with no command line arguments, it will solve the entire problem on its
own, so you can see how long it takes to do so without using distributed computing. In a trial that
I ran, it took 40 seconds for CLMandelbrotMaster to solve the problem on its own. Using just
one worker, it took 43 seconds. The extra time represents extra work involved in using the
network; it takes time to set up a network connection and to send messages over the network.
Using two workers (on different computers), the problem was solved in 22 seconds. In this case,
each worker did about half of the work, and their computations were performed in parallel, so
that the job was done in about half the time. With larger numbers of workers, the time continued
to decrease, but only up to a point. The master program itself has a certain amount of work to
do, no matter how many workers there are, and the total time to solve the problem can never be
less than the time it takes for the master program to do its part. In this case, the minimum time
seemed to be about five seconds.
∗∗∗
Let’s take a look at how this distributed application is programmed. The master program
divides the overall problem into a set of tasks. Each task is represented by an object of type
CLMandelbrotTask. These tasks have to be communicated to the worker programs, and the
worker programs must send back their results. Some protocol is needed for this communication.
I decided to use character streams. The master encodes a task as a line of text, which is sent to
a worker. The worker decodes the text (into an object of type CLMandelbrotTask ) to find out
what task it is supposed to perform. It performs the assigned task. It encodes the results as
another line of text, which it sends back to the master program. Finally, the master decodes the
results and combines them with the results from other tasks. After all the tasks have been
completed and their results have been combined, the problem has been solved.
The problem is divided into a fairly large number of tasks. A worker receives not just one
task, but a sequence of tasks. Each time it finishes a task and sends back the result, it is
assigned a new task. After all tasks are complete, the worker receives a “close” command
that tells it to close the connection. In [Link], all this is done in a
method named handleConnection() that is called to handle a connection that has
already been opened to the master program. It uses a method readTask() to decode a
task that it receives from the master and a method writeResults() to encode the results
of the task for transmission back to the master. It must also handle any errors that occur:
private static void handleConnection(Socket
connection) { try {
BufferedReader in = new BufferedReader( new InputStreamReader( [Link]()) );

PrintWriter out = new

PrintWriter([Link]()); while (true) {
String line = [Link](); // Message from the master.
if (line == null) {
End-of-steram encountered -- should not happen. throw
new Exception("Connection closed unexpectedly.");
}
11.5. NETWORK PROGRAMMING AND THREADS 591

if ([Link](CLOSE CONNECTION COMMAND)) {

Represents the normal termination of the connection.
[Link]("Received close command.");
break;
}
else if ([Link](TASK COMMAND)) {
Represents a CLMandelbrotTask that this worker is
supposed to perform.
CLMandelbrotTask task = readTask(line); // Decode the
message. [Link](); // Peform the task.
[Link](writeResults(task)); // Send back the
results. [Link]();
}
else {
No other messages are part of the protocol.
throw new Exception("Illegal command received.");
}
}
}
catch (Exception e) {
[Link]("Client connection closed with error " + e);
}
finally {
try {
[Link](); // Make sure the socket is closed.
}
catch (Exception e) {
}
}
}

Note that this method is not executed in a separate thread. The worker has only one thing
to do at a time and does not need to be multithreaded.
You might wonder why so many tasks are used. Why not just divide the problem into one
task for each worker? The reason is that using a larger number of tasks makes it possible to do
load balancing . Not all tasks take the same amount of time to execute. This is true for many
reasons. Some of the tasks might simply be more computationally complex than others. Some of
the worker computers might be slower than others. Or some worker computers might be busy
running other programs, so that they can only give part of their processing power to the worker
program. If we assigned one task per worker, it is possible that a complex task running on a
slow, busy computer would take much longer than the other tasks to complete. This would leave
the other workers idle and delay the completion of the job while that worker completes its task.
To complete the job as quickly as possible, we want to keep all the workers busy and have them
all finish at about the same time. This is called load balancing. If we have a large number of
tasks, the load will automatically be approximately balanced: A worker is not assigned a new
task until it finishes the task that it is working on. A slow worker, or one that happens to receive
more complex tasks, will complete fewer tasks than other workers, but all workers will be kept
busy until close to the end of the job. On the other hand, individual tasks shouldn’t be too small.
Network communication takes some time. If it takes longer to transmit a task and its results than
it does to perform the task, then using distributed computing will take more
592 CHAPTER 11. FILES AND NETWORKING

time than simply doing the whole job on one computer! A problem is a good candidate for
distributed computing if it can be divided into a fairly large number of fairly large tasks.
Turing to the master program, [Link], we encounter a more
complex situation. The master program must communicate with several workers over
several network connections. To accomplish this, the master program is multi-threaded, with
one thread to manage communication with each worker. A pseudocode outline of the
main() routine is quite simple:
create a list of all tasks that must be performed
if there are no command line arguments {
The master program does all the tasks
itself. Perform each task.
}
else {
The tasks will be performed by worker
programs. for each command line argument:
Get information about a worker from command line argument.
Create and start a thread to communicate with the worker.
Wait for all threads to terminate.
}
// All tasks are now complete (assuming no error occurred).

The list of tasks is stored in a variable, tasks, of type ArrayList<CLMandelbrotTask>.

The communication threads take tasks from this list and send them to worker programs. The
method getNextTask() gets one task from the list. If the list is empty, it returns null as
a signal that all tasks have been assigned and the communication thread can terminate.
Since tasks is a resource that is shared by several threads, access to it must be controlled;
this is accomplished by writing getNextTask() as a synchronized method:
synchronized private static CLMandelbrotTask
getNextTask() { if ([Link]() == 0)
return null;
else
return [Link](0);
}

(The reason for the synchronization is to avoid the race condition that could occur between
the time that the value of [Link]() is tested and the time that [Link]() is
called. See Subsection 8.5.3 for information about parallel programming, race conditions,
and synchronized.)
The job of a thread is to send a sequence of tasks to a worker thread and to receive the
results that the worker sends back. The thread is also responsible for opening the connection in
the first place. A pseudocode outline for the process executed by the thread might look like:
Create a socket connected to the worker program.
Create input and output streams for communicating with the worker.
while (true) {
Let task = getNextTask().
If task == null
break; // All tasks have been assigned.
Encode the task into a message and transmit it to the worker.
Read the response from the worker.
Decode and process the response.
}
11.5. NETWORK PROGRAMMING AND THREADS 593

Send a "close" command to the worker.

Close the socket.

This would work OK. However, there are a few subtle points. First of all, the thread must be
ready to deal with a network error. For example, a worker might shut down unexpectedlyy. But if
that happens, the master program can continue, provided other workers are still available. (You
can try this when you run the program: Stop one of the worker programs, with CONTROL-C, and
observe that the master program still completes successfully.) A di fficulty arises if an error
occurs while the thread is working on a task: If the problem as a whole is going to be completed,
that task will have to be reassigned to another worker. I take care of this by putting the
uncompleted task back into the task list. (Unfortunately, my program does not handle all possible
errors. If a network connection “hangs” indefinitely without actually generating an error, my
program will also hang, waiting for a response from a worker that will never arrive. A more robust
program would have some way of detecting the problem and reassigning the task.)
Another defect in the procedure outlined above is that it leaves the worker program idle
while the thread is processing the worker’s response. It would be nice to get a new task to
the worker before processing the response from the previous task. This would keep the
worker busy and allow two operations to proceed simultaneously instead of sequentially. (In
this example, the time it takes to process a response is so short that keeping the worker
waiting while it is done probably makes no significant difference. But as a general principle,
it’s desirable to have as much parallelism as possible in the algorithm.) We can modify the
procedure to take this into account:
try {
Create a socket connected to the worker program.
Create input and output streams for communicating with the worker.
Let currentTask = getNextTask().
Encode currentTask into a message and send it to the worker.
while (true) {
Read the response from the worker.
Let nextTask = getNextTask().
If nextTask != null {
Send nextTask to the worker before processing the
response to currentTask.
Encode nextTask into a message and send it to the worker.
}
Decode and process the response to currentTask.
currentTask = nextTask.
if (currentTask == null)
break; // All tasks have been assigned.
}
Send a "close" command to the worker.
Close the socket.
}
catch (Exception e) {
Put uncompleted task, if any, back into the task list.
}
finally {
Close the connection.
}

Finally, here is how this translates into Java. The pseudocode presented above becomes the
run() method in the class that defines the communication threads used by the master program:
594 CHAPTER 11. FILES AND NETWORKING

/**
This class represents one worker thread. The job of a worker thread
is to send out tasks to a CLMandelbrotWorker program over a network
connection, and to get back the results computed by that
program. */
private static class WorkerConnection extends Thread {
int id; // Identifies this thread in output statements.
String host; // The host to which this thread will connect.
int port; // The port number to which this thread will connect.

/**
The constructor just sets the values of the instance
variables id, host, and port and starts the
thread. */
WorkerConnection(int id, String host, int
port) { [Link] = id;
[Link] = host;
[Link] = port;
start();
}
/**
The run() method of the thread opens a connection to the host and
port specified in the constructor, then sends tasks to the
CLMandelbrotWorker program on the other side of that connection.
If the thread terminates normally, it outputs the number of tasks
that it processed. If it terminates with an error, it outputs
an error message.
*/
public void run() {
int tasksCompleted = 0; // How many tasks has this thread handled.
Socket socket; // The socket for the connection.

try {
socket = new Socket(host,port); // open the connection.
}
catch (Exception e) {
[Link]("Thread " + id + " could not open
connection to " + host + ":" + port);
[Link](" Error: " + e);
return;
}
CLMandelbrotTask currentTask = null;
CLMandelbrotTask nextTask = null;
try {
PrintWriter out = new PrintWriter([Link]());
BufferedReader in = new BufferedReader(
new InputStreamReader([Link]()) );
currentTask = getNextTask();
if (currentTask != null) {
Send first task to the worker program.
String taskString = writeTask(currentTask);
11.5. NETWORK PROGRAMMING AND THREADS 595

[Link](taskString);
[Link]();
}
while (currentTask != null) {
String resultString = [Link](); // Get results for currentTask.
if (resultString == null)
throw new IOException("Connection closed unexpectedly.");
if (! [Link](RESULT COMMAND))
throw new IOException("Illegal string received from
worker."); nextTask = getNextTask(); // Get next task and
send it to worker. if (nextTask != null) {
Send nextTask to worker before processing results for
currentTask, so that the worker can work on nextTask
while the currentTask results are processed.
String taskString = writeTask(nextTask);
[Link](taskString);
[Link]();
}
readResults(resultString, currentTask);
finishTask(currentTask); // Process results from
currentTask. tasksCompleted++;
currentTask = nextTask; // We are finished with old
currentTask.
nextTask = null;
}
[Link](CLOSE CONNECTION COMMAND); // Send close command
to worker.
[Link]();
}
catch (Exception e) {
[Link]("Thread " + id + " terminated because of an
error"); [Link](" Error: " + e);
[Link]();
Put uncompleted task, if any, back into the task
list. if (currentTask != null)
reassignTask(currentTask);
if (nextTask != null)
reassignTask(nextTask);
}
finally {
[Link]("Thread " + id + " ending after
completing " + tasksCompleted + " tasks");
try {
[Link]();
}
catch (Exception e) {
}
}

} //end run()

} // end nested class WorkerConnection

596 CHAPTER 11. FILES AND NETWORKING

11.6 A Brief Introduction to XML

When data is saved to a file or transmitted over a network, it must be represented in some way
that will allow the same data to be rebuilt later, when the file is read or the transmission is
received. We have seen that there are good reasons to prefer textual, character-based rep-
resentations in many cases, but there are many ways to represent a given collection of data as
text. In this section, we’ll take a brief look at one type of character-based data representation that
has become increasingly common.
XML (eXtensible Markup Language) is a syntax for creating data representation
languages. There are two aspects or levels of XML. On the first level, XML specifies a strict
but relatively simple syntax. Any sequence of characters that follows that syntax is a well-
formed XML document. On the second level, XML provides a way of placing further
restrictions on what can appear in a document. This is done by associating a DTD
(Document Type Definition) with an XML document. A DTD is essentially a list of things that
are allowed to appear in the XML document. A well-formed XML document that has an
associated DTD and that follows the rules of the DTD is said to be a valid XML document.
The idea is that XML is a general format for data representation, and a DTD specifies how to
use XML to represent a particular kind of data. (There is also an alternative to DTDs, known
as XML schemas, for defining valid XLM documents, but let’s ignore them here.)
There is nothing magical about XML. It’s certainly not perfect. It’s a very verbose language,
and some people think it’s ugly. On the other hand it’s very flexible; it can be used to represent
almost any type of data. It was built from the start to support all languages and alphabets. Most
important, it has become an accepted standard. There is support in just about any programming
language for processing XML documents. There are standard DTDs for describing many
different kinds of data. There are many ways to design a data representation language, but XML
is the one that has happened to come into widespread use. In fact, it has found its way into
almost every corner of information technology. For example: There are XML languages for
representing mathematical expressions (MathML), musical notation (MusicXML), molecules and
chemical reactions (CML), vector graphics (SVG), and many other kinds of information. XML is
used by OpenOffice and recent versions of Microsoft Office in the document format for o ffice
applications such as word processing, spreadsheets, and presentations. XML site syndication
languages (RSS, ATOM) make it possible for web sites, newspapers, and blogs to make a list of
recent headlines available in a standard format that can be used by other web sites and by web
browsers; the same format is used to publish podcasts. And XML is a common format for the
electronic exchange of business information.
My purpose here is not to tell you everything there is to know about XML. I will just
explain a few ways in which it can be used in your own programs. In particular, I will not say
anything further about DTDs and valid XML. For many purposes, it is su fficient to use well-
formed XML documents with no associated DTDs.

11.6.1 Basic XML Syntax

An XML document looks a lot like an HTML document (see Subsection 6.2.3). HTML is not
itself an XML language, since it does not follow all the strict XML syntax rules, but the basic
ideas are similar. Here is a short, well-formed XML document:
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<simplepaint version="1.0">
<background red=’255’ green=’153’ blue=’51’/>
11.6. A BRIEF INTRODUCTION TO XML 597

<curve>
<color red=’0’ green=’0’ blue=’255’/>
<symmetric>false</symmetric>
<point x=’83’ y=’96’/>
<point x=’116’ y=’149’/>
<point x=’159’ y=’215’/>
<point x=’216’ y=’294’/>
<point x=’264’ y=’359’/>
<point x=’309’ y=’418’/>
<point x=’371’ y=’499’/>
<point x=’400’ y=’543’/>
</curve>
<curve>
<color red=’255’ green=’255’ blue=’255’/>
<symmetric>true</symmetric>
<point x=’54’ y=’305’/>
<point x=’79’ y=’289’/>
<point x=’128’ y=’262’/>
<point x=’190’ y=’236’/>
<point x=’253’ y=’209’/>
<point x=’341’ y=’158’/>
</curve>
</simplepaint>

The first line, which is optional, merely identifies this as an XML document. This line can
also specify other information, such as the character encoding that was used to encode the
characters in the document into binary form. If this document had an associated DTD, it
would be specified in a “DOCTYPE” directive on the next line of the file.
Aside from the first line, the document is made up of elements, attributes, and textual content.
An element starts with a tag , such as <curve> and ends with a matching end-tag such as
</curve>. Between the tag and end-tag is the content of the element, which can consist of text and
nested elements. (In the example, the only textual content is the true or false in the
<symmetric> elements.) If an element has no content, then the opening tag and end-tag can be
combined into a single empty tag , such as <point x=’83’ y=’96’/>, which is an abbreviation
for <point x=’83’ y=’96’></point>. A tag can include attributes such as the x and y in
<point x=’83’ y=’96’/> or the version in <simplepaint version="1.0">. A document
can also include a few other things, such as comments, that I will not discuss here.
The basic structure should look familiar to someone familiar with HTML. The most striking
difference is that in XML, you get to choose the tags. Whereas HTML comes with a fixed, finite
set of tags, with XML you can make up meaningful tag names that are appropriate to your
application and that describe the data that is being represented. (For an XML document that
uses a DTD, it’s the author of the DTD who gets to choose the tag names.)
Every well-formed XML document follows a strict syntax. Here are some of the most
important syntax rules: Tag names and attribute names in XML are case sensitive. A name must
begin with a letter and can contain letters, digits and certain other characters. Spaces and ends-
of-line are significant only in textual content. Every tag must either be an empty tag or have a
matching end-tag. By “matching” here, I mean that elements must be properly nested; if a tag is
inside some element, then the matching end-tag must also be inside that element. A document
must have a root element , which contains all the other elements. The root element in the above
example has tag name simplepaint. Every attribute must have a value, and that value must
be enclosed in quotation marks; either single quotes or double
598 CHAPTER 11. FILES AND NETWORKING

quotes can be used for this. The special characters < and &, if they appear in attribute values
or textual content, must be written as &lt; and &amp;. “&lt;” and “&amp;” are examples of
entities. The entities &gt;, &quot;, and &apos; are also defined, representing >, double
quote, and single quote. (Additional entities can be defined in a DTD.)
While this description will not enable you to understand everything that you might en-
counter in XML documents, it should allow you to design well-formed XML documents to
represent data structures used in Java programs.

11.6.2 XMLEncoder and XMLDecoder

We will look at two approaches to representing data from Java programs in XML format. One
approach is to design a custom XML language for the specific data structures that you want to
represent. We will consider this approach in the next subsection. First, we’ll look at an easy way
to store data in XML files and to read those files back into a program. The technique uses the
classes XMLEncoder and XMLDecoder. These classes are defined in the package
[Link]. An XMLEncoder can be used to write objects to an OutputStream in XML form.
An XMLDecoder can be used to read the output of an XMLEncoder and reconstruct the objects
that were written by it. XMLEncoder and XMLDecoder have much the same functionality as
ObjectOutputStream and ObjectInputStream and are used in much the same way. In fact, you
don’t even have to know anything about XML to use them. However, you do need to know a little
about Java beans.
A Java bean is just an object that has certain characteristics. The class that defines a
Java bean must be a public class. It must have a constructor that takes no parameters. It
should have a “get” method and a “set” method for each of its important instance variables.
(See Subsection 5.1.3). The last rule is a little vague. The idea is that is should be possible
to inspect all aspects of the object’s state by calling “get” methods, and it should be possible
to set all aspects of the state by calling “set” methods. A bean is not required to implement
any particular interface; it is recognized as a bean just by having the right
characteristics. Usually, Java beans are passive data structures that are acted upon by
other objects but don’t do much themselves.
XMLEncoder and XMLDecoder can’t be used with arbitrary objects; they can only be used
with beans. When an XMLEncoder writes an object, it uses the “get” methods of that object to
find out what information needs to be saved. When an XMLDecoder reconstructs an object, it
creates the object using the constructor with no parameters and it uses “set” methods to restore
the object’s state to the values that were saved by the XMLEncoder. (Some standard java
classes are processed using additional techniques. For example, a di fferent constructor might
be used, and other methods might be used to inspect and restore the state.)
For an example, we return to the same SimplePaint example that was used in
Subsec-tion 11.3.4. Suppose that we want to use XMLEncoder and XMLDecoder to create
and read files in that program. Part of the data for a SimplePaint sketch is stored in
objects of type CurveData, defined as:
private static class CurveData {
Color color; // The color of the curve.
boolean symmetric; // Are reflections also drawn?
ArrayList<Point> points; // The points on the curve.
}

To use such objects with XMLEncoder and XMLDecoder, we have to modify this class so that
11.6. A BRIEF INTRODUCTION TO XML 599

it follows the Java bean pattern. The class has to be public, and we need get and set
methods for each instance variable. This gives:
public static class CurveData {
private Color color; // The color of the curve.
private boolean symmetric; // Are reflections also
drawn? private ArrayList<Point> points; // The points
on the curve. public Color getColor() {
return color;
}
public void setColor(Color color) {
[Link] = color;
}
public ArrayList<Point> getPoints() {
return points;
}
public void setPoints(ArrayList<Point>
points) { [Link] = points;
}
public boolean isSymmetric() {
return symmetric;
}
public void setSymmetric(boolean symmetric)
{ [Link] = symmetric;
}
}

I didn’t really need to make the instance variables private, but bean properties are
usually private and are accessed only through their get and set methods.
At this point, we might define another bean class, SketchData, to hold all the necessary data
for representing the user’s picture. If we did that, we could write the data to a file with a single
output statement. In my program, however, I decided to write the data in several pieces.
An XMLEncoder can be constructed to write to any output stream. The output stream is
specified in the encoder’s constructor. For example, to create an encoder for writing to a file:
XMLEncoder encoder;
try {
FileOutputStream stream = new FileOutputStream(selectedFile);
encoder = new XMLEncoder( stream );
.
.

Once an encoder has been created, its writeObject() method is used to write objects,
coded into XML form, to the stream. In the SimplePaint program, I save the background
color, the number of curves in the picture, and the data for each curve. The curve data are
stored in a list of type ArrayList<CurveData> named curves. So, a complete
representation of the user’s picture can be created with:
[Link](getBackground());
[Link](new Integer([Link]()));
for (CurveData c : curves)
[Link](c);
[Link]();
600 CHAPTER 11. FILES AND NETWORKING

When reading the data back into the program, an XMLDecoder is created to read from
an input file stream. The objects are then read, using the decoder’s readObject()
method, in the same order in which they were written. Since the return type of
readObject() is Object, the returned values must be type-cast to their correct type:
Color bgColor = (Color)[Link](); Integer curveCt
= (Integer)[Link](); ArrayList<CurveData>
newCurves = new ArrayList<CurveData>(); for (int i = 0; i <
curveCt; i++) {
CurveData c = (CurveData)[Link]();
[Link](c);
}
[Link]();
curves = newCurves; // Replace the program’s data with data from the file.
setBackground(bgColor);
repaint();

You can look at the sample program [Link] to see this

code in the context of a complete program. Files are created by the method
doSaveAsXML() and are read by doOpenAsXML().
The XML format used by XMLEncoder and XMLDecoder is more robust than the binary
format used for object streams and is more appropriate for long-term storage of objects in files.

11.6.3 Working With the DOM

The output produced by an XMLEncoder tends to be long and not very easy for a human reader
to understand. It would be nice to represent data in a more compact XML format that uses
meaningful tag names to describe the data and makes more sense to human readers. We’ll look
at yet another version of SimplePaint that does just that. See [Link] for
the source code. The sample XML document shown earlier in this section was produced by this
program. I designed the format of that document to represent all the data needed to reconstruct
a picture in SimplePaint. The document encodes the background color of the picture and a
list of curves. Each <curve> element contains the data from one object of type CurveData.
It is easy enough to write data in a customized XML format, although we have to be very
careful to follow all the syntax rules. Here is how I write the data for a SimplePaint
picture to a PrintWriter, out:
[Link]("<?xml version=\"1.0\"?>");
[Link]("<simplepaint version=\"1.0\">");
Color bgColor = getBackground();
[Link](" <background red=’" + [Link]() + "’ green=’"
+ [Link]() + "’ blue=’" + [Link]() +
"’/>");
for (CurveData c : curves) {
[Link](" <curve>");
[Link](" <color red=’" + [Link]() + "’ green=’" +
[Link]() + "’ blue=’" + [Link]() + "’/>");
[Link](" <symmetric>" + [Link] + "</symmetric>");
for (Point pt : [Link])
[Link](" <point x=’" + pt.x + "’ y=’" + pt.y + "’/>");
[Link](" </curve>");
}
[Link]("</simplepaint>");
11.6. A BRIEF INTRODUCTION TO XML 601

Reading the data back into the program is another matter. To reconstruct the data
structure represented by the XML Document, it is necessary to parse the document and
extract the data from it. Fortunately, Java has a standard API for parsing and processing
XML Documents. (Actually, it has two, but we will only look at one of them.)
A well-formed XML document has a certain structure, consisting of elements containing
attributes, nested elements, and textual content. It’s possible to build a data structure in the
computer’s memory that corresponds to the structure and content of the document. Of
course, there are many ways to do this, but there is one common standard representation
known as the Document Object Model , or DOM. The DOM specifies how to build data
structures to represent XML documents, and it specifies some standard methods for
accessing the data in that structure. The data structure is a kind of tree whose structure
mirrors the structure of the document. The tree is constructed from nodes of various types.
There are nodes to represent elements, attributes, and text. (The tree can also contain
several other types of node, representing aspects of XML that we can ignore here.)
Attributes and text can be processed without directly manipulating the corresponding nodes,
so we will be concerned almost entirely with element nodes.
The sample program [Link] lets you experiment with XML and the DOM. It has
a text area where you can enter an XML document. Initially, the input area contains the
sample XML document from this section. When you click a button named “Parse XML
Input”, the program will attempt to read the XML from the input box and build a DOM
representation of that document. If the input is not legal XML, an error message is
displayed. If it is legal, the program will traverse the DOM representation and display a list of
elements, attributes, and textual content that it encounteres. (The program uses a few
techniques that I won’t discuss here.)
In Java, the DOM representation of an XML document file can be created with just two
statements. If selectedFile is a variable of type File that represents the XML file, then
DocumentBuilder docReader
[Link]().newDocumentBuilder();
xmldoc = [Link](selectedFile);

will open the file, read its contents, and build the DOM representation. The classes Document-
Builder and DocumentBuilderFactory are both defined in the package [Link].
The method [Link]() does the actual work. It will throw an exception if it can’t
read the file or if the file does not contain a legal XML document. If it succeeds, then the value
returned by [Link]() is an object that represents the entire XML document. (This
is a very complex task! It has been coded once and for all into a method that can be used very
easily in any Java program. We see the benefit of using a standardized syntax.)
The structure of the DOM data structure is defined in the package [Link], which
contains several data types that represent an XML document as a whole and the individual
nodes in a document. The “org.w3c” in the name refers to the World Wide Web Consortium,
W3C, which is the standards organization for the Web. DOM, like XML, is a general
standard, not just a Java standard. The data types that we need here are Document, Node,
Element, and NodeList. (They are defined as interfaces rather than classes, but that
fact is not relevant here.) We can use methods that are defined in these data types to
access the data in the DOM representation of an XML document.
An object of type Document represents an entire XML document. The return value of
[Link]()—xmldoc in the above example—is of type Document. We will only
need one one method from this class: If xmldoc is of type Document, then
602 CHAPTER 11. FILES AND NETWORKING

[Link]()

returns a value of type Element that represents the root element of the document. (Recall
that this is the top-level element that contains all the other elements.) In the sample XML
document from earlier in this section, the root element consists of the tag <simplepaint
version="1.0">, the end-tag </simplepaint>, and everything in between. The
elements that are nested inside the root element are represented by their own nodes, which
are said to be children of the root node. An object of type Element contains several useful
methods. If element is of type Element, then we have:
[Link]() — returns a String containing the name that is used in the
ele-ment’s tag. For example, the name of a <curve> element is the string “curve”.
[Link](attrName) — if attrName is the name of an attribute in
the element, then this method returns the value of that attribute. For the element,
<point x="83" y="42"/>, [Link]("x") would return the
string “83”. Note that the return value is always a String, even if the attribute is
supposed to represent a numerical value. If the element has no attribute with the
specified name, then the return value is an empty string.
[Link]() — returns a String containing all the textual content that
is contained in the element. Note that this includes text that is contained inside other
elements that are nested inside the element.
[Link]() — returns a value of type NodeList that contains all the
Nodes that are children of the element. The list includes nodes representing other elements
and textual content that are directly nested in the element (as well as some other types of
node that I don’t care about here). The getChildNodes() method makes it possible to
traverse the entire DOM data structure by starting with the root element, looking at children
of the root element, children of the children, and so on. (There is a similar method that
returns the attributes of the element, but I won’t be using it here.)
[Link](tagName) — returns a NodeList that contains all the
nodes representing all elements that are are nested inside element and which have the given
tag name. Note that this includes elements that are nested to any level, not just elements that
are directly contained inside element. The getElementsByTagName() method allows you
to reach into the document and pull out specific data that you are interested in.

An object of type NodeList represents a list of Nodes. It does not use the API defined for lists
in the Java Collection Framework. Instead, a value, nodeList, of type NodeList has two
methods: [Link]() returns the number of nodes in the list, and
[Link](i) returns the node at position i, where the positions are numbered 0, 1,
. . , [Link]() - 1. Note that the return value of [Link]() is of
type Node, and it might have to be type-cast to a more specific node type before it is used.
Knowing just this much, you can do the most common types of processing of DOM rep-
resentations. Let’s look at a few code fragments. Suppose that in the course of processing a
document you come across an Element node that represents the element
<background red=’255’ green=’153’ blue=’51’/>

This element might be encountered either while traversing the document with getChildNodes() or in
the result of a call to getElementsByTagName("background"). Our goal is to reconstruct the data
structure represented by the document, and this element represents part of that data. In this case, the
element represents a color, and the red, green, and blue components are given
11.6. A BRIEF INTRODUCTION TO XML 603

by the attributes of the element. If element is a variable that refers to the node, the color
can be obtained by saying:
int r = [Link]( [Link]("red") );
int g = [Link]( [Link]("green") );
int b = [Link]( [Link]("blue") );
Color bgColor = new Color(r,g,b);

Suppose now that element refers to the node that represents the element
<symmetric>true</symmetric>

In this case, the element represents the value of a boolean variable, and the value is encoded in
the textual content of the element. We can recover the value from the element with:
String bool = [Link]();
boolean symmetric;
if ([Link]("true"))
symmetric = true;
else
symmetric = false;

Next, consider an example that uses a NodeList. Suppose we encounter an element that
repre-sents a list of Points :
<pointlist>
<point x=’17’ y=’42’/>
<point x=’23’ y=’8’/>
<point x=’109’ y=’342’/>
<point x=’18’ y=’270’/>
</pointlist>

Suppose that element refers to the node that represents the <pointlist> element. Our
goal is to build the list of type ArrayList<Point> that is represented by the element. We
can do this by traversing the NodeList that contains the child nodes of element:
ArrayList<Point> points = new ArrayList<Point>(); NodeList
children = [Link](); for (int i = 0; i <
[Link](); i++) {
Node child = [Link](i); // One of the child nodes of element.
if ( child instanceof Element ) {
Element pointElement = (Element)child; // One of the <point> elements.
int x = [Link]( [Link]("x") );
int y = [Link]( [Link]("y") );
Point pt = new Point(x,y); // Create the Point represented by pointElement.
[Link](pt); // Add the point to the list of points.
}
}

All the nested <point> elements are children of the <pointlist> element. The if statement in
this code fragment is necessary because an element can have other children in addition to its nested
elements. In this example, we only want to process the children that are elements.
All these techniques can be employed to write the file input method for the sample program
[Link]. When building the data structure represented by an XML file, my
approach is to start with a default data structure and then to modify and add to it as I traverse the
DOM representation of the file. It’s not a trivial process, but I hope that you can follow it:
604 CHAPTER 11. FILES AND NETWORKING

Color newBackground = [Link];

ArrayList<CurveData> newCurves = new ArrayList<CurveData>();

Element rootElement = [Link]();

if ( ! [Link]().equals("simplepaint") )
throw new Exception("File is not a SimplePaint file.");
String version =
[Link]("version"); try {
double versionNumber = [Link](version);
if (versionNumber > 1.0)
throw new Exception("File requires a newer version of SimplePaint.");
}
catch (NumberFormatException e) {
}
NodeList nodes = [Link]();
for (int i = 0; i < [Link](); i++) {
if ([Link](i) instanceof Element) {
Element element = (Element)[Link](i);
if ([Link]().equals("background")) { // Read background
color. int r = [Link]([Link]("red"));
int g = [Link]([Link]("green"));
int b = [Link]([Link]("blue"));
newBackground = new Color(r,g,b);
}
else if ([Link]().equals("curve")) { // Read data
for a curve. CurveData curve = new CurveData();
[Link] = [Link];
[Link] = new ArrayList<Point>();
[Link](curve); // Add this curve to the new list of curves.
NodeList curveNodes = [Link]();
for (int j = 0; j < [Link](); j++) {
if ([Link](j) instanceof Element) {
Element curveElement = (Element)[Link](j);
if ([Link]().equals("color")) {
int r = [Link]([Link]("red"));
int g = [Link]([Link]("green"));
int b = [Link]([Link]("blue"));
[Link] = new Color(r,g,b);
}
else if ([Link]().equals("point")) {
int x = [Link]([Link]("x"));
int y = [Link]([Link]("y"));
[Link](new Point(x,y));
}
else if ([Link]().equals("symmetric"))
{ String content = [Link]();
if ([Link]("true"))
[Link] = true;
}
}
}
}
11.6. A BRIEF INTRODUCTION TO XML 605

}
}
curves = newCurves; // Change picture in window to show the data from file.
setBackground(newBackground);
repaint();

∗∗∗
XML has developed into an extremely important technology, and some applications of it
are very complex. But there is a core of simple ideas that can be easily applied in Java.
Knowing just the basics, you can make good use of XML in your own Java programs.
606 CHAPTER 11. FILES AND NETWORKING

Exercises for Chapter 11

The sample program [Link], given as an example in Subsection 11.2.2, will

print a list of files in a directory specified by the user. But some of the files in that
directory might themselves be directories. And the subdirectories can themselves
contain directories. And so on. Write a modified version of DirectoryList that will
list all the files in a directory and all its subdirectories, to any level of nesting. You will
need a recursive subroutine to do the listing. The subroutine should have a parameter
of type File. You will need the constructor from the File class that has the form
public File( File dir, String fileName )
Constructs the File object representing a file
named fileName in the directory specified by dir.

Write a program that will count the number of lines in each file that is specified on the
command line. Assume that the files are text files. Note that multiple files can be
specified, as in:
java LineCounts [Link] [Link] [Link]

Write each file name, along with the number of lines in that file, to standard output. If an
error occurs while trying to read from one of the files, you should print an error
message for that file, but you should still process all the remaining files. Do not use
TextIO to process the files; use a FileReader to access each file.

For this exercise, you will write a network server program. The program is a simple file
server that makes a collection of files available for transmission to clients. When the
server starts up, it needs to know the name of the directory that contains the collection
of files. This information can be provided as a command-line argument. You can
assume that the directory contains only regular files (that is, it does not contain any
sub-directories). You can also assume that all the files are text files.
When a client connects to the server, the server first reads a one-line command from
the client. The command can be the string “index”. In this case, the server responds by
sending a list of names of all the files that are available on the server. Or the command can
be of the form “get filename”, where filename is a file name. The server checks
whether the requested file actually exists. If so, it first sends the word “ok” as a message to
the client. Then it sends the contents of the file and closes the connection. Otherwise, it
sends the word “error” to the client and closes the connection.
Ideally, your server should start a separate thread to handle each connection
request. However, if you don’t want to deal with threads you can just call a subroutine
to handle the request. See the DirectoryList example in Subsection 11.2.2 for
help with the problem of getting the list of files in the directory.

Write a client program for the server from Exercise 11.3. Design a user interface that will
let the user do at least two things: (1) Get a list of files that are available on the server
and display the list on standard output; and (2) Get a copy of a specified file from the
server and save it to a local file (on the computer where the client is running).

The sample program [Link], from Subsection 11.3.2, stores

name/number pairs for a simple phone book in a text file in the user’s home
directory.
Exercises 607

Modify that program so that is uses an XML format for the data. The only significant
changes that you will have to make are to the parts of the program that read and write
the data file. Use the DOM to read the data, as discussed in Subsection 11.6.3. You
can use the XML format illustrated in the following sample phone directory file:
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<phone directory>
<entry name=’barney’ number=’890-1203’/>
<entry name=’fred’ number=’555-9923’/>
</phone directory>

(This is just an easy exercise in simple XML processing; as before, the program in this
exercise is not meant to be a useful phone directory program.)

The sample program [Link] from Subsection 7.5.3 lets two players play
checkers. It would be nice if, in the middle of a game, the state of the game could be
saved to a file. Later, the file could be read back into the file to restore the game and
allow the players to continue. Add the ability to save and load files to the checkers
program. Design a simple text-based format for the files. Here is a picture of my
solution to this exercise, just after a file has been loaded into the program:

Note: The original checkers program could be run as either an applet or a stand-alone
application. Since the new version uses files, however, it can only be run as an
application. An applet running in a web browser is not allowed to access files.
It’s a little tricky to completely restore the state of a game. The program has a variable
board of type CheckersData that stores the current contents of the board, and it has a
variable currentPlayer of type int that indicates whether Red or Black is currently
moving. This data must be stored in the file when a file is saved. When a file is read into the
program, you should read the data into two local variables newBoard of type
CheckersData and newCurrentPlayer of type int. Once you have successfully read all
the data from the file, you can use the following code to set up the program state correctly.
This code assumes that you have introduced two new variables saveButton and
loadButton of type JButton to represent the “Save Game” and “Load Game” buttons:
608 CHAPTER 11. FILES AND NETWORKING

board = newBoard; // Set up game with data read from file.

currentPlayer = newCurrentPlayer;
legalMoves = [Link](currentPlayer);
selectedRow = -1;
gameInProgress = true;
[Link](false);
[Link](false);
[Link](true);
[Link](true);
if (currentPlayer == [Link])
[Link]("Game loaded -- it’s RED’s move.");
else
[Link]("Game loaded -- it’s BLACK’s
move."); repaint();

(Note, by the way, that I used a TextReader to read the data from the file into my
program. TextReader is a non-standard class introduced in Subsection 11.1.4 and
defined in the file [Link]. How to read the data in a file depends, of course, on the
format that you have chosen for the data.)
Quiz 609

Quiz on Chapter 11

In Java, input/output is done using streams. Streams are an abstraction. Explain what
this means and why it is important.

Java has two types of streams: character streams and byte streams. Why? What is the
difference between the two types of streams?

What is a file? Why are files necessary?

What is the point of the following statement?

out = new PrintWriter( new FileWriter("[Link]") );

Why would you need a statement that involves two different stream classes,
PrintWriter and FileWriter ?

The package [Link] includes a class named URL. What does an object of type URL
represent, and how is it used?

Explain what is meant by the client / server model of network communication.

What is a socket ?

What is a ServerSocket and how is it used?

Network server programs are often multithreaded. Explain what this means and why it is
true.

What is meant by an element in an XML document?

What is it about XML that makes it suitable for representing almost any type of data?

Write a complete program that will display the first ten lines from a text file. The lines should
be written to standard output, [Link]. The file name is given as the command-
line argument args[0]. You can assume that the file contains at least ten lines. Don’t
bother to make the program robust. Do not use TextIO to process the file; use a
FileReader to access the file.
610 CHAPTER 11. FILES AND NETWORKING
Chapter 12

Advanced GUI Programming

It’s possible to program a wide variety of GUI applications using only the techniques cov-ered in
Chapter 6. In many cases, the basic events, components, layouts, and graphics routines
covered in that chapter suffice. But the Swing graphical user interface library is far richer than
what we have seen so far, and it can be used to build highly sophisticated applications. This
chapter is a further introduction to Swing and other aspects of GUI programming. Although the
title of the chapter is “Advanced GUI Programming,” it is still just an introduction. Full coverage of
this topic would require at least another complete book.

12.1 Images and Resources

We have seen how to use the Graphics class to draw on a GUI component that is visible on the
computer’s screen. Often, however, it is useful to be able to create a drawing off-screen, in the
computer’s memory. It is also important to be able to work with images that are stored in files.

To a computer, an image is just a set of numbers. The numbers specify the color of each
pixel in the image. The numbers that represent the image on the computer’s screen are
stored in a part of memory called a frame buffer . Many times each second, the computer’s
video card reads the data in the frame buffer and colors each pixel on the screen according
to that data. Whenever the computer needs to make some change to the screen, it writes
some new numbers to the frame buffer, and the change appears on the screen a fraction of
a second later, the next time the screen is redrawn by the video card.
Since it’s just a set of numbers, the data for an image doesn’t have to be stored in a
frame buffer. It can be stored elsewhere in the computer’s memory. It can be stored in a file
on the computer’s hard disk. Just like any other data file, an image file can be downloaded
over the Internet. Java includes standard classes and subroutines that can be used to copy
image data from one part of memory to another and to get data from an image file and use it
to display the image on the screen.

12.1.1 Images and BufferedImages

The class [Link] represents an image stored in the computer’s memory. There are two
fundamentally different types of Image. One kind represents an image read from a source outside the
program, such as from a file on the computer’s hard disk or over a network connection. The second
type is an image created by the program. I refer to this second type as an off-screen canvas. An off-
screen canvas is a region of the computer’s memory that can be used as a

611
612 CHAPTER 12. ADVANCED GUI PROGRAMMING

drawing surface. It is possible to draw to an offscreen image using the same Graphics class
that is used for drawing on the screen.
An Image of either type can be copied onto the screen (or onto an o ff-screen canvas)
using methods that are defined in the Graphics class. This is most commonly done in the
paintComponent() method of a JComponent. Suppose that g is the Graphics object that
is provided as a parameter to the paintComponent() method, and that img is of type
Image. Then the statement
[Link](img, x, y, this);

will draw the image img in a rectangular area in the component. The integer-valued parameters
x and y give the position of the upper-left corner of the rectangle in which the image is
displayed, and the rectangle is just large enough to hold the image. The fourth parameter,
this, is the special variable from Subsection 5.6.1 that refers to the JComponent itself. This
parameter is there for technical reasons having to do with the funny way Java treats image files.
For most applications, you don’t need to understand this, but here is how it works:
[Link]() does not actually draw the image in all cases. It is possible that the complete
image is not available when this method is called; this can happen, for example, if the image has
to be read from a file. In that case, [Link]() merely initiates the drawing of the image
and returns immediately. Pieces of the image are drawn later, asynchronously, as they become
available. The question is, how do they get drawn? That’s where the fourth parameter to the
drawImage method comes in. The fourth parameter is something called an ImageObserver.
When a piece of the image becomes available to be drawn, the system will inform the
ImageObserver, and that piece of the image will appear on the screen. Any JComponent object
can act as an ImageObserver. The drawImage method returns a boolean value to indicate
whether the image has actually been drawn or not when the method returns. When drawing an
image that you have created in the computer’s memory, or one that you are sure has already
been completely loaded, you can set the ImageObserver parameter to null.
There are a few useful variations of the drawImage() method. For example, it is possible
to scale the image as it is drawn to a specified width and height. This is done with the command
[Link](img, x, y, width, height, imageObserver);

The parameters width and height give the size of the rectangle in which the image is displayed.
Another version makes it possible to draw just part of the image. In the command:
[Link](img, dest x1, dest y1, dest x2, dest y2,
source x1, source y1, source x2, source y2, imageObserver);

the integers source x1, source y1, source x2, and source y2 specify the top-left and
bottom-right corners of a rectangular region in the source image. The integers dest x1, dest y1,
dest x2, and dest y2 specify the corners of a region in the destination graphics context. The
specified rectangle in the image is drawn, with scaling if necessary, to the specified rectangle in the
graphics context. For an example in which this is useful, consider a card game that needs to display
52 different cards. Dealing with 52 image files can be cumbersome and inefficient, especially for
downloading over the Internet. So, all the cards might be put into a single image:
12.1. IMAGES AND RESOURCES 613

(This image is from the Gnome desktop project, [Link] and is shown here
much smaller than its actual size.) Now, only one Image object is needed. Drawing one card
means drawing a rectangular region from the image. This technique is used in a variation of
the sample program [Link] from Subsection 6.7.6. In the original version, the
cards are represented by textual descriptions such as “King of Hearts.” In the new version,
[Link], the cards are shown as images. An applet version of the
program can be found in the on-line version of this section.
In the program, the cards are drawn using the following method. The instance variable
cardImages is a variable of type Image that represents the image that is shown above,
containing 52 cards, plus two Jokers and a face-down card. Each card is 79 by 123 pixels.
These numbers are used, together with the suit and value of the card, to compute the
corners of the source rectangle for the drawImage() command:
/**
Draws a card in a 79x123 pixel rectangle with its
upper left corner at a specified point (x,y). Drawing the card
requires the image file "[Link]".
@param g The graphics context used for drawing the card.
@param card The card that is to be drawn. If the value is null, then a
face-down card is drawn.
@param x the x-coord of the upper left corner of the card
@param y the y-coord of the upper left corner of the card
*/
public void drawCard(Graphics g, Card card, int x, int y) {

int cx; // x-coord of upper left corner of the card inside cardsImage
int cy; // y-coord of upper left corner of the card inside cardsImage
if (card == null) {
cy = 4*123; // coords for a face-down card.
cx = 2*79;
}
else {
614 CHAPTER 12. ADVANCED GUI PROGRAMMING

cx = ([Link]()-1)*79;
switch ([Link]()) {
case [Link]:
cy = 0;
break;
case [Link]:
cy = 123;
break;
case [Link]:
cy = 2*123;
break;
default: // spades
cy = 3*123;
break;
}
}
[Link](cardImages,x,y,x+79,y+123,cx,cy,cx+79,cy+123,this);
}

I will tell you later in this section how the image file, [Link], can be loaded into the program.
∗∗∗
In addition to images loaded from files, it is possible to create images by drawing to an
off-screen canvas. An off-screen canvas can be represented by an object belonging to the
class BufferedImage, which is defined in the package [Link]. BufferedImage
is a subclass of Image, so that once you have a BufferedImage, you can copy it into a
graphics context g using one of the [Link]() methods, just as you would do with
any other image. A BufferedImage can be created using the constructor
public BufferedImage(int width, int height, int imageType)

where width and height specify the width and height of the image in pixels, and
imageType can be one of several constants that are defined in the Bu fferedImage. The image
type specifies how the color of each pixel is represented. The most likely value for imageType
is [Link] INT RGB, which specifies that the color of each pixel is a usual
RGB color, with red, green and blue components in the range 0 to 255. The image type
[Link] INT ARGB represents an RGB image with “transparency”; see the next
section for more information on this. The image type [Link] BYTE GRAY can
be used to create a grayscale image in which the only possible colors are shades of gray.
To draw to a BufferedImage, you need a graphics context that is set up to do its drawing
on the image. If OSC is of type BufferedImage, then the method
[Link]()

returns an object of type Graphics that can be used for drawing on the image.
There are several reasons why a programmer might want to draw to an off-screen canvas. One is to simply
keep a copy of an image that is shown on the screen. Remember that a picture that is drawn on a component
can be lost, for example when the component is covered by another window. This means that you have to be
able to redraw the picture on demand, and that in turn means keeping enough information around to enable
you to redraw the picture. One way to do this is to keep a copy of the picture in an off-screen canvas.
Whenever the on-screen picture needs to be redrawn, you just have to copy the contents of the off-screen
canvas onto the screen. Essentially, the off-screen canvas allows you to save a copy of the color of every
12.1. IMAGES AND RESOURCES 615

individual pixel in the picture. The sample program PaintWithOff[Link] is a little

painting program that uses an off-screen canvas in this way. In this program, the user can draw
curves, lines, and various shapes; a “Tool” menu allows the user to select the thing to be drawn.
There is also an “Erase” tool and a “Smudge” tool that I will get to later. A Bu fferedImage is used
to store the user’s picture. When the user changes the picture, the changes are made to the
image, and the changed image is then copied to the screen. No record is kept of the shapes that
the user draws; the only record is the color of the individual pixels in the o ff-screen image. (You
should contrast this with the program [Link] in Subsection 7.3.4, where the user’s
drawing is recorded as a list of objects that represent the shapes that user drew.)
You should try the program (or the applet version in the on-line version of this section). Try
drawing a Filled Rectangle on top of some other shapes. As you drag the mouse, the rectangle
stretches from the starting point of the mouse drag to the current mouse location. As the mouse
moves, the underlying picture seems to be unaffected—parts of the picture can be covered up by the
rectangle and later uncovered as the mouse moves, and they are still there. What this means is that
the rectangle that is shown as you drag the mouse can’t actually be part of the off-screen canvas,
since drawing something into an image means changing the color of some pixels in the image. The
previous colors of those pixels are not stored anywhere else and so are permanently lost. In fact,
when you draw a line, rectangle, or oval in PaintWithOffScreenCanvas, the shape that is shown
as you drag the mouse is not drawn to the off-screen canvas at all. Instead, the paintComponent()
method draws the shape on top of the contents of the canvas. Only when you release the mouse
does the shape become a permanent part of the off-screen canvas. This illustrates the point that
when an off-screen canvas is used, not everything that is visible on the screen has to be drawn on
the canvas. Some extra stuff can be drawn on top of the contents of the canvas by the
paintComponent() method. The other tools are handled differently from the shape tools. For the
curve, erase, and smudge tools, the changes are made to the canvas immediately, as the mouse is
being dragged.
Let’s look at how an off-screen canvas is used in this program. The canvas is represented by
an instance variable, OSC, of type BufferedImage. The size of the canvas must be the same
size as the panel on which the canvas is displayed. The size can be determined by calling the
getWidth() and getHeight() instance methods of the panel. Furthermore, when the
canvas is first created, it should be filled with the background color, which is represented in the
program by an instance variable named fillColor. All this is done by the method:
/**
This method creates the off-screen canvas and fills it with the current
fill color.
*/
private void createOSC() {
OSC = new BufferedImage(getWidth(),getHeight(),[Link] INT RGB);
Graphics osg = [Link]();
[Link](fillColor);
[Link](0,0,getWidth(),getHeight());
[Link]();
}

Note how it uses [Link]() to obtain a graphics context for drawing to the image.
Also note that the graphics context is disposed at the end of the method. It is good practice to
dispose a graphics context when you are finished with it. There still remains the problem of
where to call this method. The problem is that the width and height of the panel object are not
set until some time after the panel object is constructed. If createOSC() is called in
616 CHAPTER 12. ADVANCED GUI PROGRAMMING

the constructor, getWidth() and getHeight() will return the value zero and we won’t
get an off-screen image of the correct size. The approach that I take in
PaintWithOffScreenCanvas is to call createOSC() in the paintComponent()
method, the first time the paintComponent() method is called. At that time, the size of
the panel has definitely been set, but the user has not yet had a chance to draw anything.
With this in mind you are ready to understand the paintComponent() method:
public void paintComponent(Graphics g) {
/* First create the off-screen canvas, if it does not already exist. */

if (OSC == null)
createOSC();

/* Copy the off-screen canvas to the panel. Since we know that

the image is already completely available, the fourth
"ImageObserver" parameter to [Link]() can be null. Since
the canvas completely fills the panel, there is no need to call
[Link](g). */

[Link](OSC,0,0,null);
/* If the user is currently dragging the mouse to draw a line, oval,
or rectangle, draw the shape on top of the image from the off-screen
canvas, using the current drawing color. (This is not done if the
user is drawing a curve or using the smudge tool or the erase tool.) */

if (dragging && SHAPE [Link](currentTool)) {

[Link](currentColor);
putCurrentShape(g);
}
}

Here, dragging is a boolean instance variable that is set to true while the user is dragging the
mouse, and currentTool tells which tool is currently in use. The possible tools are defined by
an enum named Tool, and SHAPE TOOLS is a variable of type EnumSet<Tool> that contains
the line, oval, rectangle, filled oval, and filled rectangle tools. (See Subsection 10.2.4.)
You might notice that there is a problem if the size of the panel is ever changed, since
the size of the off-screen canvas will not be changed to match. The
PaintWithOffScreenCanvas program does not allow the user to resize the program’s
window, so this is not an issue in that program. If we want to allow resizing, however, a new
off-screen canvas must be created whenever the size of the panel changes. One simple
way to do this is to check the size of the canvas in the paintComponent() method and to
create a new canvas if the size of the canvas does not match the size of the panel:
if (OSC == null || getWidth() != [Link]() || getHeight() !=
[Link]()) createOSC();

Of course, this will discard the picture that was contained in the old canvas unless some ar-
rangement is made to copy the picture from the old canvas to the new one before the old
canvas is discarded.
The other point in the program where the off-screen canvas is used is during a mouse-drag
operation, which is handled in the mousePressed(), mouseDragged(), and mouseReleased()
methods. The strategy that is implemented was discussed above. Shapes are drawn to the off-screen
canvas only at the end of the drag operation, in the mouseReleased() method.
12.1. IMAGES AND RESOURCES 617

However, as the user drags the mouse, the part of the image where the shape appears is
redrawn each time the mouse is moved; the shape that appears on the screen is drawn on top of
the canvas by the paintComponent() method. For the other tools, changes are made directly
to the canvas, and the region that was changed is repainted so that the change will appear on
the screen. (By the way, the program uses a version of the repaint() method that repaints
just a part of a component. The command repaint(x,y,width,height) tells the system to
repaint the rectangle with upper left corner (x,y) and with the specified width and height. This
can be substantially faster than repainting the entire component.) See the source code,
PaintWithOff[Link], if you want to see how it’s all done.
∗∗∗
One traditional use of off-screen canvasses is for double buffering . In double-
buffering, the off-screen image is an exact copy of the image that appears on screen. In
double buffering, whenever the on-screen picture needs to be redrawn, the new picture is
drawn step-by-step to an off-screen image. This can take some time. If all this drawing were
done on screen, the user would see the image flicker as it is drawn. Instead, the long
drawing process takes place off-screen and the completed image is then copied very
quickly onto the screen. The user doesn’t see all the steps involved in redrawing. This
technique can be used to implement smooth, flicker-free animation.
The term “double buffering” comes from the term “frame bu ffer,” which refers to the re-
gion in memory that holds the image on the screen. In fact, true double bu ffering uses two
frame buffers. The video card can display either frame buffer on the screen and can switch
instantaneously from one frame buffer to the other. One frame bu ffer is used to draw a new
image for the screen. Then the video card is told to switch from one frame bu ffer to the
other. No copying of memory is involved. Double-buffering as it is implemented in Java does
require copying, which takes some time and is not perfectly flicker-free.
In Java’s older AWT graphical API, it was up to the programmer to do double bu ffering
by hand. In the Swing graphical API, double buffering is applied automatically by the
system, and the programmer doesn’t have to worry about it. (It is possible to turn this
automatic double buffering off in Swing, but there is seldom a good reason to do so.)
One final historical note about off-screen canvasses: There is an alternative way to
create them. The Component class defines the following instance method, which can be
used in any GUI component object:
public Image createImage(int width, int height)

This method creates an Image with a specified width and height. You can use this image as
an off-screen canvas in the same way that you would a BufferedImage. In fact, you can
expect that in a modern version of Java, the image that is returned by this method is in fact
a BufferedImage. The createImage() method was part of Java from the beginning,
before the BufferedImage class was introduced.

12.1.2 Working With Pixels

One good reason to use a BufferedImage is that it allows easy access to the colors of
individual pixels. If image is of type BufferedImage, then we have the methods:

[Link](x,y) — returns an int that encodes the color of the pixel at coordinates
(x,y) in the image. The values of the integers x and y must lie within the image. That is,
618 CHAPTER 12. ADVANCED GUI PROGRAMMING

it must be true that 0 <= x < [Link]() and 0 <= y <

[Link](); if not, then an exception is thrown.
[Link](x,y,rgb) — sets the color of the pixel at coordinates (x,y) to the
color encoded by rgb. Again, x and y must be in the valid range. The third
parameter, rgb, is an integer that encodes the color.

These methods use integer codes for colors. If c is of type Color, the integer code for the
color can be obtained by calling [Link](). Conversely, if rgb is an integer that
encodes a color, the corresponding Color object can be obtained with the constructor call
new Color(rgb). This means that you can use

Color c = new Color( [Link](x,y) )

to get the color of a pixel as a value of type Color. And if c is of type Color, you can set a
pixel to that color with
[Link]( x, y, [Link]() );

The red, green, and blue components of a color are represented as 8-bit integers, in the
range 0 to 255. When a color is encoded as a single int, the blue component is contained in the
eight low-order bits of the int, the green component in the next lowest eight bits, and the red
component in the next eight bits. (The eight high order bits store the “alpha component” of the
color, which we’ll encounter in the next section.) It is easy to translate between the two
representations using the shift operators << and >> and the bitwise logical operators & and
|. (I have not covered these operators previously in this book. Briefly: If A and B are integers,
then A << B is the integer obtained by shifting each bit of A B bit positions to the left;
>> B is the integer obtained by shifting each bit of A B bit positions to the right; A & B is
the integer obtained by applying the logical and operation to each pair of bits in A and B;
and A | B is obtained similarly, using the logical or operation. For example, using 8-bit
binary numbers, we have: 01100101 & 10100001 is 00100001, while 01100101 |
10100001 is 11100101.) You don’t necessarily need to understand these operators. Here
are incantations that you can use to work with color codes:
/* Suppose that rgb is an int that encodes a color.
To get separate red, green, and blue color components: *;

int red = (rgb >> 16) & 0xFF;

int green = (rgb >> 8) & 0xFF;
int blue = rgb & 0xFF;

/* Suppose that red, green, and blue are color components in

the range 0 to 255. To combine them into a single int: */

int rgb = (red << 16) | (green << 8) | blue;

∗∗∗
An example of using pixel colors in a BufferedImage is provided by the smudge tool in
the sample program PaintWithOff[Link]. The purpose of this tool is to smear
the colors of an image, as if it were drawn in wet paint. For example, if you rub the middle of
a black rectangle with the smudge tool, you’ll get something like this:
12.1. IMAGES AND RESOURCES 619

This is an effect that can only be achieved by manipulating the colors of individual pixels!
Here’s how it works: when the user presses the mouse using the smudge tool, the color
components of a 7-by-7 block of pixels are copied from the o ff-screen canvas into arrays
named smudgeRed, smudgeGreen and smudgeBlue. This is done in the
mousePressed() routine with the following code:
int w = [Link]();
int h = [Link]();
int x = [Link]();
int y = [Link]();
for (int i = 0; i < 7; i++)
for (int j = 0; j < 7; j++) {
int r = y + j - 3;
int c = x + i - 3;
if (r < 0 || r >= h || c < 0 || c >= w) {
A -1 in the smudgeRed array indicates that the
corresponding pixel was outside the
canvas. smudgeRed[i][j] = -1;
}
else {
int color = [Link](c,r);
smudgeRed[i][j] = (color >> 16) & 0xFF;
smudgeGreen[i][j] = (color >> 8) & 0xFF;
smudgeBlue[i][j] = color & 0xFF;
}
}

The arrays are of type double[ ][ ] because I am going to do some computations with them
that require real numbers. As the user moves the mouse, the colors in the array are blended
with the colors in the image, just as if you were mixing wet paint by smudging it with your
finger. That is, the colors at the new mouse position in the image are replaced with a
weighted average of the current colors in the image and the colors in the arrays. This has
the effect of moving some of the color from the previous mouse position to the new mouse
position. At the same time, the colors in the arrays are replaced by a weighted average of
the colors in the arrays and the colors from the image. This has the e ffect of moving some
color from the image into the arrays. This is done using the following code for each pixel
position, (c,r), in a 7-by-7 block around the new mouse location:
int curCol = [Link](c,r);
int curRed = (curCol >> 16) & 0xFF;
int curGreen = (curCol >> 8) & 0xFF;
int curBlue = curCol & 0xFF;
int newRed = (int)(curRed*0.7 + smudgeRed[i][j]*0.3);
int newGreen = (int)(curGreen*0.7 + smudgeGreen[i]
[j]*0.3); int newBlue = (int)(curBlue*0.7 + smudgeBlue[i]
[j]*0.3); int newCol = newRed << 16 | newGreen << 8 |
newBlue; [Link](c,r,newCol);
620 CHAPTER 12. ADVANCED GUI PROGRAMMING

smudgeRed[i][j] = curRed*0.3 + smudgeRed[i][j]*0.7;

smudgeGreen[i][j] = curGreen*0.3 + smudgeGreen[i][j]*0.7;
smudgeBlue[i][j] = curBlue*0.3 + smudgeBlue[i][j]*0.7;

12.1.3 Resources
Throughout this textbook, up until now, we have been thinking of a program as made up
entirely of Java code. However, programs often use other types of data, including images,
sounds, and text, as part of their basic structure. These data are referred to as resources.
An example is the image file, [Link], that was used in the [Link]
program earlier in this section. This file is part of the program. The program needs it in order
to run. The user of the program doesn’t need to know that this file exists or where it is
located; as far as the user is concerned, it is just part of the program. The program of
course, does need some way of locating the resource file and loading its data.
Resources are ordinarily stored in files that are in the same locations as the compiled
class files for the program. Class files are located and loaded by something called a class
loader , which is represented in Java by an object of type ClassLoader. A class loader has a
list of locations where it will look for class files. This list is called the class path . It includes
the location where Java’s standard classes are stored. It generally includes the current
directory. If the program is stored in a jar file, the jar file is included on the class path. In
addition to class files, a ClassLoader is capable of locating resource files that are located on
the class path or in subdirectories of locations that are on the class path.
The first step in using a resource is to obtain a ClassLoader and to use it to locate the
resource file. In the HighLowWithImages program, this is done with:
ClassLoader cl = [Link]();
URL imageURL = [Link]("[Link]");

The idea of the first line is that in order to get a class loader, you have to ask a class that was
loaded by the class loader. Here, [Link] is a name for the object that
represents the actual class HighLowWithImages. In other programs, you would just substitute for
“HighLowWithImages” the name of the class that contains the call to getClassLoader().
The second line uses the class loader to locate the resource file named [Link]. The return
value of [Link]() is of type [Link], and it represents the location of the
resource rather than the resource itself. If the resource file cannot be found, then the return value
is null. The class URL was discussed in Subsection 11.4.1.
Often, resources are stored not directly on the class path but in a subdirectory. In that
case, the parameter to getResource() must be a path name that includes the directory
path to the resource. For example, suppose that the image file “[Link]” were stored in a
directory named images inside a directory named resources, where resources is
directly on the class path. Then the path to the file is “resources/images/[Link]” and the
command for locating the resource would be
URL imageURL = [Link]("resources/images/[Link]");

Once you have a URL that represents the location of a resource file, you could use a URL-
Connection, as discussed in Subsection 11.4.1, to read the contents of that file. However, Java
provides more convenient methods for loading several types of resources. For loading image
resources, a convenient method is available in the class [Link]. It can be used as in the
following line from HighLowWithImages, where cardImages is an instance variable of type Image
and imageURL is the URL that represents the location of the image file:
12.1. IMAGES AND RESOURCES 621

cardImages = [Link]().createImage(imageURL);

This still does not load the image completely—that will only be done later, for example when
cardImages is used in a drawImage command.
∗∗∗
The Applet and JApplet classes have an instance method that can be used to load an
image from a given URL:
public Image getImage(URL imageURL)

When you are writing an applet, this method can be used as an alternative to the
createImage() method in class Toolkit.
More interesting is the fact that Applet and JApplet contain a static method that can
be used to load sound resources:
public static AudioClip newAudioClip(URL soundURL)

Since this is a static method, it can be used in any program, simply by calling it as
[Link](soundURL) or [Link](soundURL). (This seems to
be the only easy way to use sounds in a Java program; it’s not clear why this capability is only in the
applet classes.) The return value is of type [Link]. Once you have an
AudioClip, you can call its play() method to play the audio clip from the beginning.
Here is a method that puts all this together to load and play the sound from an audio
resource file:
private void playAudioResource(String audioResourceName)
{ ClassLoader cl =
[Link](); URL resourceURL =
[Link](audioResourceName);
if (resourceURL != null) {
AudioClip sound =
[Link](resourceURL); [Link]();
}
}

This method is from a sample program SoundAndCursorDemo that will be discussed in

the next subsection. Of course, if you plan to reuse the sound often, it would be better to
load the sound once into an instance variable of type AudioClip, which could then be used to
play the sound any number of times, without the need to reload it each time.
The AudioClip class supports audio files in the common WAV, AIFF, and AU formats.

12.1.4 Cursors and Icons

The position of the mouse is represented on the computer’s screen by a small image called
a cursor . In Java, the cursor is represented by an object of type [Link]. A
Cursor has an associated image. It also has a hot spot , which is a Point that specifies the
pixel within the image that corresponds to the exact point on the screen where the mouse is
pointing. For example, for a typical “arrow” cursor, the hot spot is the tip of the arrow. For a
“crosshair” cursor, the hot spot is the center of the crosshairs.
The Cursor class defines several standard cursors, which are identified by constants such as
[Link] CURSOR and [Link] CURSOR. You can get a standard cursor by
calling the static method [Link](code), where code is one of the
constants that identify the standard cursors. It is also possible to create a custom cursor from an
Image. The Image might be obtained as an image resource, as described in the previous
622 CHAPTER 12. ADVANCED GUI PROGRAMMING

subsection. It could even be a BufferedImage that you create in your program. It should be
small, maybe 16-by-16 or 24-by-24 pixels. (Some platforms might only be able to handle
certain cursor sizes; see the documentation for [Link]() for
more information.) A custom cursor can be created by calling the static method
createCustomCursor() in the Toolkit class:
Cursor c = [Link]().createCustomCursor(image,hotSpot,name);

where hotSpot is of type Point and name is a String that will act as a name for the cursor
(and which serves no real purpose that I know of ).
Cursors are associated with GUI components. When the mouse moves over a component,
the cursor changes to whatever Cursor is associated with that component. To associate a
Cursor with a component, call the component’s instance method setCursor(cursor). For
example, to set the cursor for a JPanel, panel, to be the standard “wait” cursor:
[Link]( [Link]([Link] CURSOR) );

To reset the cursor to be the default cursor, you can use:

[Link]( [Link]() );

To set the cursor to be an image that is defined in an image resource file named
imageResource, you might use:
ClassLoader cl = [Link]();
URL resourceURL = [Link](imageResource); if
(resourceURL != null) {
Toolkit toolkit = [Link]();
Image image = [Link](resourceURL);
Point hotSpot = new Point(7,7);
Cursor cursor = [Link](image, hotSpot,
"mycursor"); [Link](cursor);
}

The sample program [Link] shows how to use predefined and

custom cursors and how to play sounds from resource files. The program has several
buttons that you can click. Some of the buttons change the cursor that is associated with the
main panel of the program. Some of the buttons play sounds. When you play a sound, the
cursor is reset to be the default cursor. You can find an applet version of the program in the
on-line version of this section.
Another standard use of images in GUI interfaces is for icons. An icon is simply a small
picture. As we’ll see in Section 12.3, icons can be used on Java’s buttons, menu items, and
labels; in fact, for our purposes, an icon is simply an image that can be used in this way.
An icon is represented by an object of type Icon, which is actually an interface rather
than a class. The class ImageIcon, which implements the Icon interface, is used to create
icons from Images. If image is a (rather small) Image, then the constructor call new
ImageIcon(image) creates an ImageIcon whose picture is the specified image. Often, the
image comes from a resource file. We will see examples of this later in this chapter

12.1.5 Image File I/O

The class [Link] makes it easy to save images from a program into files and to read
images from files into a program. This would be useful in a program such as
12.1. IMAGES AND RESOURCES 623

PaintWithOffScreenCanvas, so that the users would be able to save their work and to
open and edit existing images. (See Exercise 12.1.)
There are many ways that the data for an image could be stored in a file. Many standard
formats have been created for doing this. Java supports at least three standard image
formats: PNG, JPEG, and GIF. (Individual implementations of Java might support more.)
The JPEG format is “lossy,” which means that the picture that you get when you read a
JPEG file is only an approximation of the picture that was saved. Some information in the
picture has been lost. Allowing some information to be lost makes it possible to compress
the image into a lot fewer bits than would otherwise be necessary. Usually, the
approximation is quite good. It works best for photographic images and worst for simple line
drawings. The PNG format, on the other hand is “lossless,” meaning that the picture in the
file is an exact duplicate of the picture that was saved. A PNG file is compressed, but not in
a way that loses information. The compression works best for images made up mostly of
large blocks of uniform color; it works worst for photographic images. GIF is an older format
that is limited to just 256 colors in an image; it has mostly been superseded by PNG.
Suppose that image is a BufferedImage. The image can be saved to a file simply by calling
[Link]( image, format, file )

where format is a String that specifies the image format of the file and file is a File that
specifies the file that is to be written. (See Subsection 11.2.2 for information about the File
class.) The format string should ordinarily be either "PNG" or "JPEG", although other
formats might be supported.
[Link]() is a static method in the ImageIO class. It returns a boolean
value that is false if the image format is not supported. That is, if the specified image
format is not supported, then the image is not saved, but no exception is thrown. This
means that you should always check the return value! For example:
boolean hasFormat = [Link](OSC,format,selectedFile);
if ( ! hasFormat )
throw new Exception(format + " format is not available.");

If the image format is recognized, it is still possible that an IOExcption might be thrown
when the attempt is made to send the data to the file.
Usually, the file to be used in [Link]() will be selected by the user using a
JFile-Chooser, as discussed in Subsection 11.2.3. For example, here is a typical method for
saving an image:
/**
Attempts to save an image to a file selected by the user.
@param image the BufferedImage to be saved to the file
@param format the format of the image, probably either "PNG"
or "JPEG" */
private void doSaveFile(BufferedImage image, String
format) { if (fileDialog == null)
fileDialog = new JFileChooser();
[Link](new File("image." + [Link]()));
[Link]("Select File to be Saved");
int option = [Link](null);
if (option != [Link] OPTION)
return; // User canceled or clicked the dialog’s close box.
File selectedFile = [Link]();
624 CHAPTER 12. ADVANCED GUI PROGRAMMING

if ([Link]()) { // Ask the user whether to replace

the file. int response = [Link]( null,
"The file \"" + [Link]()
"\" already exists.\nDo you want to replace
it?", "Confirm Save",
[Link] NO OPTION,
[Link] MESSAGE );
if (response == [Link] OPTION)
return; // User does not want to replace the file.
}
try {
boolean hasFormat = [Link](image,format,selectedFile);
if ( ! hasFormat )
throw new Exception(format + " format is not available.");
}
catch (Exception e) {
[Link]("Sorry, an error occured while trying to save
image."); [Link]();
}
}

∗∗∗
The ImageIO class also has a static read() method for reading an image from a file
into a program. The method
[Link]( inputFile )

takes a variable of type File as a parameter and returns a Bu fferedImage. The return value
is null if the file does not contain an image that is stored in a supported format. Again, no
exception is thrown in this case, so you should always be careful to check the return value.
It is also possible for an IOException to occur when the attempt is made to read the file.
There is another version of the read() method that takes an InputStream instead of a file
as its parameter, and a third version that takes a URL.
Earlier in this section, we encountered another method for reading an image from a URL,
the createImage() method from the Toolkit class. The difference is that
[Link]() reads the image data completely and stores the result in a
BufferedImage. On the other hand, createImage() does not actually read the data; it
really just stores the image location and the data won’t be read until later, when the image
is used. This has the advantage that the createImage() method itself can complete very
quickly. [Link](), on the other hand, can take some time to execute.

12.2 Fancier Graphics

The graphics commands provided by the Graphics class are sufficient for many purposes.
However, recent versions of Java provide a much larger and richer graphical toolbox in the form
of the class [Link].Graphics2D. I mentioned Graphics2D in Subsection 6.3.5 and
promised to discuss it further in this chapter.
Graphics2D is a subclass of Graphics, so all of the graphics commands that you already know
can be used with a Graphics2D object. In fact, when you obtain a Graphics context for drawing on a
Swing component or on a BufferedImage, the graphics object is actually of type Graphics2D and can
be type-cast to gain access to the advanced Graphics2D graphics commands.
12.2. FANCIER GRAPHICS 625

For example, if image is of type BufferedImage, then you can get a Graphics2D for
drawing on the image using:
Graphics2D g2 = (Graphics2D)[Link]();

And, as mentioned in Subsection 6.3.5, to use Graphics2D commands in the paintComponent()

method of a Swing component, you can write a paintComponent() method of the form:
public void paintComponent(Graphics g) {
[Link](g);
Graphics g2 = (Graphics2D)g;
.
. // Draw to the component using g2 (and g).
.
}

Note that when you do this, g and g2 are just two variables that refer to the same object,
so they both draw to the same drawing surface; g2 just gives you access to methods that
are defined in Graphics2D but not in Graphics. When properties of g2, such as drawing
color, are changed, the changes also apply to g. By saying
Graphics2D g2 = (Graphics2D)[Link]()

you can obtain a newly created graphics context. The object created by [Link]() is a
graphics context that draws to the same drawing surface as g and that initially has all the
same properties as g. However, it is a separate object, so that changing properties in g2
has no effect on g. This can be useful if you want to keep an unmodified copy of the
original graphics context around for some drawing operations.

12.2.1 Measuring Text

Although this section is mostly about Graphics2D, we start with a topic that has nothing to
do with it.
Often, when drawing a string, it’s important to know how big the image of the string will
be. For example, you need this information if you want to center a string in a component. Or
if you want to know how much space to leave between two lines of text, when you draw
them one above the other. Or if the user is typing the string and you want to position a
cursor at the end of the string. In Java, questions about the size of a string can be answered
by an object belonging to the standard class [Link].
There are several lengths associated with any given font. Some of them are shown in
this illustration:
D L e es
a cd A e i n s n g c t e n
t L i n e he i g
h t
626 CHAPTER 12. ADVANCED GUI PROGRAMMING

The dashed lines in the illustration are the baselines of the two lines of text. The baseline of
a string is the line on which the bases of the characters rest. The suggested distance between
two baselines, for single-spaced text, is known as the lineheight of the font. The ascent is the
distance that tall characters can rise above the baseline, and the descent is the distance that
tails like the one on the letter “g” can descend below the baseline. The ascent and descent do
not add up to the lineheight, because there should be some extra space between the tops of
characters in one line and the tails of characters on the line above. The extra space is called
leading . (The term comes from the time when lead blocks were used for printing. Characters
were formed on blocks of lead that were lined up to make up the text of a page, covered with ink,
and pressed onto paper to print the page. Extra, blank “leading” was used to separate the lines
of characters.) All these quantities can be determined by calling instance methods in a
FontMetrics object. There are also methods for determining the width of a character and the total
width of a string of characters.
Recall that a font in Java is represented by the class Font. A FontMetrics object is asso-
ciated with a given font and is used to measure characters and strings in that font. If font is of
type Font and g is a graphics context, you can get a FontMetrics object for the font by calling
[Link](font). Then, if fm is the variable that refers to the FontMetrics object,
then the ascent, descent, leading, and lineheight of the font can be obtained by calling
[Link](), [Link](), [Link](), and [Link](). If ch
is a char-acter, then [Link](ch) is the width of the character when it is drawn in that
font. If str is a string, then [Link](str) is the width of the string when drawn in
that font. For example, here is a paintComponent() method that shows the message “Hello
World” in the exact center of the component:
public void paintComponent(Graphics g) {
[Link](g);

int strWidth, strHeight; // Width and height of the string.

int centerX, centerY; // Coordinates of the center of the component.
int baseX, baseY; // Coordinates of the basepoint of the string.
int topOfString; // y-coordinate of the top of the string.

centerX = getWidth() / 2;
centerY = getHeight() / 2;

Font font = [Link](); // What font will g draw in?

FontMetrics fm = [Link](font);
strWidth = [Link]("Hello World");
strHeight = [Link](); // Note: There are no tails on
any of the chars in the string!

baseX = centerX - (strWidth/2); // Move back from center by half the

// width of the string.

topOfString = centerY - (strHeight/2); // Move up from

center by half // the height of the string.

baseY = topOfString + [Link](); // Baseline is [Link]()

pixels // below the top of the
string.

[Link]("Hello World", baseX, baseY); // Draw the string.

}
12.2. FANCIER GRAPHICS 627

You can change the font that is used for drawing strings as described in Subsection 6.3.3.
For the height of the string in this method, I use [Link](). If I were drawing
“Goodbye World” instead of “Hello World,” I would have used [Link]() +
[Link](), where the descent is added to the height in order to take into account
the tail on the “y” in “Goodbye”. The value of baseX is computed to be the amount of space
between the left edge of the component and the start of the string. It is obtained by
subtracting half the width of the string from the horizontal center of the component. This will
center the string horizontally in the component. The next line computes the position of the
top of the string in the same way. However, to draw the string, we need the y-coordinate of
the baseline, not the y-coordinate of the top of the string. The baseline of the string is below
the top of the string by an amount equal to the ascent of the font.
There is an example of centering a two-line block of text in the sample program
[Link], which is discussed in the next subsection.

12.2.2 Transparency
A color is represented by red, blue, and green components. In Java’s usual representation, each
component is an eight-bit number in the range 0 to 255. The three color components can be
packed into a 32-bit integer, but that only accounts for 24 bits in the integer. What about the
other eight bits? They don’t have to be wasted. They can be used as a fourth component of the
color, the alpha component . The alpha component can be used in several ways, but it is most
commonly associated with transparency . When you draw with a transparent color, it’s like
laying down a sheet of colored glass. It doesn’t completely obscure the part of the image that is
colored over. Instead, the background image is blended with the transparent color that is used
for drawing—as if you were looking at the background through colored glass. This type of
drawing is properly referred to as alpha blending , and it is not equivalent to true transparency;
nevertheless, most people refer to it as transparency.
The value of the alpha component determines how transparent that color is. Actually, the
alpha component gives the opaqueness of the color. Opaqueness is the opposite of trans-
parency. If something is fully opaque, you can’t see through it at all; if something is almost
fully opaque, then it is just a little transparent; and so on. When the alpha component of a
color has the maximum possible value, the color is fully opaque. When you draw with a fully
opaque color, that color simply replaces the color of the background over which you draw.
This is the only type of color that we have used up until now. If the alpha component of a
color is zero, then the color is perfectly transparent, and drawing with that color has no
effect at all. Intermediate values of the alpha component give partially opaque colors that
will blend with the background when they are used for drawing.
The sample program [Link] can help you to understand transparency.
When you run the program you will see a display area containing a triangle, an oval, a rect-
angle, and some text. Sliders at the bottom of the applet allow you to control the degree of
transparency of each shape. When a slider is moved all the way to the right, the corresponding
shape is fully opaque; all the way to the left, and the shape is fully transparent. An applet version
of the program can be found in the on-line version of this section.
∗∗∗
Colors with alpha components were introduced in Java along with Graphics2D, but they can
be used with ordinary Graphics objects as well. To specify the alpha component of a color, you
can create the Color object using one of the following constructors from the Color class:
628 CHAPTER 12. ADVANCED GUI PROGRAMMING

public Color(int red, int green, int blue, int alpha);

public Color(float red, float green, float blue, float alpha);

In the first constructor, all the parameters must be integers in the range 0 to 255. In the
second, the parameters must be in the range 0.0 to 1.0. For example,
Color transparentRed = new Color( 255, 0, 0, 200 );

makes a slightly transparent red, while

Color tranparentCyan = new Color( 0.0F, 1.0F, 1.0F, 0.5F);

makes a blue-green color that is 50% opaque. (The advantage of the constructor that takes
parameters of type float is that it lets you think in terms of percentages.) When you create
an ordinary RGB color, as in new Color(255,0,0), you just get a fully opaque color.
Once you have a transparent color, you can use it in the same way as any other color.
That is, it if want to use a Color c to draw in a graphics context g, you just say
[Link](c), and subsequent drawing operations will use that color. As you can see,
transparent colors are very easy to use.
∗∗∗
A BufferedImage with image type [Link] INT ARGB can use
transparency. The color of each pixel in the image can have its own alpha component, which
tells how transparent that pixel will be when the image is drawn over some background. A pixel
whose alpha component is zero is perfectly transparent, and has no e ffect at all when the image
is drawn; in effect, it’s not part of the image at all. It is also possible for pixels to be partly
transparent. When an image is saved to a file, information about transparency might be lost,
depending on the file format. The PNG image format supports transparency; JPEG does not. (If
you look at the images of playing cards that are used in the program HighLowWithImages in
Subsection 12.1.1, you might notice that the tips of the corners of the cards are fully transparent.
The card images are from a PNG file, [Link].)
If you want to experiment with transparency in BufferedImages, I suggest that you start
by making the entire canvas fully transparent, before you draw anything else on the canvas.
Here is one way of doing this: The Graphics2D class has a method setBackground()
that can be used to set a background color for the graphics context, and it has a
clearRect() method that fills a rectangle with the current background color. To create a
fully transparent image with width w and height h, you can use:
BufferedImage image = new BufferedImage(w, h, [Link]
INT ARGB); Graphics2D g2 = (Graphics2D)[Link]();
[Link](new Color(0,0,0,0)); // (The R, G, and B values don’t
matter.)
[Link](0, 0, w, h);

As an example, just for fun, here is a method that will set the cursor of a component to be a
red square with a transparent interior:
private void useRedSquareCursor() {
BufferedImage image = new BufferedImage(24,24,[Link] INT ARGB);
Graphics2D g2 = (Graphics2D)[Link]();
[Link](new Color(0,0,0,0));
[Link](0, 0, 24, 24);
[Link]([Link]);
[Link](0,0,23,23);
[Link](1,1,21,21);
12.2. FANCIER GRAPHICS 629

[Link]();
Point hotSpot = new Point(12,12);
Toolkit tk = [Link]();
Cursor cursor = [Link](image,hotSpot,"square");
setCursor(cursor);
}

12.2.3 Antialiasing
To draw a geometric figure such as a line or circle, you just have to color the pixels that are
part of the figure, right? Actually, there is a problem with this. Pixels are little squares.
Geometric figures, on the other hand, are made of geometric points that have no size at all.
Think about drawing a circle, and think about a pixel on the boundary of that circle. The
infinitely thin geometric boundary of the circle cuts through the pixel. Part of the pixel lies
inside the circle, part lies outside. So, when we are filling the circle with color, do we color
that pixel or not? A possible solution is to color the pixel if the geometric circle covers 50%
or more of the pixel. Following this procedure, however, leads to a visual defect known as
aliasing . It is visible in images as a jaggedness or “staircasing” effect along the borders of
shapes. Lines that are not horizontal or vertical also have a jagged, aliased appearance.
(The term “aliasing” seems to refer to the fact that many di fferent geometric points map to
the same pixel. If you think of the real-number coordinates of a geometric point as a “name”
for the pixel that contains that point, then each pixel has many different names or “aliases.”)
It’s not possible to build a circle out of squares, but there is a technique that can
eliminate some of the jaggedness of aliased images. The technique is called antialiasing .
Antialiasing is based on transparency. The idea is simple: If 50% of a pixel is covered by the
geometric figure that you are trying to draw, then color that pixel with a color that is 50%
transparent. If 25% of the pixel is covered, use a color that is 75% transparent (25%
opaque). If the entire pixel is covered by the figure, of course, use a color that is 100%
opaque—antialiasing only affects pixels along the boundary of the shape.
In antialiasing, the color that you are drawing with is blended with the original color of the
pixel, and the amount of blending depends on the fraction of the pixel that is covered by the
geometric shape. (The fraction is difficult to compute exactly, so in practice, various
methods are used to approximate it.) Of course, you still don’t get a picture of the exact
geometric shape, but antialiased images do tend to look better than jagged, aliased images.
For an example, look at the image in the next subsection. Antialiasing is used to draw
the panels in the second and third row of the image, but it is not used in the top row. You
should note the jagged appearance of the lines and rectangles in the top row. (By the way,
when antialiasing is applied to a line, the line is treated as a geometric rectangle whose
width is equal to the size of one pixel.)
Antialiasing is supported in Graphics2D. By default, antialiasing is turned o ff. If g2 is a
graphics context of type Graphics2D, you can turn on antialiasing in g2 by saying:
[Link]([Link] ANTIALIASING,
[Link] ANTIALIAS ON);

As you can see, this is only a “hint” that you would like to use antialiasing, and it is even possible
that the hint will be ignored. However, it is likely that subsequent drawing operations in g2 will
be antialiased. If you want to turn antialiasing off in g2, you can just say:
630 CHAPTER 12. ADVANCED GUI PROGRAMMING

[Link]([Link] ANTIALIASING,
[Link] ANTIALIAS OFF);

12.2.4 Strokes and Paints

When using the Graphics class, any line that you draw will be a solid line that is one pixel thick.
The Graphics2D class makes it possible to draw a much greater variety of lines. You can draw
lines of any thickness, and you can draw lines that are dotted or dashed instead of solid.
An object of type Stroke contains information about how lines should be drawn, including
how thick the line should be and what pattern of dashes and dots, if any, should be used.
Every Graphics2D has an associated Stroke object. The default Stroke draws a solid line of
thickness one. To get lines with different properties, you just have to install a different stroke
into the graphics context.
Stroke is an interface, not a class. The class BasicStroke, which implements the
Stroke interface, is the one that is actually used to create stroke objects. For example, to
create a stroke that draws solid lines with thickness equal to 3, use:
BasicStroke line3 = new BasicStroke(3);

If g2 is of type Graphics2D, the stroke can be installed in g2 by calling its setStroke()

com-mand:
[Link](line3)

After calling this method, subsequent drawing operations will use lines that are three times
as wide as the usual thickness. The thickness of a line can be given by a value of type float,
not just by an int. For example, to use lines of thickness 2.5 in the graphics context g2, you
can say:
[Link]( new BasicStroke(2.5F) );

(Fractional widths make more sense if antialiasing is turned on.)

When you have a thick line, the question comes up, what to do at the ends of the line. If you
draw a physical line with a large, round piece of chalk, the ends of the line will be rounded. When
you draw a line on the computer screen, should the ends be rounded, or should the line simply
be cut off flat? With the BasicStroke class, the choice is up to you. Maybe it’s time to look at
examples. This illustration shows fifteen lines, drawn using different BasicStrokes . Lines in the
middle row have rounded ends; lines in the other two rows are simpley cut off at their endpoints. Lines of
various thicknesses are shown, and the bottom row shows dashed lines. (And, as mentioned above, only the
bottom two rows are antialiased.)
12.2. FANCIER GRAPHICS 631

This illustration shows the sample program [Link]. (You can try an applet version of
the program in the on-line version of this section.) In this program, you can click and drag in any
of the small panels, and the lines in all the panels will be redrawn as you move the mouse. In
addition, if you right-click and drag, then rectangles will be drawn instead of lines; this shows that
strokes are used for drawing the outlines of shapes and not just for straight lines. If you look at
the corners of the rectangles that are drawn by the program, you’ll see that there are several
ways of drawing a corner where two wide line segments meet.
All the options that you want for a BasicStroke have to be specified in the constructor.
Once the stroke object is created, there is no way to change the options. There is one
constructor that lets you specify all possible options:
public BasicStroke( float width, int capType, int joinType, float miterlimit,
float[] dashPattern, float dashPhase )

I don’t want to cover all the options in detail, but here’s some basic info:
width specifies the thickness of the line
capType specifies how the ends of a line are “capped.” The possible values are
[Link] SQUARE, [Link] ROUND and [Link]
BUTT. These values are used, respectively, in the first, second, and third rows of the
above picture. The default is [Link] SQUARE.
joinType specifies how two line segments are joined together at corners. Possible values are
[Link] MITER, [Link] ROUND, and [Link]
BEVEL. Again, these are used in the three rows of panels in the sample program. The default is
[Link] MITER.
miterLimit is used only if the value of joinType is JOIN MITER; just use the default value,
10.0F.
dashPattern is used to specify dotted and dashed lines. The values in the array specify
lengths in the dot/dash pattern. The numbers in the array represent the length of a solid
piece, followed by the length of a transparent piece, followed by the length of a solid piece,
632 CHAPTER 12. ADVANCED GUI PROGRAMMING

and so on. At the end of the array, the pattern wraps back to the beginning of the array.
If you want a solid line, use a different constructor that has fewer parameters.
dashPhase tells the computer where to start in the dashPattern array, for the first
seg-ment of the line. Use 0 for this parameter in most cases.

For the third row in the above picture, the dashPattern is set to new float[] {5,5}. This
means that the lines are drawn starting with a solid segment of length 5, followed by a transpar-
ent section of length 5, and then repeating the same pattern. A simple dotted line would have
thickness 1 and dashPattern new float[] {1,1}. A pattern of short and long dashes
could be made by using new float[] {10,4,4,4}. For more information, see the Java
documentation, or try experimenting with the source code for the sample program.
∗∗∗
So now we can draw fancier lines. But any drawing operation is still restricted to drawing with
a single color. We can get around that restriction by using Paint. An object of type Paint is used
to assign color to each pixel that is “hit” by a drawing operation. Paint is an interface, and the
Color class implements the Paint interface. When a color is used for painting, it applies the same
color to every pixel that is hit. However, there are other types of paint where the color that is
applied to a pixel depends on the coordinates of that pixel. Standard Java includes two classes
that define paint with this property: GradientPaint and TexturePaint. In a gradient , the color that
is applied to pixels changes gradually from one color to a second color as you move in a certain
direction. In a texture, the pixel colors come from an image, which is repeated, if necessary, like
a wallpaper pattern to cover the entire xy-plane.
It will be helpful to look at some examples. This illustration shows a polygon filled with
two different textures. The polygon on the left uses a GradientPaint while the one on the
right uses a TexturePaint. Note that in this picture, the paint is used only for filling the
polygon. The outline of the polygon is drawn in a plain black color. However, Paint objects
can be used for drawing lines as well as for filling shapes. These pictures were made by the
sample program [Link]. In that program, you can select among several di fferent
paints, and you can control certain properties of the paints. As usual, an applet version of
the program is available on line.

Gradient paints are created using the constructor

public GradientPaint(float x1, float y1, Color c1,
float x2, float y2, Color c2, boolean cyclic)
12.2. FANCIER GRAPHICS 633

This constructs a gradient that has color c1 at the point with coordinates (x1,y1) and color
c2 at the point (x2,y2). As you move along the line between the two points, the color of the
gradient changes from c1 to c2; along lines perpendicular to this line, the color is constant. The
last parameter, cyclic, tells what happens if you move past the point (x2,y2) on the line
from (x1,y1) to (x2,y2). If cyclic is false, the color stops changing and any point
beyond (x2,y2) has color c2. If cyclic is true, then the colors continue to change in a
cyclic pattern after you move past (x2,y2). (It works the same way if you move past the other
endpoint, (x1,y1).) In most cases, you will set cyclic to true. Note that you can vary the
points (x1,y1) and (x2,y2) to change the width and direction of the gradient. For example,
to create a cyclic gradient that varies from black to light gray along the line from (0,0) to
(100,100), use:
new GradientPaint( 0, 0, [Link], 100, 100, [Link] GRAY, true)

To construct a TexturePaint, you need a BufferedImage that contains the image that will
be used for the texture. You also specify a rectangle in which the image will be drawn. The
image will be scaled, if necessary, to exactly fill the rectangle. Outside the specified
rectangle, the image will be repeated horizontally and vertically to fill the plane. You can
vary the size and position of the rectangle to change the scale of the texture and its
positioning on the plane. Ordinarily, however the upper left corner of the rectangle is placed
at (0,0), and the size of the rectangle is the same as the actual size of the image. The
constructor for TexturePaint is defined as
public TexturePaint( BufferedImage textureImage, Rectangle2D anchorRect)

The Rectangle2D is part of the Graphics2D framework and will be discussed at the end of
this section. Oftern, a call to the constructor takes the form:
new TexturePaint( image,
new [Link](0,0,[Link](),[Link]() )

Once you have a Paint object, you can use the setPaint() method of a Graphics2D
object to install the paint in a graphics context. For example, if g2 is of type Graphics2D,
then the command
[Link]( new GradientPaint(0,0,[Link],100,100,[Link],true) );

sets up g2 to use a gradient paint. Subsequent drawing operations with g2 will draw using
a blue/green gradient.

12.2.5 Transforms
In the standard drawing coordinates on a component, the upper left corner of the component
has coordinates (0,0). Coordinates are integers, and the coordinates (x,y) refer to the
point that is x pixels over from the left edge of the component and y pixels down from the
top. With Graphics2D, however, you are not restricted to using these coordinates. In fact,
you can can set up a Graphics2D graphics context to use any system of coordinates that
you like. You can use this capability to select the coordinate system that is most appropriate
for the things that you want to draw. For example, if you are drawing architectural blueprints,
you might use coordinates in which one unit represents an actual distance of one foot.
Changes to a coordinate system are referred to as transforms. There are three basic types
of transform. A translate transform changes the position of the origin, (0,0). A scale transform
changes the scale, that is, the unit of distance. And a rotation transforms applies a
634 CHAPTER 12. ADVANCED GUI PROGRAMMING

rotation about some point. You can make more complex transforms by combining
transforms of the three basic types. For example, you can apply a rotation, followed by a
scale, followed by a translation, followed by another rotation. When you apply several
transforms in a row, their effects are cumulative. It takes a fair amount of study to fully
understand complex transforms. I will limit myself here to discussing a few of the most
simple cases, just to give you an idea of what transforms can do
Suppose that g2 is of type Graphics2D. Then [Link](x,y) moves the origin,
(0,0), to the point (x,y). This means that if you use coordinates (0,0) after saying
[Link](x,y), then you are referring to the point that used to be (x,y), before
the translation was applied. All other coordinate pairs are moved by the same amount. For
exam-ple saying
[Link](x,y);
[Link]( 0, 0, 100, 200 );

draws the same line as

[Link]( x, y, 100+x, 200+y );

In the second case, you are just doing the same translation “by hand.” A translation (like all
transforms) affects all subsequent drawing operations. Instead of thinking in terms of coordinate
systems, you might find it clearer to think of what happens to the objects that are drawn. After
you say [Link](x,y), any objects that you draw are displaced x units vertically and
y units horizontally. Note that the parameters x and y can be real numbers.
As an example, perhaps you would prefer to have (0,0) at the center of a component,
instead of at its upper left corner. To do this, just use the following command in the
paintComponent() method of the component:
[Link]( getWidth()/2, getHeight()/2 );

To apply a scale transform to a Graphics2D g2, use [Link](s,s), where s is the real
number that specifies the scaling factor. If s is greater than 1, everything is magnified by a
factor of s, while if s is between 0 and 1, everything is shrunk by a factor of s. The center of
scaling is (0,0). That is, the point (0,0) is unaffected by the scaling, and other points more
towards or away from (0,0) by a factor of s. Again, it can be clearer to think of the e ffect on
objects that are drawn after a scale transform is applied. Those objects will be magnified or
shrunk by a factor of s. Note that scaling affects everything, including thickness of lines and
size of fonts. By the way, it is possible to use scale factors that are less than 0. It is even
possible to use different scale factors in the horizontal and vertical direction with a command of
the form [Link](sx,sy), although that will distort the shapes of objects.
The third type of basic transform is rotation. The command [Link](r) rotates all
subsequently drawn objects through an angle of r about the point (0,0). You can rotate
instead about the point (x,y) with the command [Link](r,x,y). All the
parameters can be real numbers. Angles are measured in radians, where one radian is
equal to 180 degrees. To rotate through an angle of d degrees, use
[Link]( d * [Link] / 180 );

Positive angles are clockwise rotations, while negative angles are counterclockwise (unless
you have already applied a negative scale factor, which reverses the orientation).
Rotation is not as common as translation or scaling, but there are a few things that you can
do with it that can’t be done any other way. For example, you can use it to draw an image “on
the slant.” Rotation also makes it possible to draw text that is rotated so that its baseline
12.2. FANCIER GRAPHICS 635

is slanted or even vertical. To draw the string “Hello World” with its basepoint at (x,y) and
rising at an angle of 30 degrees, use:
[Link]( -30 * [Link] / 180, x, y );
[Link]( "Hello World", x, y );

To draw the message vertically, with the center of its baseline at the point (x,y), we can use
FontMetrics to measure the string, and say:
FontMetrics fm = [Link]( [Link]() );
int baseineLength = [Link]("Hello World");
[Link]( -90 * [Link] / 180, x, y);
[Link]( "Hello World", x - baselineLength/2, y );

∗∗∗
The drawing operations in the Graphics class use integer coordinates only. Graphics2D
makes it possible to use real numbers as coordinates. This becomes particularly important once
you start using transforms, since after you apply a scale, a square of size one might cover many
pixels instead of just a single pixel. Unfortunately, the designers of Java couldn’t decide whether
to use numbers of type float or double as coordinates, and their indecision makes things a little
more complicated than they need to be. (My guess is that they really wanted to use float, since
values of type float have enough accuracy for graphics and are probably used in the underlying
graphical computations of the computer. However, in Java programming, it’s easier to use
double than float, so they wanted to make it possible to use double values too.)
To use real number coordinates, you have to use classes defined in the package
[Link]. Among the classes in this package are classes that represent geometric shapes
such as lines and rectangles. For example, the class Line2D represents a line whose endpoints are
given as real number coordinates. The unfortunate thing is that Line2D is an abstract class, which
means that you can’t create objects of type Line2D directly. However, Line2D has two concrete
subclasses that can be used to create objects. One subclass uses coordinates of type float, and one
uses coordinates of type double. The most peculiar part is that these subclasses are defined as static
nested classes inside Line2D. Their names are [Link] and [Link]. This means that
Line2D objects can be created, for example, with:
Line2D line1 = new [Link]( 0.17F, 1.3F, -2.7F, 5.21F );
Line2D line2 = new [Link]( 0, 0, 1, 0);
Line2D line3 = new [Link]( x1, y1, x2, y2 );

where x1, y1, x2, y2 are any numeric variables. In my own code, I generally use
[Link] rather than [Link].
Other shape classes in [Link] are similar. The class that represents
rectangles is Rectangle2D. To create a rectangle object, you have to use either
[Link] or [Link]. For example,
Rectangle2D rect = new [Link]( -0.5, -0.5, 1.0, 1.0 );

creates a rectangle with a corner at (-0.5,-0.5) and with width and height both equal to
1. Other classes include Point2D, which represents a single point; Ellipse2D, which
represents an oval; and Arc2D, which represents an arc of a circle.
If g2 is of type Graphcis2D and shape is an object belonging to one of the 2D shape
classes, then the command
[Link](shape);
636 CHAPTER 12. ADVANCED GUI PROGRAMMING

draws the shape. For a shape such as a rectangle or ellipse that has an interior, only the
outline is drawn. To fill in the interior of such a shape, use
[Link](shape)
For example, to draw a line from (x1,y1) to (x2,y2), use
[Link]( new [Link](x1,y1,x2,y2) );
and to draw a filled rectangle with a corner at (3.5,7), with width 5, and with height 3, use
[Link]( new [Link](3.5, 7, 5, 3) );

The package [Link] also has a very nice class GeneralPath that can be
used to draw polygons and curves defined by any number of points. See the Java
documentation if you want to find out how to use it. There is still a large part of the
Graphics2D framework for you to explore.

12.3 Actions and Buttons

For the past two sections, we have been looking at some of the more advanced aspects of the
Java graphics API. But the heart of most graphical user interface programming is using GUI
components. In this section and the next, we’ll be looking at JComponents. We’ll cover several
component classes that were not covered in Chapter 6, as well as some features of classes that
were covered there.
This section is mostly about buttons. Buttons are among the simplest of GUI
components, and it seems like there shouldn’t be all that much to say about them. However,
buttons are not as simple as they seem. For one thing, there are many different types of
buttons. The basic functionality of buttons in Java is defined by the class
[Link]. Subclasses of this class represent push buttons, check
boxes, and radio buttons. Menu items are also considered to be buttons. The AbstractButton
class defines a surprisingly large API for controlling the appearance of buttons. This section
will cover part of that API, but you should see the class documentation for full details.
In this section, we’ll also encounter a few classes that do not themselves define buttons
but that are related to the button API, starting with “actions.”

12.3.1 Action and AbstractAction

The JButton class represents push buttons. Up until now, we have created push buttons
using the constructor
public JButton(String text);

which specifies text that will appear on the button. We then added an ActionListener to the
button, to respond when the user presses it. Another way to create a JButton is using an Action.
The Action interface represents the general idea of some action that can be performed, together
with properties associated with that action, such as a name for the action, an icon that
represents the action, and whether the action is currently enabled or disabled. Actions are
usually defined using the class AbstractAction, an abstract class which includes a method,
public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent evt)

that must be defined in any concrete subclass. Often, this is done in an anonymous inner
class. For example, if display is an object that has a clear() method, an Action object that
represents the action “clear the display” might be defined as:
12.3. ACTIONS AND BUTTONS 637

Action clearAction = new AbstractAction("Clear")

{ public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent evt) {
[Link]();
}
};

The parameter, "Clear", in the constructor of the AbstractAction is the name of the action.
Other properties can be set by calling the method setValue(key,value), which is part
of the Action interface. For example,
[Link]([Link] DESCRIPTION, "Clear the Display");

sets the SHORT DESCRIPTION property of the action to have the value “Clear the Display”.
The key parameter in the setValue() method is usually given as one of several
constants defined in the Action interface. As another example, you can change the name of
an action by using [Link] as the key in the setValue() method.
Once you have an Action, you can use it in the constructor of a button. For example,
using the action clearAction defined above, we can create the JButton
JButton clearButton = new JButton( clearAction );

The name of the action will be used as the text of the button, and some other properties of
the button will be taken from properties of the action. For example, if the SORT
DESCRIPTION property of the action has a value, then that value is used as the tooltip text
for the button. (The tooltip text appears when the user hovers the mouse over the button.)
Furthermore, when you change a property of the action, the corresponding property of the
button will also be changed.
The Action interface defines a setEnabled() method that is used to enable and disable the
action. The clearAction action can be enabled and disabled by calling
[Link](true) and [Link](false). When you do
this, any button that has been created from the action is also enabled or disabled at the same time.
Now of course, the question is, why should you want to use Actions at all? One advantage is
that using actions can help you to organize your code better. You can create separate objects
that represent each of the actions that can be performed in your program. This represents a nice
division of responsibility. Of course, you could do the same thing with individual ActionListener
objects, but then you couldn’t associate descriptions and other properties with the actions.
More important is the fact that Actions can also be used in other places in the Java API.
You can use an Action to create a JMenuItem in the same way as for a JButton:
JMenuItem clearCommand = new JMenuItem( clearAction );

A JMenuItem, in fact, is a kind of button and shares many of the same properties that a JButton
can have. You can use the same Action to create both a button and a menu item (or even
several of each if you want). Whenever you enable or disable the action or change its name, the
button and the menu item will both be changed to match. If you change the NAME property of
the action, the text of both the menu item and the button will be set to new name of the action.
You can think of the button and the menu items as being two presentations of the Action, and
you don’t have to keep track of the button or menu item after you create them. You can do
everything that you need to do by manipulating the Action object.
It is also possible to associate an Action with any key, so that the action will be performed
whenever the user presses that key. I won’t explain how to do it here, but you can look up the
documentation for the classes [Link] and [Link].
638 CHAPTER 12. ADVANCED GUI PROGRAMMING

By the way, if you want to add a menu item that is defined from an Action to a menu, you
don’t even need to create the JMenuItem yourself. You can add the action object directly to the
menu, and the menu item will be created from the properties of the action. For example, if menu
is a JMenu and clearAction is an Action, you can simply say [Link](clearAction).

12.3.2 Icons on Buttons

In addition to—or instead of—text, buttons can also show icons. Icons are represented by the
Icon interface and are usually created as ImageIcons, as discussed in Subsection 12.1.4. For
example, here is a picture of a button that displays an image of a large “X” as its icon:

The icon for a button can be set by calling the button’s setIcon() method, or by passing
the icon object as a parameter to the constructor when the button is created. To create the
button shown above, I created an ImageIcon from a Bu fferedImage on which I drew the
picture that I wanted, and I constructed the JButton using a constructor that takes both the
text and the icon for the button as parameters. Here’s the code segment that does it:
BufferedImage image = new BufferedImage(24,24,[Link] INT RGB);

Graphics2D g2 = (Graphics2D)[Link]();
[Link]([Link] GRAY); // Draw the image for the icon.
[Link](0,0,24,24);
[Link]( new BasicStroke(3) ); // Use thick lines.
[Link]([Link]);
[Link](4,4,20,20); // Draw the "X".
[Link](4,20,20,4);
[Link]();
Icon clearIcon = new ImageIcon(image); // Create the icon.

JButton clearButton = new JButton("Clear the Display", clearIcon);

You can create a button with an icon but no text by using a constructor that takes just the
icon as parameter. Another alternative is for the button to get its icon from an Action. When
a button is constructed from an action, it takes its icon from the value of the action property
[Link] ICON. For example, suppose that we want to use an action named
clearAction to create the button shown above. This could be done with:
[Link]( [Link] ICON, clearIcon );
JButton clearButton = new JButton( clearAction );

The icon could also be associated with the action by passing it as a parameter to the
constructor of an AbstractAction:
Action clearAction = new AbstractAction("Clear the Display",
clearIcon) { public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent evt) {
.
// Carry out the action.

}
}
JButton clearButton = new JButton( clearAction );
12.3. ACTIONS AND BUTTONS 639

The appearance of buttons can be tweaked in many ways. For example, you can change
the size of the gap between the button’s text and its icon. You can associate additional icons
with a button that are used when the button is in certain states, such as when it is pressed
or when it is disabled. It is even possible to change the positioning of the text with respect to
the icon. For example, to place the text centered below the icon on a button, you can say:
[Link]([Link]);
[Link]([Link]);

These methods and many others are defined in the class AbstractButton. This class is a su-
perclass for JMenuItem, as well as for JButton and for the classes that define check boxes
and radion buttons. Note in particular that an icon can be shown in a menu by associating
the icon with a menu item or with the action that is used to create the menu item.
Finally, I will mention that it is possible to use icons on JLabels in much the same way
that they can be used on JButtons.

12.3.3 Radio Buttons

The JCheckBox class was covered in Subsection 6.6.3, and the equivalent for use in
menus, JCheckBoxMenuItem, in Subsection 6.8.1. A checkbox has two states, selected and
not selected, and the user can change the state by clicking on the check box. The state of a
checkbox can also be set programmatically by calling its setSelected() method, and the
current value of the state can be checked using the isSelected() method.
Closely related to checkboxes are radio buttons. Like a checkbox, a radio button can be
either selected or not. However, radio buttons are expected occur in groups, and at most
one radio button in a group can be selected at any given time. In Java, a radio button is
represented by an object of type JRadioButton. When used in isolation, a JRadioButton acts
just like a JCheckBox, and it has the same methods and events. Ordinarily, however, a
JRadioButton is used in a group. A group of radio buttons is represented by an object
belonging to the class ButtonGroup. A ButtonGroup is not a component and does not itself
have a visible representation on the screen. A ButtonGroup works behind the scenes to
organize a group of radio buttons, to ensure that at most one button in the group can be
selected at any given time.
To use a group of radio buttons, you must create a JRadioButton object for each button
in the group, and you must create one object of type ButtonGroup to organize the individual
buttons into a group. Each JRadioButton must be added individually to some container, so
that it will appear on the screen. (A ButtonGroup plays no role in the placement of the
buttons on the screen.) Each JRadioButton must also be added to the ButtonGroup, which
has an add() method for this purpose. If you want one of the buttons to be selected
initially, you can call setSelected(true) for that button. If you don’t do this, then none of
the buttons will be selected until the user clicks on one of them.
As an example, here is how you could set up a set of radio buttons that can be used to
select a color:
JRadioButton redRadio, blueRadio, greenRadio, blackRadio;
Variables to represent the radio buttons.
These should probably be instance variables, so
that they can be used throughout the program.
ButtonGroup colorGroup = new ButtonGroup();
640 CHAPTER 12. ADVANCED GUI PROGRAMMING

redRadio = new JRadioButton("Red"); // Create a button.

[Link](redRadio); // Add it to the group.
blueRadio = new JRadioButton("Blue");
[Link](blueRadio);
greenRadio = new JRadioButton("Green");
[Link](greenRadio);
blackRadio = new JRadioButton("Black");
[Link](blackRadio);
[Link](true); // Make an initial selection.

The individual buttons must still be added to a container if they are to appear on the screen.
If you want to respond immediately when the user clicks on one of the radio buttons, you
can register an ActionListener for each button. Just as for checkboxes, it is not always
necessary to register listeners for radio buttons. In some cases, you can simply check the
state of each button when you need to know it, using the button’s isSelected() method.
All this is demonstrated in the sample program [Link]. The program
shows four radio buttons. When the user selects one of the radio buttons, the text and
background color of a label is changed. Here is a picture of the program, with the “Green”
radio button selected:

You can add the equivalent of a group of radio buttons to a menu by using the class
JRadioButtonMenuItem. To use this class, create several objects of this type, and create a
But-tonGroup to manage them. Add each JRadioButtonMenuItem to the ButtonGroup, and
also add them to a JMenu. If you want one of the items to be selected initially, call its
setSelected() method to set its selection state to true. You can add ActionListeners to
each JRadioButton-MenuItem if you need to take some action when the user selects the
menu item; if not, you can simply check the selected states of the buttons whenever you
need to know them. As an example, suppose that menu is a JMenu. Then you can add a
group of buttons to menu as follows:
JRadionButtonMenuItem selectRedItem, selectGreenItem, selectBlueItem;
These might be defined as instance variables
ButtonGroup group = new ButtonGroup();
selectRedItem = new JRadioButtonMenuItem("Red");
[Link](selectRedItem);
[Link](selectRedItem);
12.3. ACTIONS AND BUTTONS 641

selectGreenItem = new JRadioButtonMenuItem("Green");

[Link](selectGreenItem);
[Link](selectGreenItem);
selectBlueItem = new JRadioButtonMenuItem("Blue");
[Link](selectBlueItem);
[Link](selectBlueItem);

∗∗∗
When it’s drawn on the screen, a JCheckBox includes a little box that is either checked or
unchecked to show the state of the box. That box is actually a pair of Icons. One icon is shown
when the check box is unselected; the other is shown when it is selected. You can change the
appearance of the check box by substituting different icons for the standard ones.
The icon that is shown when the check box is unselected is just the main icon for the JCheckBox.
You can provide a different unselected icon in the constructor or you can change the icon using the
setIcon() method of the JCheckBox object. To change the icon that is shown when the check box
is selected, use the setSelectedIcon() method of the JCheckBox. All this applies equally to
JRadioButton, JCheckBoxMenuItem, and JRadioButtonMenuItem.
An example of this can be found in the sample program [Link], which is
dis-cussed in the next subsection. That program creates a set of radio buttons that use
custom icons. The buttons are created by the following method:
/**
Create a JRadioButton and add it to a specified button group. The button
is meant for selecting a drawing color in the display. The color is used to
create two custom icons, one for the unselected state of the button and one
for the selected state. These icons are used instead of the usual
radio button icons.
@param c the color of the button, and the color to be used for drawing.
(Note that c has to be "final" since it is used in the anonymous inner
class that defines the response to ActionEvents on the button.)
@param grp the ButtonGroup to which the radio button will be added.
@param selected if true, then the state of the button is set to selected.
@return the radio button that was just created; sorry, but the button
is not as pretty as I would like!
*/
private JRadioButton makeColorRadioButton(final Color c,
ButtonGroup grp, boolean selected) {

/* Create an ImageIcon for the normal, unselected state of the button,

using a BufferedImage that is drawn here from scratch. */

BufferedImage image = new BufferedImage(30,30,[Link] INT RGB);

Graphics g = [Link]();
[Link]([Link] GRAY);
[Link](0,0,30,30);
[Link](c);
g.fill3DRect(1, 1, 24, 24, true);
[Link]();
Icon unselectedIcon = new ImageIcon(image);
/* Create an ImageIcon for the selected state of the button. */

image = new BufferedImage(30,30,[Link]

INT RGB); g = [Link]();
642 CHAPTER 12. ADVANCED GUI PROGRAMMING

[Link]([Link] GRAY);
[Link](0,0,30,30);
[Link](c);
g.fill3DRect(3, 3, 24, 24, false);
[Link]();
Icon selectedIcon = new ImageIcon(image);
/* Create and configure the button. */

JRadioButton button = new JRadioButton(unselectedIcon);

[Link](selectedIcon);
[Link]( new ActionListener() {
public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e) {
The action for this button sets the current drawing color
in the display to c.
[Link](c);
}
});
[Link](button);
if (selected)
[Link](true);
return button;
} // end makeColorRadioButton

∗∗∗
It is possible to create radio buttons and check boxes from Actions. The button takes its
name, main icon, tooltip text, and enabled/disabled state from the action. However, in Java
5.0, an action has no property corresponding to the selected/unselected state. This means
that you can’t check or set the selection state through the action. In Java 6.0, the action API
will be considerably improved, and among the changes is support for selection state.

12.3.4 Toolbars
It has become increasingly common for programs to have a row of small buttons along the
top or side of the program window that offer access to some of the commonly used features
of the program. The row of buttons is known as a tool bar . Typically, the buttons in a tool
bar are presented as small icons, with no text. Tool bars can also contain other components,
such as JTextFields and JLabels.
In Swing, tool bars are represented by the class JToolBar. A JToolBar is a container that can
hold other components. It is also itself a component, and so can be added to other containers. In
general, the parent component of the tool bar should use a BorderLayout. The tool bar should
occupy one of the edge positions—NORTH, SOUTH, EAST, or WEST—in the BorderLayout.
Furthermore, the other three edge positions should be empty. The reason for this is that it might
be possible (depending on the platform and configuration) for the user to drag the tool bar from
one edge position in the parent container to another. It might even be possible for the user to
drag the toolbar off its parent entirely, so that it becomes a separate window.
Here is a picture of a tool bar from the sample program [Link].
12.3. ACTIONS AND BUTTONS 643

In this program, the user can draw colored curves in a large drawing area. The first three
buttons in the tool bar are a set of radio buttons that control the drawing color. The fourth
button is a push button that the user can click to clear the drawing.
Tool bars are easy to use. You just have to create the JToolBar object, add it to a container,
and add some buttons and possibly other components to the tool bar. One fine point is adding
space to a tool bar, such as the gap between the radio buttons and the push button in the
sample program. You can leave a gap by adding a separator to the tool bar. For example:
[Link](new Dimension(20,20));

This adds an invisible 20-by-20 pixel block to the tool bar. This will appear as a 20 pixel gap
between components.
Here is the constructor from the ToolBarDemo program. It shows how to create the tool
bar and place it in a container. Note that class ToolBarDemo is a subclass of JPanel, and
the tool bar and display are added to the panel object that is being constructed:
public ToolBarDemo() {
setLayout(new BorderLayout(2,2));
setBackground([Link]);
setBorder([Link]([Link],2));
display = new Display();
add(display, [Link]);
JToolBar toolbar = new JToolBar();
add(toolbar, [Link]);
ButtonGroup group = new ButtonGroup();
[Link]( makeColorRadioButton([Link],group,true) );
[Link]( makeColorRadioButton([Link],group,false) );
[Link]( makeColorRadioButton([Link],group,false) );
[Link](new Dimension(20,20));

[Link]( makeClearButton() );
}

Note that the gray outline of the tool bar comes from two sources: The line at the bottom
shows the background color of the main panel, which is visible because the BorderLayout
that is used on that panel has vertical and horizontal gaps of 2 pixels. The other three sides
are part of the border of the main panel.
If you want a vertical tool bar that can be placed in the EAST or WEST position of a Border-
Layout, you should specify the orientation in the tool bar’s constructor:
JToolBar toolbar = new JToolBar( [Link] );

The default orientation is [Link]. The orientation is adjusted

automatically when the user drags the toolbar into a new position. If you want to prevent the
user from dragging the toolbar, just say [Link](false).

12.3.5 Keyboard Accelerators

In most programs, commonly used menu commands have keyboard equivalents. The user
can type the keyboard equivalent instead of selecting the command from the menu, and the
result will be exactly the same. Typically, for example, the “Save” command has keyboard
644 CHAPTER 12. ADVANCED GUI PROGRAMMING

equivalent CONTROL-C, and the “Undo” command corresponds to CONTROL-Z. (Under

Mac OS, the keyboard equivalents for these commands would probably be META-C and
META-Z, where META refers to holding down the “apple” key.) The keyboard equivalents for
menu commands are referred to as accelerators.
The class [Link] is used to represent key strokes that the user can type on
the keyboard. A key stroke consists of pressing a key, possibly while holding down one or more of the
modifier keys control, shift, alt, and meta. The KeyStroke class has a static method,
getKeyStroke(String), that makes it easy to create key stroke objects. For example,
[Link]( "ctrl S" )

returns a KeyStroke that represents the action of pressing the “S” key while holding down
the control key. In addition to “ctrl”, you can use the modifiers “shift”, “alt”, and “meta” in the
string that describes the key stroke. You can even combine several modifiers, so that
[Link]( "ctrl shift Z" )

represents the action of pressing the “Z” key while holding down both the control and the shift
keys. When the key stroke involves pressing a character key, the character must appear in the
string in upper case form. You can also have key strokes that correspond to non-character keys.
The number keys can be referred to as “1”, “2”, etc., while certain special keys have names such
as “F1”, “ENTER”, and “LEFT” (for the left arrow key). The class KeyEvent defines many
constants such as VK ENTER, VK LEFT, and VK S. The names that are used for keys in the
keystroke description are just these constants with the leading “VK ” removed.
There are at least two ways to associate a keyboard accelerator with a menu item. One
is to use the setAccelerator() method of the menu item object:
JMenuItem saveCommand = new JMenuItem( "Save..." );
[Link]( [Link]("ctrl S") );

The other technique can be used if the menu item is created from an Action. The action
property [Link] KEY can be used to associate a KeyStroke with an
Action. When a menu item is created from the action, the keyboard accelerator for the
menu item is taken from the value of this property. For example, if redoAction is an
Action representing a “Redo” action, then you might say:
[Link]( [Link] KEY,
[Link]("ctrl shift Z") );
JMenuItem redoCommand = new JMenuItem( redoAction );

or, alternatively, you could simply add the action to a JMenu, editMenu, with
[Link](redoAction). (Note, by the way, that accelerators apply only to menu
items, not to push buttons. When you create a JButton from an action, the ACCELERATOR
KEY property of the action is ignored.)
Note that you can use accelerators for JCheckBoxMenuItems and
JRadioButtonMenuItems, as well as for simple JMenuItems.
For an example of using keyboard accelerators, see the solution to Exercise 12.2.
∗∗∗
By the way, as noted above, in the Macintosh operating system, the meta (or apple) key is usually used for
keyboard accelerators instead of the control key. If you would like to make your program more Mac-friendly,
you can test whether your program is running under Mac OS and, if so, adapt your accelerators to the Mac OS
style. The recommended way to detect Mac
12.3. ACTIONS AND BUTTONS 645

OS is to test the value of [Link]("[Link]"). This function call

happens to return a non-null value under Mac OS but returns null under other operating
systems. For example, here is a simple utility routine for making Mac-friendly accelerators:
/**
Create a KeyStroke that uses the meta key on Mac OS and
the control key on other operating systems.
@param description a string that describes the keystroke,
without the "meta" or "ctrl"; for example, "S" or
"shift Z" or "alt F1"
@return a keystroke created from the description string
with either "ctrl " or "meta " prepended
*/
private static KeyStroke makeAccelerator(String
description) { String commandKey;
if ( [Link]("[Link]") == null )
commandKey = "ctrl";
else
commandKey = "meta";
return [Link]( commandKey + " " + description );
}

12.3.6 HTML on Buttons

As a final stop in this brief tour of ways to spi ff up your buttons, I’ll mention the fact that the
text that is displayed on a button can be specified in HTML format. HTML is the markup
language that is used to write web pages. A brief introduction to HTML can be found in
Subsection 6.2.3. HTML allows you to apply color or italics or other styles to just part of the
text on your buttons. It also makes it possible to have buttons that display multiple lines of
text. (You can also use HTML on JLabels, which can be even more useful.) Here’s a picture
of a button with HTML text (along with a “Java” icon):

If the string of text that is applied to a button starts with “<html>”, then the string is
interpreted as HTML. The string does not have to use strict HTML format; for example, you don’t
need a closing </html> at the end of the string. To get multi-line text, use <br> in the string to
represent line breaks. If you would like the lines of text to be center justified, include the entire
text (except for the <html>) between <center> and </center>. For example,
JButton button = new JButton(
"<html><center>This button has<br>two lines of text</center>" );

creates a button that displays two centered lines of text. You can apply italics to part of the
string by enclosing that part between <i> and </i>. Similarly, use <b>...</b> for bold
text and <u>...</u> for underlined text. For green text, enclose the text between <font
color=green> and </font >. You can, of course, use other colors in place of “green.”
The “Java” button that is shown above was created using:
646 CHAPTER 12. ADVANCED GUI PROGRAMMING

JButton javaButton = new JButton( "<html><b>Now</b> is the time for<br>" + "a

nice cup of <font color=red>coffee</font>." );

Other HTML features can also be used on buttons and labels—experiment to see what you
can get away with!

12.4 Complex Components and MVC

Since even buttons turn out to be pretty complex, as seen in the previous section, you might
guess that there is a lot more complexity lurking in the Swing API. While this is true, a lot of that
complexity works to your benefit as a programmer, since a lot of it is hidden in normal uses of
Swing components. For example, you don’t have to know about all the complex details of
buttons in order to use them effectively in most programs.
Swing defines several component classes that are much more complex than those we have
looked at so far, but even the most complex components are not very di fficult to use for many
purposes. In this section, we’ll look at components that support display and manipulation of lists,
tables, and text documents. To use these complex components e ffectively, you’ll need to know
something about the Model-View-Controller pattern that is used as a basis for the design of
many Swing components. This pattern is discussed in the first part of this section.
This section is our last look at Swing components, but there are a number of component
classes that have not even been touched on in this book. Some useful ones that you might
want to look into include: JTabbedPane, JSplitPane, JTree, JSpinner, JPopupMenu,
JProgressBar, JScrollBar, and JPasswordField.
At the end of the section, we’ll look briefly at the idea of writing custom component
classes— something that you might consider when even the large variety of components
that are already defined in Swing don’t do quite what you want.

12.4.1 Model-View-Controller
One of the principles of object-oriented design is division of responsibilities. Ideally, an
object should have a single, clearly defined role, with a limited realm of responsibility. One
application of this principle to the design of graphical user interfaces is the MVC pattern.
“MVC” stands for “Model-View-Controller” and refers to three different realms of
responsibility in the design of a graphical user interface.
When the MVC pattern is applied to a component, the model consists of the data that
represents the current state of the component. The view is simply the visual presentation of
the component on the screen. And the controller is the aspect of the component that
carries out actions in response to events generated by the user. The idea is to assign
responsibility for the model, the view, and the controller to different objects.
The view is the easiest part of the MVC pattern to understand. It is often represented by the
component object itself, and its responsibility is to draw the component on the screen. In doing
this, of course, it has to consult the model, since the model represents the state of the
component, and that state can determine what appears on the screen. To get at the model data
—which is stored in a separate object according to the MVC pattern —the component object needs
to keep a reference to the model object. Furthermore, when the model changes, the view might have to be
redrawn to reflect the changed state. The component needs some way of knowing when changes in the model
occur. Typically, in Java, this is done with events and listeners. The model object is set up to generate events
when its data changes. The view object
12.4. COMPLEX COMPONENTS AND MVC 647

registers itself as a listener for those events. When the model changes, an event is
generated, the view is notified of that event, and the view responds by updating its
appearance on the screen.
When MVC is used for Swing components, the controller is generally not so well defined
as the model and view, and its responsibilities are often split among several objects. The
controller might include mouse and keyboard listeners that respond to user events on the
view; Actions that respond to menu commands or buttons; and listeners for other high-level
events, such as those from a slider, that affect the state of the component. Usually, the
controller responds to events by making modifications to the model, and the view is changed
only indirectly, in response to the changes in the model.
The MVC pattern is used in many places in the design of Swing. It is even used for buttons.
The state of a Swing button is stored in an object of type ButtonModel. The model stores such
information as whether the button is enabled, whether it is selected, and what ButtonGroup it is
part of, if any. If button is of type JButton (or one of the other subclasses of AbstractButton),
then its ButtonModel can be obtained by calling [Link](). In the case of buttons,
you might never need to use the model or even know that it exists. But for the list and table
components that we will look at next, knowledge of the model is essential.

12.4.2 Lists and ListModels

A JList is a component that represents a list of items that can be selected by the user. The
sample program [Link] allows the user to select one icon from a JList of Icons.
The user selects an icon from the list by clicking on it. The selected icon can be “stamped”
onto a drawing area by clicking on the drawing area. (The icons in this program are from the
KDE desktop project.) Here is a picture of the program with several icons already stamped
onto the drawing area and with the “light bulb” icon selected:

Note that the scrollbar in this program is not part of the JList. To add a scrollbar to a list, the
list must be placed into a JScrollPane. See Subsection 6.6.4, where the use of JScrollPane
to hold a JTextArea was discussed. Scroll panes are used in the same way with lists and
with other components. In this case, the JList, iconList, was added to a scroll pane and
the scroll pane was added to a panel with the single command:
add( new JScrollPane(iconList), [Link] );
648 CHAPTER 12. ADVANCED GUI PROGRAMMING

One way to construct a JList is from an array that contains the objects that will appear in
the list. The items can be of any type, but only icons and strings can actually appear in the
list; an item that is not of type Icon or String is converted into a string by calling its
toString() method. (It’s possible to “teach” a JList to display other types of items; see the
setCellRenderer() method in the JList class.) In the SillyStamper program, the
images for the icons are read from resource files, the icons are placed into an array, and
the array is used to construct the list. This is done by the following method:
private JList createIconList() {
String[] iconNames = new String[] {
"[Link]", "[Link]", "[Link]", "[Link]",
"[Link]", "[Link]", "[Link]", "[Link]",
"[Link]", "[Link]", "[Link]", "[Link]"
}; // Array containing resource file names for the icon images.

iconImages = new Image[[Link]];

ClassLoader classLoader = getClass().getClassLoader(); Toolkit toolkit

= [Link]();
try { // Get the icon images from the resource files.
for (int i = 0; i < [Link]; i++) {
URL imageURL = [Link]("stamper icons/" + iconNames[i]);
if (imageURL == null)
throw new Exception();
iconImages[i] = [Link](imageURL);
}
}
catch (Exception e) {
iconImages = null;
return null;
}
ImageIcon[] icons = new ImageIcon[[Link]];
for (int i = 0; i < [Link]; i++) // Create the icons.
icons[i] = new ImageIcon(iconImages[i]);

JList list = new JList(icons); // A list containing the image icons.

[Link]([Link] SELECTION);
[Link](0); // First item in the list is currently selected.

return list;
}

By default, the user can select any number of items in a list. A single item is selected by
clicking on it. Multiple items can be selected by shift-clicking and by either control-clicking or
meta-clicking (depending on the platform). In the SillyStamper program, I wanted to
restrict the selection so that only one item can be selected at a time. This restriction is
imposed by calling
[Link]([Link] SELECTION);

With this selection mode, when the user selects an item, the previously selected item, if any, is
deselected. Note that the selection can be changed by the program by calling
[Link](itemNum). Items are numbered starting from zero. To find out the currently
selected item in single selection mode, call [Link](). This returns
12.4. COMPLEX COMPONENTS AND MVC 649

the item number of the selected item, or -1 if no item is currently selected. If multiple selec-
tions are allowed, you can call [Link](), which returns an array of
ints that contains the item numbers of all selected items.
Now, the list that you see on the screen is only the view aspect of the list. The
controller consists of the listener objects that respond when the user clicks an item in the
list. For its model, a JList uses an object of type ListModel. This is the object that knows the
actual list of items. Now, a model is defined not only by the data that it contains but by the
set of operations that can be performed on the data. When a JList is constructed from an
array of objects, the model that is used is very simple. The model can tell you how many
items it contains and what those items are, but it can’t do much else. In particular, there is
no way to add items to the list or to delete items from the list. If you need that capability, you
will have to use a different list model.
The class DefaultListModel defines list models that support adding items to and
removing items from the list. (Note that the list model that you get when you create a JList
from an array is not of this type.) If dlmodel is of type DefaultListModel, the following
methods, among others, are defined:
[Link]() — returns the number of items
[Link](index) — returns the item at position index in the list.
[Link](item) — Adds item to the end of the list; item can be any Object.
[Link](item, index) — inserts the specified item into the
list at the specified index; items that come after that position in the list are moved
down to make room for the new item.
[Link](item, index) — Replaces the item that is currently at
position index in the list with item.
[Link](index) — removes the item at position index in the list.
[Link]() — removes everything from the list, leaving it empty.

To use a modifiable JList, you should create a DefaultListModel, add any items to it that
should be in the list initially, and pass it to the JList constructor. For example:
DefaultListModel listModel; // Should probably be instance variables!
JList flavorList;

listModel = new DefaultListModel(); // Create the model object.

[Link]("Chocolate"); // Add items to the model.

[Link]("Vanilla");
[Link]("Strawberry");
[Link]("Rum Raisen");

flavorList = new JList(listModel); // Create the list component.

By keeping a reference to the model around in an instance variable, you will be able to add
and delete flavors as the program is running by calling the appropriate methods in
listModel. Keep in mind that changes that are made to the model will automatically be
reflected in the view. Behind the scenes, when a list model is modified, it generates an
event of type ListDataEvent. The JList registers itself with its model as a listener for these
events, and it responds to an event by redrawing itself to reflect the changes in the model.
The programmer doesn’t have to take any extra action, beyond changing the model.
650 CHAPTER 12. ADVANCED GUI PROGRAMMING

By the way, the model for a JList actually has another part in addition to the ListModel :
An object of type ListSelectionModel stores information about which items in the list are
currently selected. When the model is complex, it’s not uncommon to use several model
objects to store different aspects of the state.

12.4.3 Tables and TableModels

Like a JList, a JTable displays a collection of items to the user. However, tables are much
more complicated than lists. Perhaps the most important di fference is that it is possible for
the user to edit items in the table. Table items are arranged in a grid of rows and columns.
Each grid position is called a cell of the table. Each column can have a header , which
appears at the top of the column and contains a name for the column.
It is easy to create a JTable from an array that contains the names of the columns and a
two-dimensional array that contains the items that go into the cells of the table. As an
example, the sample program [Link] creates a table with two
columns named “State” and “Capital City.” The first column contains a list of the states of the
United States and the second column contains the name of the capital city of each state.
The table can be created as follows:
String[][] statesAndCapitals = new String[][] {
{ "Alabama", "Montgomery" },
{ "Alaska", "Juneau" },
{ "Arizona", "Phoenix" },
.
.
.
{ "Wisconsin", "Madison" },
{ "Wyoming", "Cheyenne" }
};
String[] columnHeads = new String[] { "State", "Capital City" };
JTable table = new JTable(statesAndCapitals, columnHeads);

Since a table does not come with its own scroll bars, it is almost always placed in a
JScrollPane to make it possible to scroll the table. In the example program this is done with:
add( new JScrollPane(table), [Link] );

The column headers of a JTable are not actually part of the table; they are in a separate
component. But when you add the table to a JScrolPane, the column headers are
automatically placed at the top of the pane.
Using the default settings, the user can edit any cell in the table. (To select an item for
editing, click it and start typing. The arrow keys can be used to move from one cell to
another.) The user can change the order of the columns by dragging a column header to a
new position. The user can also change the width of the columns by dragging the line that
separates neighboring column headers. You can try all this in the sample program; there is
an applet version in the on-line version of this section.
Allowing the user to edit all entries in the table is not always appropriate; certainly it’s not
appropriate in the “states and capitals” example. A JTable uses an object of type
TableModel to store information about the contents of the table. The model object is also
responsible for deciding whether or not the user should be able to edit any given cell in the
table. TableModel includes the method
12.4. COMPLEX COMPONENTS AND MVC 651

public boolean isCellEditable(int rowNum, columnNum)

where rowNum and columnNum are the position of a cell in the grid of rows and columns
that make up the table. When the controller wants to know whether a certain cell is editable,
it calls this method in the table model. If the return value is true, the user is allowed to edit
the cell.
The default model that is used when the table is created, as above, from an array of
objects allows editing of all cells. For this model, the return value of isCellEditable() is
true in all cases. To make some cells non-editable, you have to provide a different model for
the table. One way to do this is to create a subclass of DefaultTableModel and override the
isCellEditable() method. (DefaultTableModel and some other classes that are
discussed in this section are defined in the package [Link].) Here is how
this might be done in the “states and capitals” program to make all cells non-editable:
TableModel model = new DefaultTableModel(statesAndCapitals,columnHeads)
{ public boolean isCellEditable(int row, int col) {
return false;
}
};
JTable table = new JTable(model);

Here, an anonymous subclass of DefaultTableModel is created in which the

isCellEditable() method returns false in all cases, and the model object that is
created from that class is passed as a parameter to the JTable constructor.
The DefaultTableModel class defines many methods that can be used to modify the
table, including for example: setValueAt(item,rowNum,colNum) to change the item in
a given cell; removeRow(rowNum) to delete a row; and addRow(itemArray) to add a
new row at the end of the table that contains items from the array itemArray. Note that if
the item in a given cell is null, then that cell will be empty. Remember, again, that when
you modify the model, the view is automatically changed to reflect the changes.
In addition to the isCellEditable() method, the table model method that you are
most likely to want to override is getColumnClass(), which is defined as
public Class<?> getColumnClass(columnNum)

The purpose of this method is to specify what kind of values are allowed in the specified
column. The return value from this method is of type Class. (The “<?>” is there for technical
reasons having to do with generic programming. See Section 10.5, but don’t worry about
understanding it here.) Although class objects have crept into this book in a few places— in
the discussion of ClassLoaders in Subsection 12.1.3 for example—this is the first time we
have directly encountered the class named Class. An object of type Class represents a
class. A Class object is usually obtained from the name of the class using expressions of the
form “[Link]” or “[Link]”. If you want a three-column table in which the
column types are String, Double, and Boolean, you can use a table model in which
getColumnClass is defined as:
public Class<?> getColumnClass(columnNum) {
if (columnNum == 0)
return [Link];
else if (columnNum = 1)
return [Link];
else
return [Link];
652 CHAPTER 12. ADVANCED GUI PROGRAMMING

The table will call this method and use the return value to decide how to display and edit
items in the table. For example, if a column is specified to hold Boolean values, the cells in
that column will be displayed and edited as check boxes. For numeric types, the table will
not accept illegal input when the user types in the value. (It is possible to change the way
that a table edits or displays items. See the methods setDefaultEditor() and
setDefaultRenderer() in the JTable class.)
As an alternative to using a subclass of DefaultTableModel, a custom table model can also
be defined using a subclass of AbstractTableModel. Whereas DefaultTableModel provides a lot
of predefined functionality, AbstractTableModel provides very little. However, using Abstract-
TableModel gives you the freedom to represent the table data any way you want. The sample
program [Link] uses a subclass of AbstractTableModel to define the
model for a JTable. In this program, the table has three columns. The first column holds a row
number and is not editable. The other columns hold values of type Double; these two columns
represent the x- and y-coordinates of points in the plane. The points themselves are graphed in
a “scatter plot” next to the table. Initially, the program fills in the first six points with random
values. Here is a picture of the program, with the x-coordinate in row 5 selected for editing:

Note, by the way, that in this program, the scatter plot can be considered to be a view of the
table model, in the same way that the table itself is. The scatter plot registers itself as a listener
with the model, so that it will receive notification whenever the model changes. When that
happens, the scatter plot redraws itself to reflect the new state of the model. It is an important
property of the MVC pattern that several views can share the same model, o ffering alternative
presentations of the same data. The views don’t have to know about each other or communicate
with each other except by sharing the model. Although I didn’t do it in this program, it would even
be possible to add a controller to the scatter plot view. This would let the user drag a point in the
scatter plot to change its coordinates. Since the scatter plot and table share the same model, the
values in the table would automatically change to match.
Here is the definition of the class that defines the model in the scatter plot program. All
the methods in this class must be defined in any subclass of AbstractTableModel except for
setValueAt(), which only has to be defined if the table is modifiable.
/**
12.4. COMPLEX COMPONENTS AND MVC 653

This class defines the TableModel that is used for the JTable in this
program. The table has three columns. Column 0 simply holds the
row number of each row. Column 1 holds the x-coordinates of the
points for the scatter plot, and Column 2 holds the y-coordinates.
The table has 25 rows. No support is provided for adding
more rows. */
private class CoordInputTableModel extends AbstractTableModel {
private Double[] xCoord = new Double[25]; // Data for Column 1.
private Double[] yCoord = new Double[25]; // Data for Column 2.
Initially, all the values in the array are null, which means
that all the cells are empty.

public int getColumnCount() { // Tells caller how many columns

there are. return 3;

}
public int getRowCount() { // Tells caller how many rows there are.
return [Link];
}
public Object getValueAt(int row, int col) { // Get value from
cell.
if (col == 0)
return (row+1); // Column 0 holds the row number.
else if (col == 1)
return xCoord[row]; // Column 1 holds the x-coordinates.
else
return yCoord[row]; // column 2 holds the y-coordinates.
}
public Class<?> getColumnClass(int col) { // Get data type of column.
if (col == 0)
return [Link];
else
return [Link];
}

public String getColumnName(int col) { // Returns a name for

column header. if (col == 0)

return "Num";
else if (col == 1)
return "X";
else
return "Y";
}

public boolean isCellEditable(int row, int col) { // Can user

edit cell? return col > 0;
}
public void setValueAt(Object obj, int row, int col) {
(This method is called by the system if the value of the cell
needs to be changed because the user has edited the cell.
It can also be called to change the value programmatically.
In this case, only columns 1 and 2 can be modified, and the data
type for obj must be Double. The method fireTableCellUpdated()
has to be called to send an event to registered listeners to
654 CHAPTER 12. ADVANCED GUI PROGRAMMING

notify them of the modification to the table

model.) if (col == 1)
xCoord[row] = (Double)obj;
else if (col == 2)
yCoord[row] = (Double)obj;
fireTableCellUpdated(row, col);
}
} // end nested class CoordInputTableModel

In addition to defining a custom table model, I customized the appearance of the table in
several ways. Because this involves changes to the view, most of the changes are made by
calling methods in the JTable object. For example, since the default height of the cells was
too small for my taste, I called [Link](25) to increase the height. To
make lines appear between the rows and columns, I found that I had to call both
[Link](true) and [Link]([Link]). Some of the
customization has to be done to other objects. For example, to prevent the user from
changing the order of the columns by dragging the column headers, I had to use
[Link]().setReorderingAllowed(false);

Tables are quite complex, and I have only discussed a part of the table API here.
Nevertheless, I hope that you have learned enough to start using them and to learn more
about them on your own.

12.4.4 Documents and Editors

As a final example of complex components, we look briefly at JTextComponent and its sub-
classes. A JTextComponent displays text that can, optionally, be edited by the user. Two
subclasses, JTextField and JTextArea, were introduced in Subsection 6.6.4. But the real
com-plexity comes in another subclass, JEditorPane, that supports display and editing of
styled text, which allows features such as boldface and italic. A JEditorPane can even work
with basic HTML documents.
It is almost absurdly easy to write a simple web browser program using a JEditorPane.
This is done in the sample program [Link]. In this program, the user
enters the URL of a web page, and the program tries to load and display the web page at
that location. A JEditorPane can handle pages with content type “text/plain”, “text/html”, and
“text/rtf”. (The content type “text/rtf” represents styled or “rich text format” text. URLs and
content types were covered in Subsection 11.4.1.) If editPane is of type JEditorPane and
url is of type URL, then the statement “[Link](url);” is sufficient to load
the page and display it. Since this can generate an exception, the following method is used
in [Link] to display a page:
private void loadURL(URL url) {
try {
[Link](url);
}
catch (Exception e) {
[Link]("text/plain"); // Set pane to display plain text.
[Link]( "Sorry, the requested document was not found\n"
+"or cannot be displayed.\n\nError:" + e);
}
}
12.4. COMPLEX COMPONENTS AND MVC 655

An HTML document can display links to other pages. When the user clicks on a link, the
web browser should go to the linked page. A JEditorPane does not do this automatically, but
it does generate an event of type HyperLinkEvent when the user clicks a link (provided that
the edit pane has been set to be non-editable by the user). A program can register a listener
for such events and respond by loading the new page.
There are a lot of web pages that a JEditorPane won’t be able to display correctly, but it
can be very useful in cases where you have control over the pages that will be displayed. A
nice application is to distribute HTML-format help and information files with a program. The
files can be stored as resource files in the jar file of the program, and a URL for a resource
file can be obtained in the usual way, using the getResource() method of a ClassLoader.
(See Subsection 12.1.3.)
It turns out, by the way, that [Link] is a little too simple. A modified
version, [Link], improves on the original by using a thread
to load a page and by checking the content type of a page before trying to load it. It actually
does work as a simple web browser.
The model for a JTextComponent is an object of type Document. If you want to be
notified of changes in the model, you can add a listener to the model using
[Link]().addDocumentListener(listener)

where textComponent is of type JTextComponent and listener is of type

DocumentListener. The Document class also has methods that make it easy to read a
document from a file and write a document to a file. I won’t discuss all the things you can do
with text components here. For one more peek at their capabilities, see the sample program
[Link], a very minimal editor for files that contain styled text of type “text/rtf.”

12.4.5 Custom Components

Java’s standard component classes are often all you need to construct a user interface. At
some point, however, you might need a component that Java doesn’t provide. In that case,
you can write your own component class, building on one of the components that Java does
provide. We’ve already done this, actually, every time we’ve written a subclass of the JPanel
class to use as a drawing surface. A JPanel is a blank slate. By defining a subclass, you can
make it show any picture you like, and you can program it to respond in any way to mouse
and keyboard events. Sometimes, if you are lucky, you don’t need such freedom, and you
can build on one of Java’s more sophisticated component classes.
For example, suppose I have a need for a “stopwatch” component. When the user clicks on
the stopwatch, I want it to start timing. When the user clicks again, I want it to display the
elapsed time since the first click. The textual display can be done with a JLabel, but we want a
JLabel that can respond to mouse clicks. We can get this behavior by defining a
StopWatchLabel component as a subclass of the JLabel class. A StopWatchLabel object will
listen for mouse clicks on itself. The first time the user clicks, it will change its display to
“Timing...” and remember the time when the click occurred. When the user clicks again, it will
check the time again, and it will compute and display the elapsed time. (Of course, I don’t
necessarily have to define a subclass. I could use a regular label in my program, set up a
listener to respond to mouse events on the label, and let the program do the work of keeping
track of the time and changing the text displayed on the label. However, by writing a new class, I
have something that can be reused in other projects. I also have all the code involved in the
656 CHAPTER 12. ADVANCED GUI PROGRAMMING

stopwatch function collected together neatly in one place. For more complicated
components, both of these considerations are very important.)
The StopWatchLabel class is not very hard to write. I need an instance variable to record the
time when the user starts the stopwatch. Times in Java are measured in milliseconds and are
stored in variables of type long (to allow for very large values). In the mousePressed()
method, I need to know whether the timer is being started or stopped, so I need a boolean
instance variable, running, to keep track of this aspect of the component’s state. There is one
more item of interest: How do I know what time the mouse was clicked? The method
[Link]() returns the current time. But there can be some delay
between the time the user clicks the mouse and the time when the mousePressed() routine
is called. To make my stopwatch as accurate as possible, I don’t want to know the current time. I
want to know the exact time when the mouse was pressed. When I wrote the StopWatchLabel
class, this need sent me on a search in the Java documentation. I found that if evt is an object
of type MouseEvent, then the function [Link]() returns the time when the event
occurred. I call this function in the mousePressed() routine to determine the exact time when
the user clicked on the label. The complete StopWatch class is rather short:
import [Link].*;
import [Link].*;
/**
A custom component that acts as a simple stop-watch. When the user clicks
on it, this component starts timing. When the user clicks again,
it displays the time between the two clicks. Clicking a third time
starts another timer, etc. While it is timing, the label just
displays the message "Timing....".
*/
public class StopWatchLabel extends JLabel implements MouseListener {
private long startTime; // Start time of timer.
(Time is measured in milliseconds.)
private boolean running; // True when the timer is running.
/**
Constructor sets initial text on the label to
"Click to start timer." and sets up a mouse listener
so the label can respond to clicks.
*/
public StopWatchLabel() {
super(" Click to start timer. ",
[Link]); addMouseListener(this);
}

/**
Tells whether the timer is currently
running. */
public boolean isRunning() {
return running;
}

/**
* React when the user presses the mouse by starting or stopping
12.4. COMPLEX COMPONENTS AND MVC 657

the timer and changing the text that is shown on the

label. */
public void mousePressed(MouseEvent evt) {
if (running == false) {
Record the time and start the
timer. running = true;
startTime = [Link](); // Time when mouse was
clicked. setText("Timing....");
}
else {
Stop the timer. Compute the elapsed time since the
timer was started and display it.
running = false;
long endTime = [Link]();
double seconds = (endTime - startTime) /
1000.0; setText("Time: " + seconds + " sec.");
}
}

public void mouseReleased(MouseEvent evt) { }

public void mouseClicked(MouseEvent evt) { }
public void mouseEntered(MouseEvent evt) { }
public void mouseExited(MouseEvent evt) { }

Don’t forget that since StopWatchLabel is a subclass of JLabel, you can do anything with a
StopWatchLabel that you can do with a JLabel. You can add it to a container. You can set its
font, foreground color, and background color. You can set the text that it displays (although this
would interfere with its stopwatch function). You can even add a Border if you want.
Let’s look at one more example of defining a custom component. Suppose that—for no good
reason whatsoever—I want a component that acts like a JLabel except that it displays its text in
mirror-reversed form. Since no standard component does anything like this, the MirrorText class
is defined as a subclass of JPanel. It has a constructor that specifies the text to be displayed and
a setText() method that changes the displayed text. The paintComponent() method
draws the text mirror-reversed, in the center of the component. This uses techniques discussed
in Subsection 12.1.1 and Subsection 12.2.1. Information from a FontMetrics object is used to
center the text in the component. The reversal is achieved by using an o ff-screen canvas. The
text is drawn to the off-screen canvas, in the usual way. Then the image is copied to the screen
with the following command, where OSC is the variable that refers to the off-screen canvas, and
width and height give the size of both the component and the off-screen canvas:
[Link](OSC, width, 0, 0, height, 0, 0, width, height, this);

This is the version of drawImage() that specifies corners of destination and source
rect-angles. The corner (0,0) in OSC is matched to the corner (width,0) on the
screen, while (width,height) is matched to (0,height). This reverses the image left-
to-right. Here is the complete class:
import [Link].*;
import [Link].*;
import [Link];
/**
658 CHAPTER 12. ADVANCED GUI PROGRAMMING

A component for displaying a mirror-reversed line of text.

The text will be centered in the available space. This component
is defined as a subclass of JPanel. It respects any background
color, foreground color, and font that are set for the JPanel.
The setText(String) method can be used to change the displayed
text. Changing the text will also call revalidate() on this
component.
*/
public class MirrorText extends JPanel {
private String text; // The text displayed by this component.
private BufferedImage OSC; // Holds an un-reversed picture of the text.

/**
Construct a MirrorText component that will display the specified
text in mirror-reversed form.
*/
public MirrorText(String text) {
if (text == null)
text = "";
[Link] = text;
}
/**
Change the text that is displayed on the label.
@param text the new text to display
*/
public void setText(String text) {
if (text == null)
text = "";
if ( ! [Link]([Link]) ) {
[Link] = text; // Change the instance variable.
revalidate(); // Tell container to recompute its layout.
repaint(); // Make sure component is redrawn.
}
}
/**
Return the text that is displayed on this component.
The return value is non-null but can be an empty
string. */
public String getText() {
return text;
}
/**
The paintComponent method makes a new off-screen canvas, if necessary,
writes the text to the off-screen canvas, then copies the canvas onto
the screen in mirror-reversed form.
*/
public void paintComponent(Graphics g) {
int width = getWidth();
int height = getHeight();
if (OSC == null || width != [Link]()
|| height != [Link]()) {
12.4. COMPLEX COMPONENTS AND MVC 659

OSC = new BufferedImage(width,height,[Link] INT RGB);

}
Graphics OSG = [Link]();
[Link](getBackground());
[Link](0, 0, width, height);
[Link](getForeground());
[Link](getFont());
FontMetrics fm = [Link](getFont());
int x = (width - [Link](text)) / 2;
int y = (height + [Link]() - [Link]()) / 2;
[Link](text, x, y);
[Link]();
[Link](OSC, width, 0, 0, height, 0, 0, width, height, null);
}
/**
Compute a preferred size that includes the size of the text, plus
a boundary of 5 pixels on each edge.
*/
public Dimension getPreferredSize() { FontMetrics
fm = getFontMetrics(getFont()); return new
Dimension([Link](text) + 10,
[Link]() + [Link]() + 10);
}
} // end MirrorText

This class defines the method “public Dimension getPreferredSize()”. This

method is called by a layout manager when it wants to know how big the component would
like to be. Standard components come with a way of computing a preferred size. For a
custom component based on a JPanel, it’s a good idea to provide a custom preferred size.
Every component has a method setPrefferedSize() that can be used to set the
preferred size of the component. For our MirrorText component, however, the preferred size
depends the font and the text of the component, and these can change from time to time.
We need a way to compute a preferred size on demand, based on the current font and text.
That’s what we do by defining a getPreferredSize() method. The system calls this
method when it wants to know the preferred size of the component. In response, we can
compute the preferred size based on the current font and text.
The StopWatchLabel and MirrorText classes define components. Components don’t stand
on their own. You have to add them to an panel or other container. The sample program Cus-
[Link] demonstrates using a MirrorText and a StopWatchLabel component.
In this program, the two custom components and a button are added to a panel that uses a
FlowLayout as its layout manager, so the components are not arranged very neatly. If you click
the button labeled “Change Text in this Program”, the text in all the components will be changed.
You can also click on the stopwatch label to start and stop the stopwatch. When you do any of
these things, you will notice that the components will be rearranged to take the new sizes into
account. This is known as “validating” the container. This is done automatically when a standard
component changes in some way that requires a change in preferred size or location. This may
or may not be the behavior that you want. (Validation doesn’t always cause as much disruption
as it does in this program. For example, in a GridLayout, where all the components are displayed
at the same size, it will have no effect at all. I chose a FlowLayout for this example to make the
effect more obvious.) When the text is changed in a MirrorText
660 CHAPTER 12. ADVANCED GUI PROGRAMMING

component, there is no automatic validation of its container. A custom component such as

MirrorText must call the revalidate() method to indicate that the container that contains
the component should be validated. In the MirrorText class, revalidate() is called in the
setText() method.

12.5 Finishing Touches

In this final section, I will present a program that is more complex and more polished than those
we have looked at previously. Most of the examples in this book have been “toy” programs that
illustrated one or two points about programming techniques. It’s time to put it all together into a
full-scale program that uses many of the techniques that we have covered, and a few more
besides. After discussing the program and its basic design, I’ll use it as an excuse to talk briefly
about some of the features of Java that didn’t fit into the rest of this book.

The program that we will look at is a Mandelbrot Viewer that lets the user explore the
famous Mandelbrot set. I will begin by explaining what that means. If you have downloaded
the web version of this book, note that the jar file [Link] is an
executable jar file that you can use to run the program as a stand-alone application. The jar
file is in the directory c12, which contains all the files for this chapter. The on-line version of
this page has two applet versions of the program. One shows the program running on the
web page. The other applet appears on the web page as a button; clicking the button opens
the program in a separate window.

12.5.1 The Mandelbrot Set

The Mandelbrot set is a set of points in the xy-plane that is defined by a computational
procedure. To use the program, all you really need to know is that the Mandelbrot set can
be used to make some pretty pictures, but here are the mathematical details: Consider the
point that has real-number coordinates (a,b) and apply the following computation:
Let x = a
Let y = b
Repeat:
Let newX = x*x - y*y + a
Let newY = 2*x*y + b
Let x = newX
Let y = newY

As the loop is repeated, the point (x,y) changes. The question is, does (x,y) grow
without bound or is it trapped forever in a finite region of the plane? If (x,y) escapes to
infinity (that is, grows without bound), then the starting point (a,b) is not in the Mandelbrot
set. If (x,y) is trapped in a finite region, then (a,b) is in the Mandelbrot set. Now, it is
2 2
known that if x + y ever becomes strictly greater than 4, then (x,y) will escape to
2 2
infinity. If x + y ever becomes bigger than 4 in the above loop, we can end the loop and
say that (a,b) is not in the Mandelbrot set. For a point (a,b) in the Mandelbrot set, this
will never happen. When we do this on a computer, of course, we don’t want to have a loop
that runs forever, so we put a limit on the number of times that the loop is executed:
x = a;
y = b;
12.5. FINISHING TOUCHES 661

count = 0;
while ( x*x + y*y < 4.1 ) {
count++;
if (count > maxIterations)
break;
double newX = x*x - y*y + a;
double newY = 2*x*y + b;
x = newY;
y = newY;
}

After this loop ends, if count is less than or equal to maxIterations, we can say that
(a,b) is not in the Mandelbrot set. If count is greater than maxIterations, then
(a,b) might or might not be in the Mandelbrot set (but the larger maxIterations is, the
more likely that (a,b) is actually in the set).
To make a picture from this procedure, use a rectangular grid of pixels to represent some
rectangle in the plane. Each pixel corresponds to some real number coordinates (a,b). (Use
the coordinates of the center of the pixel.) Run the above loop for each pixel. If the count goes
past maxIterations, color the pixel black; this is a point that is possibly in the Mandelbrot set.
Otherwise, base the color of the pixel on the value of count after the loop ends, using different
colors for different counts. In some sense, the higher the count, the closer the point is to the
Mandelbrot set, so the colors give some information about points outside the set and about the
shape of the set. However, it’s important to understand that the colors are arbitrary and that
colored points are not in the set. Here is a picture that was produced by the Mandelbrot Viewer
program using this computation. The black region is the Mandelbrot set:

When you use the program, you can “zoom in” on small regions of the plane. To do so, just
drag the mouse on the picture. This will draw a rectangle around part of the picture. When you
release the mouse, the part of the picture inside the rectangle will be zoomed to fill the entire
display. If you simply click a point in the picture, you will zoom in on the point where you click by
a magnification factor of two. (Shift-click or use the right mouse button to zoom out instead of
zooming in.) The interesting points are along the boundary of the Mandelbrot
662 CHAPTER 12. ADVANCED GUI PROGRAMMING

set. In fact, the boundary is infinitely complex. (Note that if you zoom in too far, you will exceed
the capabilities of the double data type; nothing is done in the program to prevent this.)
Use the “MaxIterations” menu to increase the maximum number of iterations in the loop.
Remember that black pixels might or might not be in the set; when you increase “MaxIter-
ations,” you might find that a black region becomes filled with color. The “Palette” menu
determines the set of colors that are used. Different palettes give very di fferent
visualizations of the set. The “PaletteLength” menu determines how many di fferent colors
are used. In the default setting, a different color is used for each possible value of count in
the algorithm. Some-times, you can get a much better picture by using a different number of
colors. If the palette length is less than maxIterations, the palette is repeated to cover
all the possible values of count; if the palette length is greater than maxIterations, only
part of of the palette will be used. (If the picture is of an almost uniform color, try
decreasing the palette length, since that makes the color vary more quickly as count
changes. If you see what look like randomly colored dots instead of bands of color, try
increasing the palette length.)
If you run the Mandelbrot Viewer program as a stand-alone application, it will have a
“File” menu that can be used to save the picture as a PNG image file. You can also save a
“param” file which simply saves the settings that produced the current picture. A param file
can be read back into the program using the “Open” command.
The Mandelbrot set is named after Benoit Mandelbrot, who was the first person to note
the incredible complexity of the set. It is astonishing that such complexity and beauty can
arise out of such a simple algorithm.

12.5.2 Design of the Program

Most classes in Java are defined in packages. While we have used standard packages such
as [Link] and [Link] extensively, all of my programming examples have been
in the “default package,” which means that they are not declared to belong to any named
package. However, when doing more serious programming, it is good style to create a
package to hold the classes for your program. Sun Microsystems recommends that package
names should be based on an Internet domain name of the organization that produces the
package. My office computer has domain name [Link], and no other computer in
the world should have the same name. According to Sun, this allows me to use the package
name [Link], with the elements of the domain name in reverse order. I can also
use sub-packages of this package, such as [Link], which is the package
name that I decided to use for my Mandelbrot Viewer application. No one else—or at least
no one else who uses Sun’s naming convention—will ever use the same package name, so
this package name uniquely identifies my program.
I briefly discussed using packages in Subsection 2.6.4. Here’s what you need to know for the
Mandelbrot Viewer program: The program is defined in ten Java source code files. They can be
found in the directory edu/hws/eck/mdb inside the source directory of the web site. (That is,
they are in a directory named mdb, which is inside a directory named eck, which is inside hws,
which is inside edu. The directory structure must follow the package name in this way.) The
same directory also contains a file named [Link] that is used by the program and
that will be discussed below. For an Integrated Development Environment such as Eclipse, you
should just have to add the edu directory to your project. To compile the files on the command
line, you must be working in the directory that contains the edu directory. Use the command
javac edu/hws/eck/mdb/*.java
12.5. FINISHING TOUCHES 663

or, if you use Windows,

javac edu\hws\eck\mdb\*.java

to compile the source code. The main routine for the stand-alone application version of the
program is defined by a class named Main. To run this class, use the command:
java [Link]
This command must also be given in the directory that contains the edu directory.
∗∗∗
The work of computing and displaying images of the Mandelbrot set is done in Mandelbrot-
[Link]. The MandelbrotDisplay class is a subclass of JPanel. It uses an off-screen canvas
to hold a copy of the image. (See Subsection 12.1.1.) The paintComponent() method copies
this image onto the panel. Then, if the user is drawing a “zoom box” with the mouse, the zoom
box is drawn on top of the image. In addition to the image, the class uses a two-dimensional
array to store the iteration count for each pixel in the image. If the range of xy-values changes,
or if the size of the window changes, all the counts must be recomputed. Since the compu-
tation can take quite a while, it would not be acceptable to block the user interface while the
computation is being performed. The solution is to do the computation in a separate thread. (See
Section 8.5.) When the computation begins, the image is filled with gray. Every so often, about
twice a second, the data that has been computed by the computation thread is gath-ered and
applied to the off-screen canvas, and the part of the canvas that has been modified is copied to
the screen. The user can continue to use the menus and even the mouse while the image is
being computed. Actually, this simplifies things a bit, because there can be more than one
computational thread. The program creates as many computational threads as there are
available processors in the computer, and the task of computing the image is split among these
threads. The algorithm that is used is essentially the same as the distributed algorithm from
Subsection 11.5.3, except that in this case all the computational threads are on the same
computer.
The file [Link] defines the main panel of the Mandelbrot Viewer window.
MandelbrotPanel is another subclass of JPanel. A MandelbrotPanel is mostly filled with a Man-
delbrotDisplay. It also adds a JLabel beneath the display. The JLabel is used as a “status bar”
that shows some information that might be interesting to the user. The MandelbrotPanel also
defines the program’s mouse listener. In addition to handling zooming, the mouse listener puts
the x and y coordinates of the current mouse location in the status bar as the user moves or
drags the mouse. Also, when the mouse exits the drawing area, the text in the status bar is set
to read “Idle”. This is the first time that we have seen an actual use for mouseMoved and
mouseExited events. (See Subsection 6.4.2 and Subsection 6.4.4.)
The menu bar for the program is defined in [Link]. Commands in the “File” and
“Control” menu are defined as Actions. (See Subsection 12.3.1.) Note that among the actions
are file manipulation commands that use techniques from Subsection 11.2.3, Subsection 11.6.3,
and Subsection 12.1.5. The “MaxIterations,” “Palette,” and “PaletteLength” menus each contain
a group of JRadioButtonMenuItems. (See Subsection 12.3.3.) I have tried several approaches
for handling such groups, and none of them have satisfied me completely. In this program, I
have defined a nested class inside Menus to represent each group. For example, the
PaletteManager class contains the menu items in the “Palette” menu as instance variables. It
registers an action listener with each item, and it defines a few utility routines for operating on
the menu. The classes for the three menus are very similar and should probably have been
defined as subclasses of some more general class.
664 CHAPTER 12. ADVANCED GUI PROGRAMMING

One interesting point is that the contents of the menu bar are different, depending on
whether the program is being run as an applet or as a stand-alone application. Since applets
cannot access the file system, there is no “File” menu for an applet. Furthermore,
accelerator keys are generally not functional in an applet that is running on a web page, so
accelerator keys are only added to menu items if the program is being run in its own
window. (See Subsection 12.3.5 for information on accelerators.) To accomplish this, the
constructor in the Menus class has parameters that tell it whether the menu bar will be used
in an applet and whether it will be used in a frame, and these parameters are consulted as
the menu bar is being built.
A third parameter to the constructor is the MandelbrotPanel that is being used in the
program. Many of the menu commands operate on this panel or on the MandelbrotDisplay
that it contains. In order to carry out these commands, the Menus object needs a reference
to the MandelbrotPanel. As for the MandelbrotDisplay, the panel has a method
getDisplay() that returns a reference to the display that it contains. So as long as the
menu bar has a reference to the panel, it can obtain a reference to the display. In previous
examples, everything was written as one large class file, so all the objects were directly
available to all the code. When a program is made up of multiple interacting files, getting
access to the necessary objects can be more of a problem.
MandelbrotPanel, MandelbrotDisplay, and Menus are the main classes that make up the
Mandelbrot Viewer program. [Link] defines a simple subclass of JFrame
that runs the program in its own window. [Link] defines an applet that
runs the program on a web page. (This applet version has an extra “Examples” menu that is
discussed in the source code file.) There are a few other classes that I will discuss below.
This brief discussion of the design of the Mandelbrot Viewer has shown that it uses a
wide variety of techniques that were covered earlier in this book. In the rest of this section,
we’ll look at a few new features of Java that were used in the program.

12.5.3 Internationalization
Internationalization refers to writing a program that is easy to adapt for running in different
parts of the world. Internationalization is often referred to as I18n , where 18 is the number
of letters between the “I” and the final “n” in “Internationalization.” The process of adapting
the program to a particular location is called localization, and the locations are called
locales. Locales differ in many ways, including the type of currency used and the format
used for numbers and dates, but the most obvious difference is language. Here, I will
discuss how to write a program so that it can be easily translated into other languages.
The key idea is that strings that will be presented to the user should not be coded into
the program source code. If they were, then a translator would have to search through the
entire source code, replacing every string with its translation. Then the program would have
to be recompiled. In a properly internationalized program, all the strings are stored together
in one or more files that are separate from the source code, where they can easily be found
and translated. And since the source code doesn’t have to be modified to do the translation,
no recompilation is necessary.
To implement this idea, the strings are stored in one or more properties files. A properties
file is just a list of key/value pairs. For translation purposes, the values are strings that will be
presented to the user; these are the strings that have to be translated. The keys are also strings,
but they don’t have to be translated because they will never be presented to the user. Since they
won’t have to be modified, the key strings can be used in the program source code. Each
12.5. FINISHING TOUCHES 665

key uniquely identifies one of the value strings. The program can use the key string to look
up the corresponding value string from the properties file. The program only needs to know
the key string; the user will only see the value string. When the properties file is translated,
the user of the program will see different value strings.
The format of a properties file is very simple. The key/value pairs take the form
[Link]=value string

There are no spaces in the key string or before the equals sign. The value string can contain
spaces or any other characters. If the line ends with a backslash (“\”), the value string can
be continued on the next line; in this case, spaces at the beginning of that line are ignored.
One unfortunate detail is that a properties file can contain only plain ASCII characters. The
ASCII character set only supports the English alphabet. Nevertheless, a value string can
include arbitrary UNICODE characters. Non-ASCII characters just have to be specially
encoded. Sun Microsystems provides a program, native2ascii, that can convert files that
use non-ASCII characters into a form that is suitable for use as a properties file.
Suppose that the program wants to present a string to the user (as the name of a menu
command, for example). The properties file would contain a key/value pair such as
[Link]=Save PNG Image...

where “Save PNG Image. . . ” is the string that will appear in the menu. The program would use
the key string, “[Link]”, to look up the corresponding value string and would then use
the value string as the text of the menu item. In Java, the look up process is supported by the
ResourceBundle class, which knows how to retrieve and use properties files. Sometimes a string
that is presented to the user contains substrings that are not known until the time when the
program is running. A typical example is the name of a file. Suppose, for example, that the
program wants to tell the user, “Sorry, the file, filename, cannot be loaded”, where filename is
the name of a file that was selected by the user at run time. To handle cases like this, value
strings in properties files can include placeholders that will be replaced by strings to be
determined by the program at run time. The placeholders take the form “{0}”, “{1}”, “{2}”, . . . .
For the file error example, the properties file might contain:
[Link]=Sorry, the file, {0}, cannot be loaded

The program would fetch the value string for the key [Link]. It would then substitute
the actual file name for the placeholder, “{0}”. Note that when the string is translated, the word
order might be completely different. By using a placeholder for the file name, you can be sure
that the file name will be put in the correct grammatical position for the language that is being
used. Placeholder substitution is not handled by the ResourceBundle class, but Java has
another class, MessageFormat, that makes such substitutions easy.
For the Mandelbrot Viewer program, the properties file is [Link]. (Any
properties file should have a name that ends in “.properties”.) Any string that you see
when you run the program comes from this file. For handling value string lookup, I wrote
[Link]. The I18n class has a static method
public static tr( String key, Object... args )

that handles the whole process. Here, key is the key string that will be looked up in
[Link]. Additional parameters, if any, will be substituted for placeholders
in the value string. (Recall that the formal parameter declaration “Object...” means that
there can be any number of actual parameters after key; see Subsection 7.2.6.) Typical
uses would include:
666 CHAPTER 12. ADVANCED GUI PROGRAMMING

String saveImageCommandText = [Link]( "[Link]" );

String errMess = [Link]( "[Link]" , [Link]() );

You will see function calls like this throughout the Mandelbrot Viewer source code. The I18n
class is written in a general way so that it can be used in any program. As long as you
provide a properties file as a resource, the only things you need to do are change the
resource file name in [Link] and put the class in your own package.
It is actually possible to provide several alternative properties files in the same program. For
example, you might include French and Japanese versions of the properties file along with an
En-glish version. If the English properties file is named [Link], then the names
for the French and Japanese versions should be strings [Link] and strings
[Link]. Every language has a two-letter code, such as “fr” and “ja”, that is used in
constructing prop-erties file names for that language. The program asks for the properties file
using the simple name “string”. If the program is being run on a Java system in which the
preferred language is French, the program will try to load “string [Link]”; if that
fails, it will look for “[Link]”. This means that the program will use the French
properties files in a French locale; it will use the Japanese properties file in a Japanese locale;
and in any other locale it will use the default properties file.

12.5.4 Events, Events, Events

We have worked extensively with mouse events, key events, and action events, but these
are only a few of the event types that are used in Java. The Mandelbrot Viewer program
makes use of several other types of events. It also serves as an example of the benefits of
event-oriented programming.
Let’s start from the following fact: The MandelbrotDisplay class knows nothing about any of
the other classes that make up the program (with the single exception of one call to the
internationalization method [Link]). Yet other classes are aware of things that are going on
in the MandelbrotDisplay class. For example, when the size of the display is changed, the new
size is reported in the status bar that is part of the MandelbrotPanel class. In the Menus class,
certain menus are disabled when the display begins the computation of an image and are re-
enabled when the computation completes. The display doesn’t call methods in the
MandelbrotPanel or Menus classes, so how do these classes get their information about what is
going on in the display? The answer, of course, is events. The MandelbrotDisplay object emits
events of various types when various things happen. The MandelbrotPanel and
MandelbrotDisplay objects set up listeners that hear those events and respond to them.
The point is that because events are used for communication, the MandelbrotDisplay class is
not strongly coupled to the other classes. In fact, it can be used in other programs without any
modification and without access to the other classes. The alternative to using events would be to
have the display object call methods such as displaySizeChanged() or
computationStarted() in the MandelbrotPanel and MandelbrotFrame objects to tell them
what is going on in the display. This would be strong coupling: Any programmer who wanted to
use MandelbrotDisplay would also have to use the other two classes or would have to modify the
display class so that it no longer refers to the other classes. Of course, not everything can be
done with events and not all strong coupling is bad: The MandelbrotPanel class refers directly to
the MandelbrotDisplay class and cannot be used without it—but since the whole purpose of a
MandelbrotPanel is to hold a MandelbrotDisplay, the coupling is not a problem.
∗∗∗
12.5. FINISHING TOUCHES 667

The Mandelbrot Viewer program responds to mouse events on the display. These events
are generated by the display object, but the display class itself doesn’t care about mouse
events and doesn’t do anything in response to them. Mouse events are handled by a
listener in the MandelbrotPanel, which responds to them by zooming the display and by
showing mouse coordinates in the status bar.
The staus bar also shows the new size of the display whenever that size is changed. To
handle this, events of type ComponentEvent are used. When the size of a component is
changed, a ComponentEvent is generated. In the Mandelbrot Viewer program, a
ComponentListener in the MandelbrotPanel class listens for size-change events in the
display. When one occurs, the listener responds by showing the new size in the status bar;
the display knows nothing about the status bar that shows the display’s size.
Component events are also used internally in the MandelbrotDisplay class in an interesting
way. When the user dynamically changes the size of the display, its size can change several
times each second. Normally, a change of display size would trigger the creation of a new o ff-
screen canvas and the start of a new asynchronous computation of the image. However, doing
this is a big deal, not something I want to do several times in a second. If you try resizing the
program’s window, you’ll notice that the image doesn’t change size dynamically as the window
size changes. The same image and off-screen canvas are used as long as the size is changing.
Only about one-third of a second after the size has stopped changing will a new, resized image
be produced. Here is how this works: The display sets up a ComponentEvent to listen for resize
events on itself. When a resize occurs, the listener starts a Timer that has a delay of 1/3 second.
(See Subsection 6.5.1.) While this timer is running, the paintComponent() method does not
resize the image; instead, it reuses the image that already exists. If the timer fires 1/3 second
later, the image will be resized at that time. However, if another resize event occurs while the
first timer is running, then the first timer will be stopped before it has a chance to fire, and a new
timer will be started with a delay of 1/3 second. The result is that the image does not get resized
until 1/3 second after the size of the window stops changing.
The Mandelbrot Viewer program also uses events of type WindowEvent, which are
generated by a window when it opens or closes (among other things). One example is in the file
[Link]. This file defines an applet that appears as a button on the web page.
The button is labeled “Launch Mandelbrot Viewer”. When the user clicks the button, a
MandelbrotFrame is opened on the screen, and the text on the button changes to “Close
Mandelbrot Viewer”. When the frame closes, the button changes back to “Launch Mandelbrot
Viewer”, and the but-ton can be used to open another window. The frame can be closed by
clicking the button, but it can also be closed using a “Close” command in the frame’s menu bar
or by clicking the close box in the frame’s title bar. The question is, how does the button’s text
get changed when the frame is closed by one of the latter two methods? One possibility would
be to have the frame call a method in the applet to tell the applet that it is closing, but that would
tightly couple the frame class to the applet class. In fact, it’s done with WindowEvents. A
WindowListener in the applet listens for close events from the frame. In response to a close
event, the text of the button is changed. Again, this can happen even though the frame class
knows nothing about the applet class. Window events are also used by [Link] to trigger an
action that has to be taken when the program is ending; this will be discussed below.
Perhaps the most interesting use of events in the Mandelbrot Viewer program is to enable
and disable menu commands based on the status of the display. For this, events of type Prop-
ertyChangeEvent are used. This event class is part of the “bean” framework that was discussed
briefly in Subsection 11.6.2, and class PropertyChangeEvent and related classes are defined in
668 CHAPTER 12. ADVANCED GUI PROGRAMMING

the package [Link]. The idea is that bean objects are defined by their “properties” (which
are just aspects of the state of the bean). When a bean property changes, the bean can emit a
PropertyChangeEvent to notify other objects of the change. Properties for which property
change events are emitted are known technically as bound properties. A bound property has a
name that identifies that particular property among all the properties of the bean. When a
property change event is generated, the event object includes the name of the property that has
changed, the previous value of the property, and the new value of the property.
The MandelbrotDisplay class has a bound property whose name is given by the constant
[Link] PROPERTY. A display emits a property change event when
its sta-tus changes. The possible values of the status property are given by other constants,
such as [Link] READY. The READY status indicates that the
display is not cur-rently running a computation and is ready to do another one. There are
several menu commands that should be enabled only when the status of the display is
READY. To implement this, the Menus class defines a PropertyChangeListener to listen for
property change events from the dis-play. When this listener hears an event, it responds by
enabling or disabling menu commands according to the new value of the status property.
All of Java’s GUI components are beans and are capable of emitting property change
events. In any subclass of Component, this can be done simply by calling the method
public void firePropertyChange(String propertyName,
Object oldValue, Object newValue)

For example, the MandelbrotDisplay class uses the following method for setting its current status:
private void setStatus(String status) {
if (status == [Link]) {
Note: Event should be fired only if status actually changes.
return;
}
String oldStatus = [Link];
[Link] = status;
firePropertyChange(STATUS PROPERTY, oldStatus, status);
}

When writing bean classes from scratch, you have to add support for property change
events, if you need them. To make this easier, the [Link] package provides the
PropertyChange-Support class.

12.5.5 Custom Dialogs

Java has several standard dialog boxes that are defined in the classes JOptionPane, JColor-
Chooser, and JFileChooser. These were introduced in Subsection 6.8.2 and Subsection 11.2.3.
Dialogs of all these types are used in the Mandelbrot Viewer program. However, sometimes
other types of dialog are needed. In such cases, you can build a custom dialog box.
Dialog boxes are defined by subclasses of the class JDialog. Like frames, dialog boxes
are separate windows on the screen, and the JDialog class is very similar to the JFrame
class. The big difference is that a dialog box has a parent , which is a frame or another
dialog box that “owns” the dialog box. If the parent of a dialog box closes, the dialog box
closes automatically. Furthermore, the dialog box will probably “float ” on top of its parent, even
when its parent is the active window.
12.5. FINISHING TOUCHES 669

Dialog boxes can be either modal or modeless. When a modal dialog is put up on the
screen, the rest of the application is blocked until the dialog box is dismissed. This is the most
common case, and all the standard dialog boxes are modal. Modeless dialog boxes are more
like independent windows, since they can stay on the screen while the user interacts with other
windows. There are no modeless dialogs in the Mandelbrot Viewer program.
The Mandelbrot Viewer program uses two custom dialog boxes. They are used to
implement the “Set Image Size” and “Set Limits” commands and are defined by the files
[Link] and [Link]. The “set image size” dialog lets the
user enter a new width and height for the Mandelbrot image. The “set limits” dialog lets the
user input the minimum and maximum values for x and y that are shown in the image. The
two dialog classes are very similar. In both classes, several JTextFields are used for user
input. Two buttons named “OK” and “Cancel” are added to the window, and listeners are set
up for these buttons. If the user clicks “OK”, the listener checks whether the inputs in the text
fields are legal; if not, an error message is displayed to the user and the dialog stays on the
screen. If the input is legal when the user clicks “OK”, the dialog is disposed. The dialog is
also disposed if the user clicks “Cancel” or clicks the dialog box’s close box. The net e ffect
is that the dialog box stays on the screen until the user either cancels the dialog or enters
legal values for the inputs and clicks “OK”. The user can find out which of these occurred by
calling a method named getInput() in the dialog object after showing the dialog. This
method returns null if the dialog was canceled; otherwise it returns the user input.
To make my custom dialog boxes easy to use, I added a static showDialog() method
to each dialog class. When this function is called, it shows the dialog, waits for it to be dismissed,
and then returns the value of the getInput() method. This makes it possible to use my
custom dialog boxes in much the same way as Java’s standard dialog boxes are used.
Custom dialog boxes are not difficult to create and to use, if you already know about
frames. I will not discuss them further here, but you can look at the source code file
[Link] as a model.

12.5.6 Preferences
Most serious programs allow the user to set preferences. A preference is really just a piece
of the program’s state that is saved between runs of the program. In order to make
preferences persistent from one run of the program to the next, the preferences could simply
be saved to a file in the user’s home directory. However, there would then be the problem of
locating the file. There would be the problem of naming the file in a way that avoids conflicts
with file names used by other programs. And there would be the problem of cluttering up the
user’s home directory with files that the user shouldn’t even have to know about.
To deal with these problems, Java has a standard means of handling preferences. It is
defined by the package [Link]. In general, the only thing that you need from
this package is Preferences.
In the Mandelbrot Viewer program, the file [Link] has an example of using
Preferences. [Link] runs the stand-alone application version of the program, and its
use of preferences applies only when the program is run in that way.
In most programs, the user sets preferences in a custom dialog box. However, the Man-delbrot
program doesn’t have any preferences that are appropriate for that type of treatment. Instead, as an
example, I automatically save a few aspects of the program’s state as preferences. Every time the
program starts up, it reads the preferences, if any are available. Every time the program terminates, it
saves the preferences. (Saving the preferences poses an interesting
670 CHAPTER 12. ADVANCED GUI PROGRAMMING

problem because the program ends when the MandelbrotFrame window closes, not when the
main() routine ends. In fact, the main() routine ends as soon as the window appears on the
screen. So, it won’t work to save the preferences at the end of the main program. The solution is
to use events: A listener listens for WindowEvents from the frame. When a window-closed event
is received, indicating that the program is ending, the listener saves the preferences.)
Preferences for Java programs are stored in some platform-dependent form in some
platform-dependent location. As a Java programmer, you don’t have to worry about it; the
Java pref-erences system knows where to store the data. There is still the problem of
identifying the preferences for one program among all the possible Java programs that
might be running on a computer. Java solves this problem in the same way that it solves the
package naming prob-lem. In fact, by convention, the preferences for a program are
identified by the package name of the program, with a slight change in notation. For
example, the Mandelbrot Viewer program is defined in the package [Link],
and its preferences are identified by the string “/edu/hws/eck/mdb”. (The periods have been
changed to “/”, and an extra “/” has been added at the beginning.)
The preferences for a program are stored in something called a “node.” The user
preferences node for a given program identifier can be accessed as follows:
Preferences root = [Link]();
Preferences node = [Link](pathName);

where pathname is the string, such as “/edu/hws/eck/mdb”, that identifies the node. The
node itself consists of a simple list of key/value pairs, where both the key and the value are
strings. You can store any strings you want in preferences nodes—they are really just a way
of storing some persistent data between program runs. In general, though, the key string
identifies some particular preference item, and the associated value string is the value of
that preference. A Preferences object, node, contains methods [Link](key) for
retrieving the value string associated with a given key and [Link](key,value) for
setting the value string for a given key.
In [Link], I use preferences to store the shape and position of the program’s
window. This makes the size and shape of the window persistent between runs of the
program; when you run the program, the window will be right where you left it the last time
you ran it. I also store the name of the directory that is currently selected in the file dialog
box that is used by the program for the Save and Open commands. This is particularly
satisfying, since the default behavior for a file dialog box is to start in the user’s home
directory, which is hardly ever the place where the user wants to keep a program’s files.
With the preferences feature, I can switch to the right directory the first time I use the
program, and from then on I’ll automatically be back in that directory when I use the
program. You can look at the source code in [Link] for the details.
∗∗∗
And that’s it. . . . There’s a lot more that I could say about Java and about programming
in general, but this book is only “An Introduction to Programming with Java,” and it ’s time for
our journey to end. I hope that it has been a pleasant journey for you, and I hope that I have helped you
establish a foundation that you can use as a basis for further exploration.
Exercises 671

Exercises for Chapter 12

The sample program PaintWithOff[Link] from Section 12.1 is a simple

paint program. Make two improvements to this program: First, add a “File” menu that
lets the user open an image file and save the current image in either PNG or JPEG
format. Second, add a basic one-level “Undo” command that lets the user undo the
most recent operation that was applied to the image. (Do not try to make a multilevel
Undo, which would allow the user to undo several operations.)
When you read a file into the program, you should copy the image that you read
into the program’s off-screen canvas. Since the canvas in the program has a fixed
size, you should scale the image that you read so that it exactly fills the canvas.

For this exercise, you should continue to work on the program from the previous exercise.
Add a “StrokeWidth” menu that allows the user to draw lines of varying thicknesses.
Make it possible to use different colors for the interior of a filled shape and for the
outline of that shape. To do this, change the “Color” menu to “StrokeColor” and add a
“Fill-Color” menu. (My solution adds two new tools, “Stroked Filled Rectangle” and
“Stroked Filled Oval”, to represent filled shapes that are outlined with the current
stroke.) Add support for filling shapes with transparent color. A simple approach to this
is to use a JCheckboxMenuItem to select either fully opaque or 50% opaque fill. (Don’t
try to apply transparency to stokes—it’s difficult to make transparency work correctly
for the Curve tool, and in any case, shape outlines look better if they are opaque.)
Finally, make the menus more user friendly by adding some keyboard accelerators to
some commands and by using JRadioButtonMenuItems where appropriate, such as in
the color and tool menus. This exercise takes quite a bit of work to get it all right, so
you should tackle the problem in pieces.

The StopWatchLabel component from Subsection 12.4.5 displays the text “Timing. . . ”
when the stop watch is running. It would be nice if it displayed the elapsed time since
the stop watch was started. For that, you need to create a Timer. (See Subsection
6.5.1.) Add a Timer to the original source code, [Link], to drive the
display of the elapsed time in seconds. Create the timer in the mousePressed()
routine when the stop watch is started. Stop the timer in the mousePressed() routine
when the stop watch is stopped. The elapsed time won’t be very accurate anyway, so
just show the integral number of seconds. You only need to set the text a few times per
second. For my Timer method, I use a delay of 200 milliseconds for the timer.

The custom component example [Link], from Subsection 12.4.5, uses an off-
screen canvas to show mirror-reversed text in a JPanel. An alternative approach would
be to draw the text after applying a transform to the graphics context that is used for
drawing. (See Subsection 12.2.5.) With this approach, the custom component can be
defined as a subclass of JLabel in which the paintComponent() method is
overridden. Write a version of the MirrorText component that takes this approach.
The solution is very short, but tricky. Note that the scale transform [Link](-1,1)
does a left-right reflection through the left edge of the component.

The sample program [Link] from Subsection 11.3.2 keeps data for a
“phone directory” in a file in the user’s home directory. Exercise 11.5 asked you to
672 CHAPTER 12. ADVANCED GUI PROGRAMMING

revise that program to use an XML format for the data. Both programs have a simple
command-line user interface. For this exercise, you should provide a GUI interface for the
phone directory data. You can base your program either on the original sample program or
on the modified version from the exercise. Use a JTable to hold the data. The user should
be able to edit all the entries in the table. Also, the user should be able to add and delete
rows. Include either buttons or menu commands that can be used to perform these actions.
The delete command should delete the selected row, if any. New rows should be added at
the end of the table. For this program, you can use a standard DefaultTableModel.
Your program should load data from the file when it starts and save data to the file
when it ends, just as the two previous programs do. For a GUI program, you can’t
simply save the data at the end of the main() routine, since main() terminates as
soon as the window shows up on the screen. You want to save the data when the user
closes the window and ends the program. There are several approaches. One is to use
a WindowListener to detect the event that occurs when the window closes. Another is
to use a “Quit” command to end the program; when the user quits, you can save the
data and close the window (by calling its dispose() method), and end the program.
If you use the “Quit” command approach, you don’t want the user to be able to end the
program simply by closing the window. To accomplish this, you should call
[Link]([Link] NOTHING ON CLOSE);

where frame refers to the JFrame that you have created for the program’s user
interface. When using a WindowListener, you want the close box on the window to
close the window, not end the program. For this, you need
[Link]([Link] ON CLOSE);

When the listener is notified of a window closed event, it can save the data and end the
program.
Most of the JTable and DefaultTableModel methods that you need for this exercise are
discussed in Subsection 12.4.3, but there are a few more that you need to know about. To
determine which row is selected in a JTable, call [Link](). This
method returns the row number of the selected row, or returns -1 if no row is selected. To
specify which cell is currently being edited, you can use:
[Link](rowNum, rowNum); // Selects row number
rowNum.
[Link]( rowNum, colNum ); // Edit cell at position (rowNum,colNum).
[Link]().requestFocus(); // Put input cursor
in cell.

One particularly troublesome point is that the data that is in the cell that is currently
being edited is not in the table model. The value in the edit cell is not put into the table
model until after the editing is finished. This means that even though the user sees the
data in the cell, its not really part of the table data yet. If you lose that data, the user
would be justified in complaining. To make sure that you get the right data when you
save the data at the end of the program, you have to turn o ff editing before retrieving
the data from the model. This can be done with the following method:
private void stopEditing() {
if ([Link]() != null)
[Link]().stopCellEditing();
}

This method must also be called before modifying the table by adding or deleting rows; if such
modifications are made while editing is in progress, the effect can be very strange.
Quiz 673

Quiz on Chapter 12

Describe the object that is created by the following statement, and give an example of
how it might be used in a program:
BufferedImage OSC = new BufferedImage(32,32,[Link] INT RGB);

Many programs depend on resource files. What is meant by a resource in this sense?
Give an example.

What is the FontMetrics class used for?

If a Color, c, is created as c = new Color(0,0,255,125), what is effect of drawing

with this color?

What is antialiasing ?

How is the ButtonGroup class used?

What does the acronym MVC stand for, and how does it apply to the JTable class?

Describe the picture that is produced by the following paintComponent() method:

public void paintComponent(Graphics g) {
[Link](g);
Graphics2D g2 = (Graphics2D)g;
[Link]( getWidth()/2, getHeight()/2 );
[Link]( 30 * [Link] / 180 );
[Link](0,0,100,100);
}

What is meant by Internationalization of a program?

Suppose that the class that you are writing has an instance method doOpen() (with no
parameters) that is meant to be used to open a file selected by the user. Write a code
segment that creates an Action that represents the action of opening a file. Then show
how to create a button and a menu item from that action.
674 CHAPTER 12. ADVANCED GUI PROGRAMMING
Appendix: Source Files

This section contains a list of the examples appearing in the free, on-line textbook In-troduction
to Programming Using Java, Version 5.0. You should be able to compile these files and use
them. Note however that some of these examples depend on other source files, such as
[Link] and [Link], that are not built into Java. These are classes that I have
written. Links to all necessary non-standard source code files are provided below. To use
examples that depend on my classes, you will need to compile the source code for the required
classes and place the compiled classes in the same directory with the main class file. If you are
using an integrated development environment such as Eclipse, you can simply add any required
source code files to your project.
Most of the solutions to end-of-chapter exercises are not listed in this section. Each end-
of-chapter exercise has its own Web page, which discusses its solution. The source code of
a sample solution of each exercise is given in full on the solution page for that exercise. If
you want to compile the solution, you should be able to cut-and-paste the solution out of a
Web browser window and into a text editing program. (You can’t cut-and-paste from the
HTML source of the solution page, since it contains extra HTML markup commands that the
Java compiler won’t understand; the HTML markup does not appear when the page is
displayed in a Web browser.)
Note that many of these examples require Java version 5.0 or later. Some of them were
written for older versions, but will still work with current versions. When you compile some of
these older programs with current versions of Java, you might get warnings about
“deprecated” methods. These warnings are not errors. When a method is deprecated, it
means that it should not be used in new code, but it has not yet been removed from the
language. It is possible that deprecated methods might be removed from the language at
some future time, but for now you just get a warning about using them.

Part 1: Text-oriented Examples

Many of the sample programs in the text are based on console-style input/output, where the
computer and the user type lines of text back and forth to each other. Some of these
programs use the standard output object, [Link], for output. Many of them use my
non-standard class, TextIO, for both input and output. For the programs that use TextIO,
one of the files [Link] or [Link] must be available when you compile the
program, and [Link] must be available when you run the program. There is also a
GUI version of TextIO; you can find information about it at the end of Part 4, below.
The programs listed here are stand-alone applications, not applets, but I have written applets
that simulate many of the programs. These “console applets” appear on Web pages in the on-
line version of this textbook. They are based on [Link], which provides the same
methods as TextIO, but in an applet instead of in a stand-alone application. It is

675
676 Source Code Listing

straightforward to convert a TextIO program to a TextIOApplet applet. See the comments in

the [Link] file for information about how to do it. One example of this can be
found in the file [Link].

[Link], from Section 2.2, computes the interest on a specific amount of money
over a period of one year.
[Link], from Section 2.3, demonstrates a few basic built-in
subroutines and functions.
[Link], from Section 2.3, a very simple first demonstration of enum types.
[Link], from Section 2.4, reads an integer typed in by the user and prints the
square of that integer. This program depends on [Link].
[Link], from Section 2.4, calculates interest on an investment for one year,
based on user input. This program depends on [Link]. The same is true for
almost all of the programs in the rest of this list.
[Link], from Section 2.4, a simple demo of output to a file, using TextIO.
[Link], from Section 3.1, the first example that uses control statements.
[Link], from Section 3.2, outputs a 3N+1 sequence for a given stating value.
[Link], from Section 3.3, computes the average value of some integers
en-tered by the user.
[Link], from Section 3.4, counts the number of divisors of an integer
entered by the user.
[Link], from Section 3.4, lists all the distinct letters in a string entered by the
user.
[Link], from Section 3.5, converts length measurements input by the
user into different units of measure.
[Link], from Section 3.7, finds the sum and the average of
numbers read from a file. Demonstrates try..catch statements.
[Link], from Section 4.2, lets the user play guessing games where the com-
puter picks a number and the user tries to guess it. A slight variation of this program, which
reports the number of games won by the user, is [Link].
[Link], from Section 4.3, a rather useless program in which one subroutine
calls another.
[Link], from Section 4.4, is an improved 3N+1 program that uses subroutines
and prints its output in neat columns.
[Link], from Section 5.4, a simple card game. It uses the classes [Link] and
[Link], which are given as examples of object-oriented programming. Also available,
the card-related classes [Link] and, from Subsection 5.5.1, [Link].
[Link], from Section 7.2, demonstrates random access to array
ele-ments using the “birthday problem” (how many people do you have to choose at
random until two are found whose birthdays are on the same day of the year).
[Link], from Section 7.3, is a short program that illustrates the use
of a partially full array by reading some numbers from the user and then printing them
in reverse order.
Source Code Listing 677

[Link], from Section 7.3, reads numbers from the user then
prints them out in reverse order. It does this using the class [Link]
as an example of using dynamic arrays.
[Link], from Section 8.2, converts measurements input by the user to
inches, feet, yards, and miles. This improvement on [Link] allows inputs
combining several measurements, such as “3 feet 7 inches,” and it detects illegal inputs.
[Link], from Section 8.3, a revision of the previous example that uses
exceptions to handle errors in the user’s input.
[Link], from Section 8.5, runs several threads all computing the same task to
test whether there is any speedup when more than one thread is used.
[Link], from Section 8.5, divides a task among several threads and
combines the results from all the threads. Also shows how to wait for all threads to
finish. And [Link] from the same section performs the same task but uses
the producer/consumer pattern for communication between threads.
[Link], from Section 9.2, prints out the steps in a solution to the Towers
of Hanoi problem; an example of recursion.
[Link], from Section 9.2, implements a linked list of strings. The program List-
[Link] tests this class.
[Link], from Section 9.3, evaluates postfix expressions using a stack.
Depends on the StackOfDouble class defined in [Link].
[Link], from Section 9.4, demonstrates a binary sort tree of strings.
[Link], from Section 9.5, evaluates fully parenthesized expressions input
by the user.
[Link], from Section 9.5, evaluates ordinary infix expressions input by the
user.
[Link], from Section 9.5, reads infix expressions input by the user and
con-structs expression trees that represent those expressions.
[Link], from Section 10.2, makes an alphabetical list of words from
a file. A TreeSet is used to eliminate duplicates and sort the words.
[Link], from Section 10.4, demonstrates the use of a HashMap as a
symbol table in a program that interprets simple commands from the user.
[Link], from Section 10.4, counts the number of occurrences of each word in
a file. The program uses several features from the Java Collection Framework.
[Link], from Section 11.2, shows how to read and write files in a simple
command-line application; uses the non-standard class [Link].
[Link], from Section 11.2, lists the contents of a directory specified by the
user; demonstrates the use of the File class.
[Link], from Section 11.3, is a program that makes a copy of a file, using file
names that are given as command-line arguments.
[Link], from Section 11.3, demonstrates the use of a file for
storing data between runs of a program.
[Link], mentioned in Section 11.4, is a short program that prints
informa-tion about each network interface on the computer where it is run, including IP
addresses associated with each interface.
678 Source Code Listing

[Link] and [Link], from Section 11.4, are very simple first examples
of network client and server programs.
[Link] and [Link], from Section 11.4, demonstrate two-way
com-munication over a network by letting users send messages back and forth;
however, no threading is used and the messages must strictly alternate.
[Link], [Link], and [Link],
from Section 11.5, are a demonstration of distributed computing in which pieces of a large
computation are sent over a network to be computed by “worker” programs.

Part 2: Graphical Examples from the Text

The following programs use a graphical user interface. The majority of them can be run both
as stand-alone applications and as applets. (If you have downloaded the web site for this
book, note that most of the jar files for Chapter 6 and Chapter 12 are executable jar files
which can be be run as applications.)
[Link] is a simple demonstration of some basic GUI components from the
Swing graphical user interface library. It appears in the text in Section 1.6, but you
won’t be able to understand it until you learn about GUI programming.
[Link] is a rather useless applet that simply draws a static image. It is the first
example of GUI programming, in Section 3.8.
[Link], also from Section 3.8, draws an animated version of the image in the
preceding example. This applet depends on [Link], which is
a simple framework for writing animated applets.
[Link], a standalone program that displays a window full of colored
squares with a moving disturbance, from Section 4.6. This program depends on
[Link] and [Link].
[Link] is a version of the previous example, modified to use a few
named constants. From Section 4.7.
[Link], from Section 5.5, is an applet that lets the user place various shapes
on a drawing area; an example of abstract classes, subclasses, and polymorphism.
[Link] and [Link], from Section 6.1, show the message
“Hello World” in a window, the first one by using the built-in JOptionPane class and the
second by building the interface “by hand.” Another variation, [Link],
from Section 6.4, uses anonymous nested classes where [Link] uses
named nested classes.
[Link], from Section 6.2, defines an applet that displays the message
“Hello World” or “Goodbye World”. The message changes when the user clicks a button.
[Link], from Section 6.2, is a panel that displays a message. The panel is
used as the content pane both in the applet [Link] and in the window of
the stand-alone application [Link]. This example illustrates the technique of
using the same panel class in both an applet and a stand-alone application, a technique
that will be used in many examples in the rest of the book.
[Link], used in Section 6.3 to demonstrate RGB and HSB colors.
This old applet uses the AWT rather than Swing for its user interface. Since it is not
presented as a programming example, it has not been revised.
Source Code Listing 679

[Link], from Section 6.3, shows 25 copies of the string “Java!” (or
some other string specified in an applet param) in random colors and fonts. The applet
uses [Link] for its content pane, and there is a stand-alone
application [Link] that uses the same panel class.
[Link], from Section 6.4, is similar to [Link]
except that the window is repainted when the user clicks the window. This is a first exam-ple of
using a mouse listener. The applet version is [Link].
[Link], from Section 6.4, lets the user place rectangles and ovals on a drawing
area by clicking with the mouse. The applet version is [Link]. Both
versions use [Link] for their content panes.
[Link], from Section 6.4, shows information about mouse events. The
applet version is [Link]. Both versions use
[Link] for their content panes.
[Link], from Section 6.4, lets the user draw curves in a drawing area and
select the drawing color from a palette. The class SimplePaint can be used either as as
applet or as a stand-alone application.
[Link], from Section 6.5, shows a new random “artwork” every four sec-
onds. This is an example of using a Timer. Used in an applet version of the program,
[Link], and a stand-alone application version, [Link].
[Link], from Section 6.5, shows how to use keyboard and focus
events. This class can be run either has an applet or as a stand-alone application.
[Link], from Section 6.5, lets the user play a simple game. Uses a timer
as well as keyboard and focus events. The applet version is [Link], and
the stand-alone application version is [Link].
[Link], a simple demo from Section 6.6, is an applet that shows three JSlider s.
[Link], from Section 6.6, is an applet that demonstrates a JTextArea in a
JScrollPane.
[Link], from Section 6.7, a very simple applet that demonstrates six types of
border.
[Link], from Section 6.7, shows how to create several
components and lay them out in a GridLayout. Can be used either as an applet or as a
stand-alone application.
[Link], from Section 6.7, lets the user add, subtract, multiply, or divide two
num-bers input by the user. A demo of text fields, buttons, and layout with nested
subpanels. Can be used either as an applet or as a stand-alone application.
[Link], from Section 6.7, shows how to lay out the components in a con-
tainer for which the layout manager has been set to null. Can be used either as an
applet or as a stand-alone application.
[Link], from Section 6.7, is a GUI version of [Link], a game where
the user sees a playing card and guesses whether the next card will be higher or lower
in value. This program also requires [Link], [Link], and [Link]. Can be
used as a stand-alone application and also contains a nested class
[Link] that represents the applet version of the program
[Link], from Section 6.8, demonstrates menus and a color chooser
dialog. This is used in a program where the user colors the squares of a mosaic by
680 Source Code Listing

clicking-and-dragging the mouse. It uses [Link] to define the mosaic panel

it-self. MosaicDrawController is used in the stand-alone application
[Link], in the applet [Link], and in the applet
[Link]. The latter applet appears as a button on a web
page; clicking the button opens a Mosaic-DrawFrame.
[Link], from Section 6.8, is an applet that demonstrates
JColorChooser and some dialogs from JOptionPane.
[Link], from Section 7.2, shows 25 copies of a message in
random colors, sizes, and positions. This is an improved version of
[Link] that uses an array to keep track of the data, so that the
same picture can be redrawn whenever necessary. (Written only as an applet.)
[Link], from Section 7.3, lets the user place colored rectangles in a
drawing area. Illustrates the use of an ArrayList. An applet version is
[Link]. This program uses and depends on [Link].
[Link], from Section 7.3, lets the user draw colored curves and stores the
data needed for repainting the drawing surface in a list of type ArrayList<CurveData>.
[Link], from Section 7.5, lets two users play a game of checkers against each
other. Illustrates the use of a two-dimensional array. (This is the longest program in the
book so far, at over 750 lines!)
[Link], from Section 9.1, recursively counts groups of colored squares in a grid.
[Link], from Section 9.3, demonstrates stacks and queues.
[Link], from Section 11.3, lets the user edit short text files. This program
demon-strates reading and writing files and using file dialogs.
[Link], from Section 11.3, demonstrates saving data from a
program to a file in both binary and character form. The program is a simple sketching
program based on [Link].
[Link], from Section 11.5 (on-line version only), is an applet that
simulates a network chat. There is no networking in this applet. The only point is to
demonstrate how a thread could be used to process (simulated) incoming messages.
[Link], from Section 11.5, is a simple GUI program for chatting between two
people over a network.
[Link], [Link], [Link], and
[Link], from Section 11.5, represent a multithreaded
server and a client program for the service that it offers. The BuddyChatServer
program is a non-GUI server that keeps a list of connected clients. These clients are
available to chat to other clients. The client program is BuddyChat. Each client
connects to the server and gets a list of other clients that are connected. A BuddyChat
user can request a connection to one of the other clients in the list; when a connection
is made, a pair of BuddyChatWindows is used for chatting between the two clients.
(The server has no part in the chat connections.) BuddyChatServerShutdown can be
used to shut down the server cleanly. This example is not scalable; that is, it should
only be used for fairly small numbers of clients. There is absolutely no defense against
denial of service attacks, such as someone opening a very large number of
connections. It is just an example of basic client/server programming using threads.
Source Code Listing 681

[Link], from Section 11.6, is a simple program that demonstrates basic parsing
of an XML document and traversal of the Document Object Model representation of the
document. The user enters the XML to be parsed in a text area. The nested class
[Link] runs the program as an applet.
[Link] and [Link], from Section 11.6,
demonstrate saving data from a program to a file in XML format. The first program uses
an invented XML language, while the second uses an XMLEncoder for writing files and
an XMLDecoder for reading files. These programs are modifications of
[Link].
[Link], from Section 12.1, is a variation of [Link] that
takes playing card images from an image file. Requires the image file [Link] and
depends on [Link], [Link], and [Link].
PaintWithOff[Link], from Section 12.1, is a little paint program that illus-
trates the use of a BufferedImage as an off-screen canvas.
[Link], from Section 12.1, lets the user play a few sounds and
change the cursor by clicking some buttons. This demonstrates using audio resource
files and using an image resource to create a custom cursor. Requires the resource
files in the directory snc resources.
[Link], from Section 12.2, demonstrates using the alpha component
of colors. It is also an example of using FontMetrics.
[Link], from Section 12.2, demonstrates the use of various BasicStrokes for
draw-ing lines and rectangles. Also demonstrates antialiasing.
[Link], from Section 12.2, demonstrates using a GradientPaint and using a
Tex-turePaint to fill a polygon. Uses the image resource files [Link] and
[Link].
[Link], from Section 12.3, does what its name indicates.
[Link], from Section 12.3, uses a JToolBar that holds a group of 3 radio
buttons and a push button. All the buttons use custom icons, and the push button is
created from an Action.
[Link], from Section 12.4, demonstrates using a JList of Icons. The user can
“stamp” images of a selected icon onto a drawing area. This program uses the icon
images in the directory stamper icons as resources.
[Link], from Section 12.4, is a completely trivial demo of a
JTable.
[Link], from Section 12.4, uses a TableModel to customize a
JTable. The table is a list of xy-points that the user can edit. A scatter plot of the points
is displayed.
[Link] and [Link], from Section
12.4, im-plement a simple web browser using JEditorPane (which is ridiculously easy).
The dif-ference between the programs is that the first loads documents synchronously,
which can hang the program in an unpleasant way, while the second uses a thread to
load documents asynchronously.
[Link], mentioned but just barely discussed in Section 12.4, lets the user
edit RTF files, which are text files in a format that include style information such as bold
and italics. This is mainly a simple demo of using Actions defined by “editor kits.”
682 Source Code Listing

[Link] and [Link], from Section 12.4, are classes that implement
custom components. [Link] is a program that tests them.
The Mandelbrot program from Section 12.5, which computes and displays visualizations of
the Mandelbrot set, is defined by several classes in the package [Link]. The
source code files can be found in the directory edu/hws/eck/mdb.

Part 3: End-of-Chapter Applets

This section contains the source code for the applets that are used as decorations at the
end of each chapter. In general, you should not expect to be able to understand these
applets at the time they occur in the text. Many of these are older applets that will work with
Java 1.1 or even Java 1.0. They are not meant as examples of good programming practice
for more recent versions of Java.

[Link], an animated design, shown at the end of Section 1.7. You can use applet
parameters to control various aspects of this applet’s behavior. Also note that you can click
on the applet and drag the pattern around by hand. See the source code for details.
[Link], from Section 2.6 is a simple animation that shows copies of the string
“Java!” in various sizes and colors appearing and disappearing. This is an old applet
that depends on an old animation framework named [Link]
[Link] shows a simple animation of rectangles continuously shrinking
towards the center of the applet. This is also a programming example in Section 3.8. It
depends on [Link].
[Link], showing a grid of colored squares that get more and more red
as a wandering disturbance visits them, from the end of Section 4.7. Depends on
[Link]
[Link], a subclass of the previous example that makes a symmetric
pattern, from the end of Section 5.7. Depends on [Link] and Random-
[Link].
[Link], an applet with lines that track the mouse, from Section 6.8.
[Link], from Section 7.5, shows moving kaleidoscopic images.
[Link], a Cellular Automaton applet, from the end of Section 8.4. This ap-plet
depends on the file [Link] For more information on cellular automata see
[Link]
[Link], from Section 9.5, graphically shows the solution to the Towers
of Hanoi problem with 10 disks.
[Link], from Section 10.5, solves pentominos puzzles using a simple
recursive backtracking algorithm. This applet depends on [Link]. For a much more
complex Pentominos applet, see [Link]
[Link], an applet that creates a random maze and solves it, from Section 11.6.
The applet at the end of Section 12.5 is the same Mandelbrot program that is discussed
as an example in that section, with source files in the directory edu/hws/eck/mdb.
Source Code Listing 683

Part 4: Required Auxiliary Files

This section lists some of the extra source files that are required by various examples in the
previous sections, along with a description of each file. The files listed here are those which
are general enough to be potentially useful in other programming projects. All of them are
also referred to above, along with the programming examples that depend on them.
[Link] defines a class containing some static methods for doing input/output. These
methods make it easier to use the standard input and output streams, [Link] and
[Link]. TextIO also supports other input sources and output destinations, such as
files. Note that this version of TextIO is new with the fifth edition of this textbook and
requires Java 5.0 (or higher). The TextIO class defined by this file will be useless on a
system that does not implement standard input, and might be inconvenient to use in
integrated development environments such as Eclipse in which standard input works
poorly. In that case, you might want to use the following file instead.
[Link] for GUI defines an alternative to the preceding file. It defines a version of
TextIO with the same set of input and output routines as the original version. But
instead of using standard I/O, this GUI version opens its own window, and the
input/output is done in that window. Please read the comments at the beginning of the
file. (For people who have downloaded this book: The file is located in a directory
named TextIO-GUI inside the source directory.)
[Link] can be used for writing applets that simulate TextIO applets. This
makes it possible to write applets that use “console-style” input/output. Such applets
are created as subclasses of TextIOApplet. See the comments in the file for more
information about how to convert a TextIO program into a TextIOApplet applet. An
example can be found in the file [Link].
[Link] can be used to “wrap” an input stream in an object that makes it easy
to read data from the stream. A TextReader object has basically the same input
methods as the TextIO class. The TextReader class is introduced in Subsection 11.1.4
[Link], a class that can be used as a framework for writing ani-
mated applets. To use the framework, you have to define a subclass of
SimpleAnimation-Applet2. Section 3.8 has an example.
[Link] contains subroutines for opening and controlling a window that contains a
grid of colored rectangles. It depends on [Link]. This is a toolbox for
writing simple stand-alone applications that use a “mosaic window”. This is rather old
code, but it is used in examples in Section 4.6 and Section 4.7.
[Link] is a greatly improved version of [Link] that has many
op-tions. This class defines a subclass of JPanel that shows little rectangles arranged
in rows and columns. It is used in the “mosaic draw” example in Section 6.8.
[Link] defines a class Expr that represent mathematical expressions involving the
vari-able x. It is used in some of the exercises in Chapter 8.
[Link] is a class that can be used to help in internationalization of a program. See
Subsection 12.5.3. (If you have downloaded the web site for this book, you can find this
file in the subdirectory edu/hws/eck/mdb of the source directory.)