Book Image

Introduction to Programming

By : Nick Samoylov
Book Image

Introduction to Programming

By: Nick Samoylov

Overview of this book

Have you ever thought about making your computer do what you want it to do? Do you want to learn to program, but just don't know where to start? Instead of guiding you in the right direction, have other learning resources got you confused with over-explanations? Don't worry. Look no further. Introduction to Programming is here to help. Written by an industry expert who understands the challenges faced by those from a non-programming background, this book takes a gentle, hand-holding approach to introducing you to the world of programming. Beginning with an introduction to what programming is, you'll go on to learn about languages, their syntax, and development environments. With plenty of examples for you to code alongside reading, the book's practical approach will help you to grasp everything it has to offer. More importantly, you'll understand several aspects of application development. As a result, you'll have your very own application running by the end of the book. To help you comprehensively understand Java programming, there are exercises at the end of each chapter to keep things interesting and encourage you to add your own personal touch to the code and, ultimately, your application.
Table of Contents (21 chapters)

Managing strings

The class String is used a lot. So, you have to have a good handle on its functionality. We talked already talked about String value immutability in Chapter 5, Java Language Elements and Types. We have shown that every time a String value is "modified", a new copy of the value is created, which means that in the case of multiple "modifications", many String objects are created, consuming memory and putting a burden on the JVM.

In such cases, it is advisable to use the class java.lang.StringBuilder or java.lang.StringBuffer because they are modifiable objects and do not have an overhead of creating String value copies. We will show how to use them and explain the difference between these two classes in the first part of this section.

After that, we will review the methods of the class String and then provide an overview of the class org.apache...