Book Image

Java Fundamentals

By : Gazihan Alankus, Rogério Theodoro de Brito, Basheer Ahamed Fazal, Vinicius Isola, Miles Obare
Book Image

Java Fundamentals

By: Gazihan Alankus, Rogério Theodoro de Brito, Basheer Ahamed Fazal, Vinicius Isola, Miles Obare

Overview of this book

Since its inception, Java has stormed the programming world. Its features and functionalities provide developers with the tools needed to write robust cross-platform applications. Java Fundamentals introduces you to these tools and functionalities that will enable you to create Java programs. The book begins with an introduction to the language, its philosophy, and evolution over time, until the latest release. You'll learn how the javac/java tools work and what Java packages are - the way a Java program is usually organized. Once you are comfortable with this, you'll be introduced to advanced concepts of the language, such as control flow keywords. You'll explore object-oriented programming and the part it plays in making Java what it is. In the concluding chapters, you'll get to grips with classes, typecasting, and interfaces, and understand the use of data structures, arrays, strings, handling exceptions, and creating generics. By the end of this book, you will have learned to write programs, automate tasks, and follow advanced courses on algorithms and data structures or explore more advanced Java courses.
Table of Contents (12 chapters)
Java Fundamentals
Preface

Typecasting


We have already seen how, when we write int a = 10, a is of integer data type, which is usually 32 bits in size. When we write char c = 'a', c has a data type of character. These data types were referred to as primitive types because they can be used to hold simple information.

Objects also have types. The type of an object is often the class of that object. For example, when we create an object such as Doctor myDoctor = new Doctor(), the myDoctor object is of type Doctor. The myDoctor variable is often referred to as a reference type. As we discussed earlier, this is because the myDoctor variable doesn't hold the object itself. Rather, it holds the reference to the object in memory.

Typecasting is a way for us to change the class or interface from one type to another. It's important to note that only classes or interfaces (together, these are called types) that belong to the same superclass or implement the same interface, that is, they have a parent-child relationship, can be...