[Chapter 1] Introduction

The phenomenon that is Java continues to capture new supporters every day. What began as a programming environment for writing fancy animation applets that could be embedded in web browsers is growing up to be a sophisticated platform for delivering all kinds of portable, distributed applications. If you are already an experienced Java programmer, you know just how powerful the portability of Java is. If you are just now discovering Java, you'll be happy to know that the days of porting applications are over. Once you write a Java application, it can run on UNIX workstations, PCs, and Macintosh computers, as well as on many other supported platforms.

This book is a complete programmer's reference to the "fundamental classes" in the Java programming environment. The fundamental classes in the Java Development Kit (JDK) provide a powerful set of tools for creating portable applications; they are an important component of the toolbox used by every Java programmer. This reference covers the classes in the java.lang, java.io, java.net, java.util, java.lang.reflect, java.math, java.text, and java.util.zip packages. This chapter offers an overview of the fundamental classes in each of these packages.

This reference assumes you are already familiar with the Java language and class libraries. If you aren't, Exploring Java, by Pat Niemeyer and Josh Peck, provides a general introduction, and other books in the O'Reilly Java series provide detailed references and tutorials on specific topics. Note that the material herein does not cover the classes that comprise the Abstract Window Toolkit (AWT): the AWT is covered by a companion volume, the Java AWT Reference, by John Zukowski. In addition, this book does not cover any of the new "enterprise" APIs in the core 1.1 JDK, such as the classes in the java.rmi, java.sql, and java.security packages. These packages will be covered by forthcoming books on distributed computing and database programming. See the Preface for a complete list of titles in the O'Reilly Java series.

You should be aware that this book covers two versions of Java: 1.0.2 and 1.1. Version 1.1 of the Java Development Kit (JDK) was released in February 1997. This release includes many improvements and additions to the fundamental Java classes; it represents a major step forward in the evolution of Java. Although Java 1.1 has a number of great new features, you may not want to switch to the new version right away, especially if you are writing mostly Java applets. You'll need to keep an eye on the state of Java support in browsers to help you decide when to switch to Java 1.1. Of course, if you are writing Java applications, you can take the plunge today.

This chapter points out new features of Java 1.1 as they come up. However, there is one "feature" that deserves mention that doesn't fit naturally into an overview. As of Java 1.1, classes, methods, and constructors available in Java 1.0.2 can be deprecated in favor of new classes, methods, and constructors in Java 1.1. The Java 1.1 compiler issues a warning whenever you use a deprecated entity.

1.1 The java.lang Package

The java.lang package contains classes and interfaces essential to the Java language. For example, the Object class is the ultimate superclass of all other classes in Java. Object defines some basic methods for thread synchronization that are inherited by all Java classes. In addition, Object defines basic methods for equality testing, hashcode generation, and string conversion that can be overridden by subclasses when appropriate.

The java.lang package also contains the Thread class, which controls the operation of each thread in a multithreaded application. A Thread object can be used to start, stop, and suspend a thread. A Thread must be associated with an object that implements the Runnable interface; the run() method of this interface specifies what the thread actually does. See Chapter 3, Threads, for a more detailed explanation of how threads work in Java.

The Throwable class is the superclass of all error and exception classes in Java, so it defines the basic functionality of all such classes. The java.lang package also defines the standard error and exception classes in Java. The error and exception hierarchies are rooted at the Error and Exception subclasses of Throwable. See Chapter 4, Exception Handling, for more information about the exception-handling mechanism.

The Boolean, Character, Byte, Double, Float, Integer, Long, and Short classes encapsulate the Java primitive data types. Byte and Short are new in Java 1.1, as is the Void class. All of these classes are necessary to support the new Reflection API and class literals in Java 1.1 The Class class also has a number of new methods in Java 1.1 to support reflection.

All strings in Java are represented by String objects. These objects are immutable. The StringBuffer class in java.lang can be used to work with mutable text strings. Chapter 2, Strings and Related Classes, offers a more detailed description of working with strings in Java.

See Chapter 12, The java.lang Package, for complete reference material on all of the classes in the java.lang package.

1. Introduction

1.1 The java.lang Package