Methods
As we said earlier in our discussion of object-oriented programing, methods are the verbs of objects.
Methods, like subroutines in procedural-oriented programming, are the basic unit of funtionality of an object.
They are a body of executable code contained within a class which can be used to effect an instantiated object of the class.
Methods consist of the following components:
- A method name
- A list of inputs which may be empty
- A return type which may be "void" if the method returns nothing
- The code to perform some action
|
Actually, some methods, such as abstract methods, do not require executable code.
Abstract methods are used like interfaces to help define a skeleton of functionality but leave the fleshing out to another.
|
Consider the following code snippet:
int add(int a, int b)
{
return (a+b);
}
In this case, we have created a method which adds two integers passed to it as arguments and then returns the result.
The method is named "add" and might be used in your code with a line such as the following in which mySum is set to "7":
int mySum = add(3, 4)
|
Note that you can only define methods within the body of a class definition so the above code alone would not work unless you made it part of a class.
|
NEXT
Selena Sol contributes to the JavaBoutique's Introduction to Java. Selena curently works for Barclays Capital in London, one of the leading global investment banks in Europe and has worked as a software developer for the National Center for Human Genome research, Microline Software, Neuron Data, and Electric Eye in Singapore. Selena is perhaps best-known for creating the Public Domain Web Script Archive (Extropia) and writing several books on Web Programming (Perl, CGI, Java).
Email: selena@extropia.com
