Methods
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. - 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. |
Additional Resources:
- Learning to Write Java
- Introducing Java (TM) - Your First Applet
- Java FAQs
- Java Software
- java.sun.com
- Sun Microsystems
Object Orientation in JavaTable of Contents
Operator Overloading (Polymorphism in Java)
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