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Programming Fundamentals in Java

This document provides an overview of static members, shadowing, the this keyword, constructors in child classes, super(), and this() in Java. It includes examples of declaring static members that belong to a class rather than individual objects, how shadowing prioritizes local variables over global variables with the same name, using this to explicitly reference data members from within methods, how child class constructors implicitly call parent class constructors, and using super() and this() to call constructors within a class and parent class respectively.

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John Pham
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51 views

Programming Fundamentals in Java

This document provides an overview of static members, shadowing, the this keyword, constructors in child classes, super(), and this() in Java. It includes examples of declaring static members that belong to a class rather than individual objects, how shadowing prioritizes local variables over global variables with the same name, using this to explicitly reference data members from within methods, how child class constructors implicitly call parent class constructors, and using super() and this() to call constructors within a class and parent class respectively.

Uploaded by

John Pham
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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HSBC Technology Graduate Training

Programming Fundamentals: Java

Day 2 (Afternoon)
Tuesday 27 October 2020 | 2pm
Contents
• Static members
• Shadowing
• this
• Example
• Constructors in Child Classes
• Super
• this()
Static members
STATIC MEMBERS

• Let’s imagine a class Coordinate that stores two data members x and y.
• The Coordinate class has a constructor that sets the x and y values.
• The Coordinate class also defines a method that prints the coordinate.
• What happens when we create an object from this class?
STATIC MEMBERS

• Let’s create 2 Coordinate objects.


• What is inside these objects? Simple: whatever we declared in the class.
• In this case, each object will have:
• Its own x data member.
• Its own y data member.
• Its own print method.
coordinate1 coordinate2

private int x = 2; private int x = 5;


private int y = 3; private int y = 7;

public void print() {…} public void print() {…}


STATIC MEMBERS

• What do we see if we call print() on coordinate1 vs. print() on coordinate2?

• So coordinate1 has its own x and y values, and coordinate2 also has its own x and y
value.
• This means that when you instantiate an object, you make a copy of the members
declared within the relevant class.
STATIC MEMBERS

• What if we don’t want to make a copy of members?


• We can use the static keyword.
• A member that is declared as static will be tied to a class and not an object.
• In other words, when you create a new object of a class, the static members will not be
copied into the object.
• Imagine now we wish that all Coordinate objects we work with has a unit, e.g. “miles”,
“km” etc.
• We want all objects of Coordinate to have the same unit.
• We can declare a unit member as static!
STATIC MEMBERS

• The example below shows the effect of declaring unit in Coordinate class as static.

Notice how we can set the value


of unit before creating an object
from the class Coordinate. This
is because static members
belong to classes, not objects.

Objects don’t have their own


copy of static members. In this
case, the static member unit
belongs to the Coordinate class,
so ALL Coordinate objects will
share the same unit member.
STATIC MEMBERS

• We can also create static methods.


• This means the method would belong to the class instead of the object.
• For example, imagine we add the static keyword to print in class Coordinate.
• Is this code valid?
STATIC MEMBERS

• This code is not valid.


• Data members x and y are NOT static. They belong to an object of type Coordinate.
• In other words, each Coordinate object has its own x and y values.
• However, the print() method is static, meaning it belongs to a class and is not copied to
an object.

This code will not run.


Shadowing
SHADOWING

• What will be printed from the following?


SHADOWING

• Let’s see what happens when we invoke the method a.foo()

• Notice that the class A has a data member x.


• However, in the method foo(), we declare a variable,
also with the name of x.
• Which x will foo() use? Two options:
• Global variable x
• Local variable x
• Method will always prioritise local variables over
global variables.
• In this case, foo() will print 20.
SHADOWING

• Let’s see what happens when we invoke the method a.bar()

• Notice that the class A has a data member x.


• Unlike foo(), bar() does not declare a local variable
with the same name x.
• There is no conflict here, so bar() will print the value
of the data member x in class A. In this case – 10.
SHADOWING

• What will be printed from the following?


• The answer is 20 followed by 10.
SHADOWING

• This demonstrates a concept called shadowing.


• Shadowing occurs where two variables with the same name are visible at some point
within the code.
• The lower-level scoped variable is ALWAYS prioritised over high-scoped variables.
this
THIS

• Following from Shadowing, what if we wanted to use the global data member instead?
• We can explicitly state this using the “this” notation.
• foo() now prints 10 instead of 20.
Example
EXAMPLE

• Is this code valid?


EXAMPLE

• No. Few reasons:


• Data member A is not static yet the what() method is static.
• We can’t use this in a static method since it does not exist within a object.
Constructors in Child Classes
CONSTRUCTORS IN CHILD CLASSES

• Imagine the following two classes.


CONSTRUCTORS IN CHILD CLASSES

• What will be printed if we run the following code?


CONSTRUCTORS IN CHILD CLASSES

• The following will be printed:


• Running constructor in One
• Running constructor in Two
CONSTRUCTORS IN CHILD CLASSES

• When we create an object from a class that inherits another, the constructors of the
parent classes will be called too.
• In the earlier example, we created an object from class Two.
• Class Two inherits class One.
• So when we create the new object from class Two, the constructor of class One is
called followed by the constructor of class Two.
Super
SUPER

• Remember how classes may have more than one constructor provided they have
different signatures?
• Let’s apply that to class One from the previous example.

• How does the constructor in Two know which parent constructor to call?
• Before we can answer that question, we must understand what Super() will do.
SUPER

• super() is a special method that invokes a constructor of the parent class.


• By default, Java adds super() to any child constructors if none is defined.
• For example, the class Two does not call super() in its constructor.
• So Java adds (in the background) super() as the first line in the constructor of Two.
SUPER

• So in this case, super() (with no arguments) will call the corresponding constructor in
the parent class One with no arguments.
• Note: this will work without super() too since Java will invoke the default constructor
of the parent class inherently.

Calling super() will run


this constructor in
class One.
SUPER

• If we call super with one integer as an argument, it will call the corresponding
constructor in the parent.

Calling super(3) will


run this constructor in
class One.
SUPER

• If we call super(), it must be the first instruction of the constructor.


• The following code is not valid since super(2) is the second instruction in the
constructor.

⛔
this()
THIS()

• Super() calls the constructor of a parent class.


• This() calls a constructor within the same class.
• Imagine the following class.
THIS()

• What if we wanted to call another constructor within the same class?


• We can use this().
• In this example, we call the constructor One(int x) from the constructor One().
• So when we create an object from class One, the following will be printed:
• First constructor.
• Second constructor.

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