Java(TM) Programming Language, The (3rd Edition) (The Java Series) [Paperback]

Ken Arnold (Author), James Gosling (Author), David Holmes (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0201704331 | ISBN-13: 978-0201704334 | Publication Date: June 5, 2000 | Edition: 3

The JavaaA A Programming Language, Third Edition gives every Java developer an up-to-date, authoritative view of the language as its creators intended it. Co-authored by James Gosling, Java's inventor, the book is as authoritative as ever, and even more comprehensive -- with in-depth coverage of the latest Java 2 Standard Edition Version 1.3 features and classes. As with previous editions, this book starts with a concise introduction to the language; presents detailed descriptions of Java's commands, constructs, and libraries; and delivers progressively advanced coverage of classes and objects, interfaces, exception-handling, threads and multitasking, packages, I/O, and more. Best of all, it offers a creator's eye view of the rationale behind Java's design, and its latest enhancements -- all designed to help developers make the most of Java's power, portability, and flexibility.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Written by several of Java's inventors, The Java Programming Language, Third Edition provides a nearly indispensable guide to basic and advanced features in today's hottest programming language. Perfect for the intermediate or advanced developer, this book delivers a wealth of information on how to do more with Java. The first sections provide a nicely compact tour of Java basics. If you're a beginner, you'll get a glimpse of the fundamentals of Java quickly. (Most of this new edition has the more experienced reader in mind.) Subsequent chapters delve into basic and advanced language features of what can be done with classes, interfaces, and other design features in Java. The authors' explanations are notably clear and never pedantic. Many examples are illustrated by using simple mathematical problems, and the class-design samples for inheritance and interfaces all use comprehensible class names and concepts.

This title is outstanding when it comes to class design. It will definitely let any reader do more with classes, whether you want to make use of such features as "anonymous inner classes" and reflection (for loading classes dynamically), or do more with interfaces (including extending interfaces and tricks on changing data members in interfaces).

Prominent sections here include a complete guide to Java language statements, including keywords, literals, and support for Unicode. Later sections feature a nice, clear explanation of Java's complicated I/O classes, a fine tutorial on threading, and a solid introduction to using Java's collection classes. The book closes with a tour of some additional "core" Java packages that are available in the language.

In all, this up-to-the-minute guide to some of the more complex features in today's Java fills a valuable niche for any Java developer. Besides providing a glimpse into what the Java team at Sun is up to, this authoritative resource can help you master the finer points of class design, as well as make the most out of newly added features in the new JDK 1.3 standard. --Richard Dragan

Topics covered: QuickStart overview of Java, class and object design in Java, access control, construction and initialization, static methods, method overloading, class inheritance, redefining members, the protected keyword, the strictfp keyword and floating-point processing, cloning objects, interfaces (constants, methods, and modifiers), extending interfaces, marker interfaces, nested classes and interfaces (including static nested types, inner classes, and anonymous inner classes), tokens, operators, and expressions in Java, literals, keywords, operator precedence, control flow, Java exception handling, exception classes, the String and StringBuffer classes, threads, synchronization APIs and techniques (scheduling, thread groups, and thread local storage), the wrapper classes for Number types, Java reflection, loading classes, garbage collection (GC algorithms, finalization and reachability states), packages, JavaDoc documentation tags, tour of Java I/O stream classes, serialization techniques, new and legacy Java collections, miscellaneous utility classes, system programming with properties, processes and JVM shutdown; internationalization and localization techniques, and tour of additional Java "core" packages.

From the Inside Flap

Beautiful buildings are more than scientific. They are true organisms, spiritually conceived; works of art, using the best technology by inspiration rather than the idiosyncrasies of mere taste or any averaging by the committee mind.
Frank Lloyd Wright

The Java™ programming language has been warmly received by the world com munity of software developers and Internet content providers. Users of the Inter net and World Wide Web benefit from access to secure, platform-independent applications that can come from anywhere on the Internet. Software developers who create applications in the Java programming language benefit by developing code only once, with no need to "port" their applications to every software and hardware platform.

For many, the language was known first as a tool to create applets for the World Wide Web. An applet is a mini-application that runs inside a Web page. An applet can perform tasks and interact with users on their browser pages without using resources from the Web server after being downloaded. Some applets may, of course, talk with the server to do their job, but that's their business. The Java programming language is indeed valuable for distributed network environments like the Web. However, it goes well beyond this domain to provide a powerful general-purpose programming language suitable for building a variety of applications that either do not depend on network features, or want them for dif ferent reasons. The ability to execute downloaded code on remote hosts in a secure manner is a critical requirement for many organizations.

Other groups use it as a general-purpose programming language for projects in which machine independence is less important. Ease of programming and safety features help you quickly produce working code. Some common program ming errors never occur because of features like garbage collection and type-safe references. Support for multithreading caters to modern network-based and graph ical user interface--based applications that must attend to multiple tasks simulta neously, and the mechanisms of exception handling ease the task of dealing with error conditions. While the built-in tools are powerful, it is a simple language in which programmers can quickly become proficient.

The Java programming language is designed for maximum portability with as few implementation dependencies as possible. An int, for example, is a 32-bit signed two's-complement integer in all implementations, irrespective of the CPU architecture on which the program executes. Defining everything possible about the language and its runtime environment enables users to run compiled code any where and share code with anyone who has a Java runtime environment.

ABOUT THIS BOOK

This book teaches the Java programming language to people who are familiar with basic programming concepts. It explains the language without being ardu ously formal or complete. This book is not an introduction to object-oriented pro gramming, although some issues are covered to establish a common terminology. Other books in this series, and much online documentation, focus on applets, graphical interfaces, databases, components, and other specific kinds of program ming tasks. For other references, see "Further Reading" on page 563.

This third edition includes the changes introduced in the Java 2 Platform, such as the new strictfp keyword, collection classes, and reference objects, as imple mented in the Java 2 SDK, Standard Edition Version 1.3 (sometimes colloquially referred to as JDK 1.3 or simply 1.3). You will also find brief coverage of the other main packages. If you have already read the second edition, you will find that much of the information in this edition has been restructured to improve the presentation of language features---such as nested classes and interfaces---and class API's. This edition will give you a lot of new information, but since most of the language is unchanged, and almost all main package types are still usable, you will want to pay most attention to the newer areas.

The Java programming language shares many features common to most pro gramming languages in use today. The language should look familiar to C and C++ programmers because it was designed with C and C++ constructs where the languages are similar. That said, this book is neither a comparative analysis nor a "bridge" tutorial---no knowledge of C or C++ is assumed. C++ programmers, especially, may be as hindered by what they must unlearn as they are helped by their knowledge.

Chapter 1---A Quick Tour---gives a quick overview of the language. Program mers who are unfamiliar with object-oriented programming notions should read the quick tour, while programmers who are already familiar with object-oriented programming paradigms will find the quick tour a useful introduction to the object-oriented features of the language.

Chapters 2, 3, 4, and 5 cover the object-oriented core features of the language, namely, class declarations that define components of a program, and objects man ufactured according to class definitions. Chapter 2---Classes and Objects-- describes the basis of the language: classes. Chapter 3---Extending Classes-- describes how an existing class can be extended,orsubclassed, to create a new class with additional data and behavior. Chapter 4---Interfaces---describes how to declare interface types which are abstract descriptions of behavior that provide maximum flexibility for class designers and implementors. Chapter 5---Nested Classes and Interfaces---describes how classes and interfaces can be declared inside other classes and interfaces, and the benefits that provides.

Chapters 6 and 7 cover standard constructs common to most languages. Chap ter 6---Tokens, Operators, and Expressions---describes the tokens of the language from which statements are constructed, how the tokens and operators are used to build expressions, and how expressions are evaluated. Chapter 7---Control Flow---describes how control statements direct the order of statement execution. Chapter 8---Exceptions---describes the language's powerful error-handling capabilities. Chapter 9---Strings---describes the built-in language and runtime support for String objects.

Chapter 10---Threads---explains the language's view of multithreading. Many applications, such as graphical interface--based software, must attend to multiple tasks simultaneously. These tasks must cooperate to behave correctly, and threads meet the needs of cooperative multitasking.

Chapter 11---Programming with Types---describes the type-related classes: individual objects that describe each class and interface, and classes that wrap primitive data types such as integers and floating-point values into their own object types.

Chapter 12---Garbage Collection and Memory---talks about garbage collec tion, finalization, and lower-strength reference objects.

Chapter 13---Packages---describes how you can group collections of classes and interfaces into separate packages.

Chapter 14---Documentation Comments---shows how to write reference doc umentation in comments.

Chapters 15 through 19 cover the main packages. Chapter 15---The I/O Pack age---describes the input/output system, which is based on streams. Chapter 16-- Collections---covers the collection or container classes such as sets and lists.

Chapter 17---Miscellaneous Utilities---covers the rest of the utility classes such as bit sets and random number generation. Chapter 18---System Programming-- leads you through the system classes that provide access to features of the under lying platform. Chapter 19---Internationalization and Localization---covers some of the tools used to create programs that can run in many linguistic and cultural environments.

Chapter 20---Standard Packages---briefly explores the packages that are part of the standard platform, giving overviews of those packages not covered in more detail in this book.

Appendix A---Runtime Exceptions---lists all the runtime exceptions and errors that the runtime system itself can throw.

Appendix B---Useful Tables---has tables of information that you may find useful for quick reference.

Finally, Further Reading lists works that may be interesting for further read ing on complete details, object orientation, programming with threads, software design, and other topics.

EXAMPLES AND DOCUMENTATION All the code examples in the text have been compiled and run on the latest version of the language available at the time the book was written, which was the Java 2 SDK, Standard Edition, Version 1.3. Only supported features are covered---depre cated types, methods, and fields are ignored except where unavoidable. We have also covered issues beyond writing programs that simply compile. Part of learning a language is to learn to use it well. For this reason, we have tried to show princi ples of good programming style and design.

In a few places we refer to online documentation. Development environments provide a way to automatically generate documentation (usually HTML docu ments) from a compile

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Product Details

• Paperback: 704 pages
• Publisher: Prentice Hall PTR; 3 edition (June 5, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0201704331
• ISBN-13: 978-0201704334
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7.3 x 1.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (70 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #340,163 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

86 of 91 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Concise but complete Java Language Model, July 12, 2000

By 

Graeme Webster (Adelaide, Australia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Java(TM) Programming Language, The (3rd Edition) (The Java Series) (Paperback)

I have worked with Java for two years, and have a six-year background in C++. I didn't seek an introduction to Java when I bought The Java Programming Language Third Edition, and I would use many of my own notes, and the book chapters in a different order, with beginning programmers (although it would make an excellent university programming text, supported with tutorials and workshops). Experienced programmers will love this book, but beginners (first-time programmers) should come back to it. But the book's strength is its concise, comprehensive unfolding of insight into the Java language model -- more than just the object model. Serious programmers will not regret reviewing everything they thought they knew about Java (especially those of us who regularly work in C++ and Object Pascal as well as in Java). I will read this book every six months, and dip into it daily, if necessary. It offers me a nice blend of terse explanation and illustrative examples of the language core. This is clearly one of the few "5 star" Java core language books available: good scope, well written, trustworthy -- expert knowledge at my fingertips. Use this book to polish your insight.

21 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars exellent java book, August 21, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Java(TM) Programming Language, The (3rd Edition) (The Java Series) (Paperback)

This is one of the best java programming books that I have read. The book concentrates ONLY in java concept and programming language, it does not cover networking, no Graphics, etc... Its advantage is to help newbie concentrated on the core language first. Novice might find the topic a bit too advanced and terse to digest, more advanced programmer will find the book concise and can be used as a reference for later used. Advanced programmer will find the book a bit too verbose--unlike the C programming language from Dennis and Brian which is very terse, great as reference.

The book offers enough depth that it requires few different re-reads for most people.

I think the book is on par with the "C programming language" as a reference of the language, I also like the layout of the page, very easy on the eyes to help the reading. It comes with good examples. The book is printed on high quality paper...

A must have JAVA book, but not the first java book for novice.

19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The only book you need to learn the "Java Language", October 11, 2000

By 

Sam "SS" (malden, ma USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Java(TM) Programming Language, The (3rd Edition) (The Java Series) (Paperback)

If you are already a developer and wanted to learn Java then this is the book for you. This book clearly explains the language its nuances (this book is not verbose). The examples used by authors to demonstrate the concepts are excellent. I programmed a lot in C/C++ and the books I used to learn those languages are "The C Programming Language" and "The C++ Programming Language" respectively. Ironically, when I started learning Java I did not take up this book. Instead I tried several books and there are some good books out there but nothing that suited me well. I prefer "to the point" discussion that this book provides when learning a language and also like to know why a certain feature was included in the language. This book did exactly that. But if you are new to programming, then this book may not be for you.

Other books that you may like to take a look at are:

1) Thinking in Java. This is available on the for Free(But its too verbose for my tastes).

2) Taming java threads( By Allan Holub. A very nice discussion of Java Threads and Caveats)