The Java Language Environment

A White Paper

A Sun Microsystems, Inc. Business 2550 Garcia Avenue Mountain View, CA 94043 U.S.A. 415 960-1300 FAX 415 969-9131
October 1995

The Java Language Environment

A White Paper

James Gosling Henry McGilton

A Sun Microsystems, Inc. Business 2550 Garcia Avenue Mountain View, CA 94043 U.S.A. 415 960-1300 FAX 415 969-9131
October 1995

Copyright Information 1995 Sun Microsystems, Inc. All rights reserved. 2550 Garcia Avenue, Mountain View, California 94043-1100 U.S.A. This BETA quality release and related documentation are protected by copyright and distributed under licenses restricting its use, copying, distribution, and decompilation. No part of this product or related documentation may be reproduced in any form by any means without prior written authorization of Sun and its licensors, if any. Portions of this product may be derived from the UNIX and Berkeley 4.3 BSD systems, licensed from UNIX System Laboratories, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Novell, Inc., and the University of California, respectively. Third-party font software in this product is protected by copyright and licensed from Suns font suppliers. RESTRICTED RIGHTS LEGEND: Use, duplication, or disclosure by the United States Government is subject to the restrictions set forth in DFARS 252.227-7013 (c)(1)(ii) and FAR 52.227-19. The release described in this manual may be protected by one or more U.S. patents, foreign patents, or pending applications. TRADEMARKS Sun, the Sun logo, Sun Microsystems, Solaris, HotJava, and Java are trademarks or registered trademarks of Sun Microsystems, Inc. in the U.S. and certain other countries. The Duke character is a trademark of Sun Microsystems, Inc., and Copyright (c) 1992-1995 Sun Microsystems, Inc. All Rights Reserved. UNIX is a registered trademark in the United States and other countries, exclusively licensed through X/Open Company, Ltd. OPEN LOOK is a registered trademark of Novell, Inc. All other product names mentioned herein are the trademarks of their respective owners. All SPARC trademarks, including the SCD Compliant Logo, are trademarks or registered trademarks of SPARC International, Inc. SPARCstation, SPARCserver, SPARCengine, SPARCstorage, SPARCware, SPARCcenter, SPARCclassic, SPARCcluster, SPARCdesign, SPARC811, SPARCprinter, UltraSPARC, microSPARC, SPARCworks, and SPARCompiler are licensed exclusively to Sun Microsystems, Inc. Products bearing SPARC trademarks are based upon an architecture developed by Sun Microsystems, Inc. The OPEN LOOK and Sun Graphical User Interfaces were developed by Sun Microsystems, Inc. for its users and licensees. Sun acknowledges the pioneering efforts of Xerox in researching and developing the concept of visual or graphical user interfaces for the computer industry. Sun holds a non-exclusive license from Xerox to the Xerox Graphical User Interface, which license also covers Suns licensees who implement OPEN LOOK GUIs and otherwise comply with Suns written license agreements. X Window System is a trademark of the X Consortium. THIS PUBLICATION IS PROVIDED AS IS WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, OR NON-INFRINGEMENT. THIS PUBLICATION COULD INCLUDE TECHNICAL INACCURACIES OR TYPOGRAPHICAL ERRORS. CHANGES ARE PERIODICALLY ADDED TO THE INFORMATION HEREIN; THESE CHANGES WILL BE INCORPORATED IN NEW EDITIONS OF THE PUBLICATION. SUN MICROSYSTEMS, INC. MAY MAKE IMPROVEMENTS AND/OR CHANGES IN THE PRODUCT(S) AND/OR THE PROGRAM(S) DESCRIBED IN THIS PUBLICATION AT ANY TIME.

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Contents
1. Introduction to Java . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.1 Beginnings of the Java Language Project. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.2 Design Goals of Java . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.2.1 Simple, Object Oriented, and Familiar . . . . . . . . . . . 1.2.2 Robust and Secure. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.2.3 Architecture Neutral and Portable . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.2.4 High Performance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.2.5 Interpreted, Threaded, and Dynamic . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.3 The Java Base System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.4 The Java Environmenta New Approach to Distributed Computing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2. JavaSimple and Familiar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.1 Main Features of the Java Language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.1.1 Primitive Data Types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.1.2 Arithmetic and Relational Operators . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.1.3 Arrays . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 12 12 13 14 14 15 15 16 17 18 20 20 21 21

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2.1.4 Strings. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.1.5 Multi-Level Break . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.1.6 Memory Management and Garbage Collection . . . 2.1.7 The Background Garbage Collector . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.1.8 Integrated Thread Synchronization . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.2 Features Removed from C and C++. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.2.1 No More Typedefs, Denes, or Preprocessor. . . . . . 2.2.2 No More Structures or Unions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.2.3 No More Functions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.2.4 No More Multiple Inheritance. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.2.5 No More Goto Statements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.2.6 No More Operator Overloading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.2.7 No More Automatic Coercions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.2.8 No More Pointers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.3 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3. Java is Object Oriented . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.1 Object Technology in Java . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.2 What Are Objects? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.3 Basics of Objects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.3.1 Classes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.3.2 Instantiating an Object from its Class. . . . . . . . . . . . 3.3.3 Constructors. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.3.4 Methods and Messaging . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.3.5 Finalizers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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3.3.6 Subclassing. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.3.7 Access Control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.3.8 Class Variables and Class Methods. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.3.9 Abstract Methods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.4 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4. Architecture Neutral, Portable, and Robust . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.1 Architecture Neutral . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.1.1 Byte Codes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.2 Portable . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.3 Robust . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.3.1 Strict Compile-Time and Run-Time Checking. . . . . 4.4 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5. Interpreted and Dynamic. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.1 Dynamic Loading and Binding. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.1.1 The Fragile Superclass Problem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.1.2 Solving the Fragile Superclass Problem . . . . . . . . . . 5.1.3 Java Language Interfaces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.1.4 Run-Time Representations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.2 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6. Security in Java . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.1 Memory Allocation and Layout . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.2 The Byte Code Verication Process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.2.1 The Byte Code Verier . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

39 41 42 42 44 46 47 47 48 49 49 50 52 53 53 54 54 55 55 56 56 57 58

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6.3 Security Checks in the Bytecode Loader . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.4 Security in the Java Networking Package . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.5 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7. Multithreading in Java. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.1 Threads at the Java Language Level . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.2 Integrated Thread Synchronization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.3 Multithreading SupportConclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8. Performance and Comparisons. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.1 Performance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.2 The Java Language Compared . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.3 A Major Benet of Java: Fast and Fearless Prototyping. . 8.4 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9. The HotJava World-Wide Web Browser . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9.1 The Evolution of Cyberspace . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9.1.1 First Generation Browsers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9.1.2 The HotJava BrowserA New Concept in Web Browsers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9.1.3 The Essential Difference . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9.1.4 Dynamic Content . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9.1.5 Dynamic Types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9.1.6 Dynamic Protocols . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9.2 Freedom to Innovate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9.3 Implementation Details . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9.4 Security . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

59 59 60 62 62 63 64 66 66 67 70 70 72 73 74 75 75 76 77 78 80 80 81

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9.4.1 The First Layerthe Java Language Interpreter. . . 9.4.2 The Next Layerthe Higher Level Protocols . . . . . 9.5 HotJavathe Promise . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10. Further Reading. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Introduction to Java

The Next Stage of the Known, Or a Completely New Paradigm? Taiichi SakaiyaThe Knowledge-Value Revolution

The Software Developers Burden

Imagine youre a software application developer. Your programming language of choice (or the language thats been foisted on you) is C or C++ . Youve been at this for quite a while and your job doesnt seem to be getting any easier. These past few years youve seen the growth of multiple incompatible hardware architectures, each supporting multiple incompatible operating systems, with each platform operating with one or more incompatible graphical user interfaces. Now youre supposed to cope with all this and make your applications work in a distributed client-server environment. The growth of the Internet, the World-Wide Web, and electronic commerce have introduced new dimensions of complexity into the development process.

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The tools you use to develop applications dont seem to help you much. Youre still coping with the same old problems; the fashionable new object-oriented techniques seem to have added new problems without solving the old ones. You say to yourself and your friends, There has to be a better way!

The Better Way is Here Now

Now there is a better wayits the Java programming language environment (Java for short) from Sun Microsystems. Imagine, if you will, this development world

Your programming language is object oriented, yet its still dead simple. Your development cycle is much faster because Java is interpreted. The compile-link-load-test-crash-debug cycle is obsoletenow you just compile and run. Your applications are portable across multiple platforms. Write your applications once, and you never need to port themthey will run without modication on multiple operating systems and hardware architectures. Your applications are robust because the Java run-time system manages memory for you. Your interactive graphical applications have high performance because multiple concurrent threads of activity in your application are supported by the multithreading built into Java environment. Your applications are adaptable to changing environments because you can dynamically download code modules from anywhere on the network. Your end users can trust that your applications are secure, even though theyre downloading code from all over the Internet; the Java run-time system has built-in protection against viruses and tampering.

You dont need to dream about these features. Theyre here now. The Java Programming Language Environment provides a portable, interpreted, highperformance, simple, object-oriented programming language and supporting runtime environment. This introductory chapter provides you with a brief look at the main design goals of the Java system; the remainder of this paper examines the features of Java in more detail.

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At the end of this paper youll nd a chapter that describes the HotJava Browser (HotJava for short). HotJava is an innovative World-Wide Web browser, and the rst major applications written using the Java environment. HotJava is the rst browser to dynamically download and execute Java code fragments from anywhere on the Internet, and to so so in a secure manner.

1.1 Beginnings of the Java Language Project

Java is designed to meet the challenges of application development in the context of heterogeneous, network-wide distributed environments. Paramount among these challenges is secure delivery of applications that consume the minimum of system resources, can run on any hardware and software platform, and can be extended dynamically. Java originated as part of a research project to develop advanced software for a wide variety of networked devices and embedded systems. The goal was to develop a small, reliable, portable, distributed, real-time operating environment. When the project started, C++ was the language of choice. But over time the difculties encountered with C++ grew to the point where the problems could best be addressed by creating an entirely new language environment. Design and architecture decisions drew from a variety of languages such as Eiffel, SmallTalk, Objective C, and Cedar/Mesa. The result is a language environment that has proven ideal for developing secure, distributed, network-based end-user applications in environments ranging from networked-embedded devices to the World-Wide Web and the desktop.

1.2 Design Goals of Java

The design requirements of Java are driven by the nature of the computing environments in which software must be deployed. The massive growth of the Internet and the World-Wide Web leads us to a completely new way of looking at development and distribution of software. To live in the world of electronic commerce and distribution, Java must enable the development of secure, high performance, and highly robust applications on multiple platforms in heterogeneous, distributed networks.

Introduction to Java

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Operating on multiple platforms in heterogeneous networks invalidates the traditional schemes of binary distribution, release, upgrade, patch, and so on. To survive in this jungle, Java must be architecture neutral, portable, and dynamically adaptable. The Java system that emerged to meet these needs is simple, so it can be easily programmed by most developers; familiar, so that current developers can easily learn Java; object oriented, to take advantage of modern software development methodologies and to t into distributed client-server applications; multithreaded, for high performance in applications that need to perform multiple concurrent activities, such as multimedia; and interpreted, for maximum portability and dynamic capabilities. Together, the above requirements comprise quite a collection of buzzwords, so lets examine some of them and their respective benets before going on.

1.2.1 Simple, Object Oriented, and Familiar

Primary characteristics of Java include a simple language that can be programmed without extensive programmer training while being attuned to current software practices. The fundamental concepts of Java are grasped quickly; programmers can be productive from the very beginning. Java is designed to be object oriented from the ground up. Object technology has nally found its way into the programming mainstream after a gestation period of thirty years. The needs of distributed, client-server based systems coincide with the encapsulated, message-passing paradigms of object-based software. To function within increasingly complex, network-based environments, programming systems must adopt object-oriented concepts. Java provides a clean and efcient object-based development environment. Programmers using Java can access existing libraries of tested objects that provide functionality ranging from basic data types through I/O and network interfaces to graphical user interface toolkits. These libraries can be extended to provide new behavior. Even though C++ was rejected as an implementation language, keeping Java looking like C++ as far as possible results in Java being a familiar language, while removing the unnecessary complexities of C++. Having Java retain many of the object-oriented features and the look and feel of C++ means that programmers can migrate easily to Java and be productive quickly.

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1.2.2 Robust and Secure
Java is designed for creating highly reliable software. It provides extensive compile-time checking, followed by a second level of run-time checking. Language features guide programmers towards reliable programming habits. The memory management modelno pointers or pointer arithmeticeliminates entire classes of programming errors that bedevil C and C++ programmers. You can develop Java language code with condence that the system will nd many errors quickly and that major problems wont lay dormant until after your production code has shipped. Java is designed to operate in distributed environments, which means that security is of paramount importance. With security features designed into the language and run-time system, Java lets you construct applications that cant be invaded from outside. In the networked environment, applications written in Java are secure from intrusion by unauthorized code attempting to get behind the scenes and create viruses or invade le systems.

1.2.3 Architecture Neutral and Portable

Java is designed to support applications that will be deployed into heterogeneous networked environments. In such environments, applications must be capable of executing on a variety of hardware architectures. Within this variety of hardware platforms, applications must execute atop a variety of operating systems and interoperate with multiple programming language interfaces. To accommodate the diversity of operating environments, the Java compiler generates bytecodesan architecture neutral intermediate format designed to transport code efciently to multiple hardware and software platforms. The interpreted nature of Java solves both the binary distribution problem and the version problem; the same Java language byte codes will run on any platform. Architecture neutrality is just one part of a truly portable system. Java takes portability a stage further by being strict in its denition of the basic language. Java puts a stake in the ground and species the sizes of its basic data types and the behavior of its arithmetic operators. Your programs are the same on every platformthere are no data type incompatibilities across hardware and software architectures.

Introduction to Java

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The architecture-neutral and portable language environment of Java is known as the Java Virtual Machine. Its the specication of an abstract machine for which Java language compilers can generate code. Specic implementations of the Java Virtual Machine for specic hardware and software platforms then provide the concrete realization of the virtual machine. The Java Virtual Machine is based primarily on the POSIX interface specicationan industrystandard denition of a portable system interface. Implementing the Java Virtual Machine on new architectures is a relatively straightforward task as long as the target platform meets basic requirements such as support for multithreading.

1.2.4 High Performance

Performance is always a consideration. Java achieves superior performance by adopting a scheme by which the interpreter can run at full speed without needing to check the run-time environment. The automatic garbage collector runs as a low-priority background thread, ensuring a high probability that memory is available when required, leading to better performance. Applications requiring large amounts of compute power can be designed such that compute-intensive sections can be rewritten in native machine code as required and interfaced with the Java environment. In general, users perceive that interactive applications respond quickly even though theyre interpreted.

1.2.5 Interpreted, Threaded, and Dynamic

The Java interpreter can execute Java bytecodes directly on any machine to which the interpreter and run-time system have been ported. In an interpreted environment such as Java system, the link phase of a program is simple, incremental, and lightweight. You benet from much faster development cyclesprototyping, experimentation, and rapid development are the normal case, versus the traditional heavyweight compile, link, and test cycles. Modern network-based applications, such as the HotJava World-Wide Web browser, typically need to do several things at the same time. A user working with HotJava can run several animations concurrently while downloading an image and scrolling the page. Javas multithreading capability provides the means to build applications with many concurrent threads of activity. Multithreading thus results in a high degree of interactivity for the end user.

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Java supports multithreading at the language level with the addition of sophisticated synchronization primitives: the language library provides the Thread class, and the run-time system provides monitor and condition lock primitives. At the library level, moreover, Javas high-level system libraries have been written to be thread safe: the functionality provided by the libraries is available without conict to multiple concurrent threads of execution. While the Java compiler is strict in its compile-time static checking, the language and run-time system are dynamic in their linking stages. Classes are linked only as needed. New code modules can be linked in on demand from a variety of sources, even from sources across a network. In the case of the HotJava browser and similar applications, interactive executable code can be loaded from anywhere, which enables transparent updating of applications. The result is on-line services that constantly evolve; they can remain innovative and fresh, draw more customers, and spur the growth of electronic commerce on the Internet.

1.3 The Java Base System

The complete Java system includes a number of libraries of utility classes and methods of use to developers in creating multi-platform applications. Very briey, these libraries are: java.langthe collection of base types (language types) that are always imported into any given compilation unit. This where youll nd the declarations of Object (the root of the class hierarchy) and Class, plus threads, exceptions, wrappers for the primitive data types, and a variety of other fundamental classes. java.iostreams and random-access les. This is where you nd the rough equivalent of the Standard I/O Library youre familiar with on most UNIX systems. A further library is called java.net, and provides support for sockets, telnet interfaces, and URLs. java.utilcontainer and utility classes. Here youll nd classes such as Dictionary, HashTable, and Stack, among others, plus encoder and decoder techniques, and Date and Time classes. java.awtan Abstract Windowing Toolkit that provides an abstract layer enabling you to port Java applications easily from one window system to another. This library contains classes for basic interface components such as events, colors, fonts, and controls such as buttons and scrollbars.

Introduction to Java

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1.4 The Java Environmenta New Approach to Distributed Computing
Taken individually, the characteristics discussed above can be found in a variety of software development environments. Whats completely new is the manner in which Java and its run-time system have combined them to produce a exible and powerful programming system. Developing your applications using Java results in software that is portable across multiple machine architectures, operating systems, and graphical user interfaces, secure, and high performance. With Java, your job as a software developer is much easieryou focus your full attention on the end goal of shipping innovative products on time, based on the solid foundation of Java. The better way to develop software is here, now, brought to you by the Java language environment.

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JavaSimple and Familiar

You know youve achieved perfection in design, Not when you have nothing more to add, But when you have nothing more to take away. Antoine de Saint Exupery.

In his science-ction novel, The Rolling Stones, Robert A. Heinlein comments: Every technology goes through three stages: rst a crudely simple and quite unsatisfactory gadget; second, an enormously complicated group of gadgets designed to overcome the shortcomings of the original and achieving thereby somewhat satisfactory performance through extremely complex compromise; third, a nal proper design therefrom. Heinleins comment could well describe the evolution of many programming languages. Java presents a new viewpoint in the evolution of programming languagescreation of a small and simple language thats still sufciently comprehensive to address a wide variety of software application development. While Java supercially like C and C++, Java gained its simplicity from the systematic removal of features from its predecessors. This chapter discusses two of the primary design features of Java, namely, its simple (from removing features) and familiar (because it looks like C and C++). The next chapter

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discusses Javas object-oriented features in more detail. At the end of this chapter youll nd a discussion on features eliminated from C and C++ in the evolution of Java.

Design Goals
Simplicity is one of Javas overriding design goals. Simplicity and removal of many features of dubious worth from its C and C++-based ancestors keep Java relatively small and reduce the programmers burden in producing reliable applications. To this end, Java design team examined many aspects of the modern C and C++ languages* to determine features that could be eliminated in the context of modern object-oriented programming. Another major design goal is that Java look familiar to a majority of programmers in the personal computer and workstation arenas, where a large fraction of system programmers and application programmers are familiar with C and C++. Thus, Java looks like C++. Programmers familiar with C, Objective C, C++, Eiffel, Ada, and related languages should nd their Java language learning curve quite shorton the order of a couple of weeks. To illustrate the simple and familiar aspects of Java, we follow the tradition of a long line of illustrious programming books by showing you the HelloWorld program. Its about the simplest program you can write that actually does something. Heres HelloWorld implemented in Java.
class HelloWorld { static public void main(String args[]) { System.out.println("Hello world!"); } }

This example declares a class named HelloWorld. Classes are discussed in the next chapter on object-oriented programming, but in general we assume the reader is familiar with object technology and understands the basics of classes, objects, instance variables, and methods. Within the HelloWorld class, we declare a single method called main() which in turn contains a single method invocation to display the string "Hello world!" on the standard output. The statement that prints "Hello world!" does so by

* Now enjoying their silver anniversaries

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invoking the println method of the out object. The out object is a class variable in the System class that performs output operations on les. Thats all there is to HelloWorld.

2.1 Main Features of the Java Language

Java follows C++ to some degree, which carries the benet of it being familiar to many programmers. This section describes the essential features of Java and points out where the language diverges from its ancestors C and C++.

2.1.1 Primitive Data Types

Other than the primitive data types discussed here, everything in Java is an object. Even the primitive data types can be encapsulated inside librarysupplied objects if required. Java follows C and C++ fairly closely in its set of basic data types, with a couple of minor exceptions. There are only three groups of primitive data types, namely, numeric types, Boolean types, and arrays.

Numeric Data Types

Integer numeric types are 8-bit byte, 16-bit short, 32-bit int, and 64-bit long. The 8-bit byte data type in Java has replaced the old C and C++ char data type. Java places a different interpretation on the char data type, as discussed below. There is no unsigned type specier for integer data types in Java. Real numeric types are 32-bit float and 64-bit double. Real numeric types and their arithmetic operations are as dened by the IEEE 754 specication. A oating point literal value, like 23.79, is considered double by default; you must explicitly cast it to float if you wish to assign it to a float variable.

Character Data Types

Java language character data is a departure from traditional C. Javas char data type denes a sixteen-bit Unicode character. Unicode characters are unsigned 16-bit values that dene character codes in the range 0 through 65,535. If you write a declaration such as
char myChar = Q;

JavaSimple and Familiar

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you get a Unicode (16-bit unsigned value) type thats initialized to the Unicode value of the character Q. By adopting the Unicode character set standard for its character data type, Java language applications are amenable to internationalization and localization, greatly expanding the market for worldwide applications.

Boolean Data Types

Java has added a boolean data type as a primitive type, tacitly ratifying existing C and C++ programming practice, where developers dene keywords for TRUE and FALSE or YES and NO or similar constructs. A Java boolean variable assumes the value true or false. A Java boolean is a distinct data type; unlike common C practice, a Java boolean type cant be converted to any numeric type.

2.1.2 Arithmetic and Relational Operators

All the familiar C and C++ operators apply. Because Java lacks unsigned data types, the >>> operator has been added to the language to indicate an unsigned (logical) right shift. Java also uses the + operator for string concatenation; concatenation is covered below in the discussion on strings.

2.1.3 Arrays
In contrast to C and C++, Java language arrays are rst-class language objects. An array in Java is a real object with a run-time representation. You can declare and allocate arrays of any type, and you can allocate arrays of arrays to obtain multi-dimensional arrays. You declare an array of, say, Points (a class youve declared elsewhere) with a declaration like this:
Point myPoints[];

This code states that myPoints is an uninitialized array of Points. At this time, the only storage allocated for myPoints is a reference handle. At some future time you must allocate the amount of storage you need, as in:
myPoints = new Point[10];

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to allocate an array of ten references to Points that are initialized to the null reference. Notice that this allocation of an array doesnt actually allocate any objects of the Point class for you; you will have to also allocate the Point objects, something like this:
int i;

for (i = 0; i < 10; i++) { myPoints[i] = new Point(); }

Access to elements of myPoints can be performed via the normal C-style indexing, but all array accesses are checked to ensure that their indices are within the range of the array. An exception is generated if the index is outside the bounds of the array. To get the length of an array, use the length() accessor method on the array object whose length you wish to know: myPoints.length() returns the number of elements in myPoints. For instance, the code fragment:
howMany = myPoints.length();

would assign the value 10 to the howMany variable. The C notion of a pointer to an array of memory elements is gone, and with it, the arbitrary pointer arithmetic that leads to unreliable code in C. No longer can you walk off the end of an array, possibly trashing memory and leading to the famous delayed-crash syndrome, where a memory-access violation today manifests itself hours or days later. Programmers can be condent that array checking in Java will lead to more robust and reliable code.

2.1.4 Strings
Strings are Java language objects, not pseudo-arrays of characters as in C. There are actually two kinds of string objects: the String class is for read-only (immutable) objects. The StringBuffer class is for string objects you wish to modify (mutable string objects). Although strings are Java language objects, Java compiler follows the C tradition of providing a syntactic convenience that C programmers have enjoyed with C-style strings, namely, the Java compiler understands that a string of characters enclosed in double quote signs is to be instantiated as a String object. Thus, the declaration:
String hello = "Hello world!";

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instantiates an object of the String class behind the scenes and initializes it with a character string containing the Unicode character representation of "Hello world!". Java has extended the meaning of the + operator to indicate string concatenation. Thus you can write statements like:
System.out.println("There are " + num + " characters in the file.");

This code fragment concatenates the string "There are " with the result of converting the numeric value num to a string, and concatenates that with the string " characters in the file.". Then it prints the result of those concatenations on the standard output. Just as with array objects, String objects provide a length() accessor method to obtain the number of characters in the string.

2.1.5 Multi-Level Break

Java has no goto statement. To break or continue multiple-nested loop or switch constructs, you can place labels on loop and switch constructs, and then break out of or continue to the block named by the label. Heres a small fragment of code from Javas built-in String class:
test: for (int i = fromIndex; i + max1 <= max2; i++) { if (charAt(i) == c0) { for (int k = 1; k<max1; k++) { if (charAt(i+k) != str.charAt(k)) { continue test; } } /* end of inner for loop */ } } /* end of outer for loop */

The continue test statement is inside a for loop nested inside another for loop. By referencing the label test, the continue statement passes control to the outer for statement. In traditional C, continue statements can only continue the immediately enclosing block; to continue or exit outer blocks, programmers have traditionally either used auxiliary Boolean variables whose only purpose is to determine if the outer block is to be continued or exited;

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alternatively, programmers have (mis)used the goto statement to exit out of nested blocks. Use of labelled blocks in Java leads to considerable simplication in programming effort and a major reduction in maintenance. The notion of labelled blocks dates back to the mid-1970s, but it hasnt caught on to any large extent in modern programming languages. Perl is another modern programming language that implements the concept of labelled blocks. Perls next label and last label are equivalent to continue label and break label statements in Java.

2.1.6 Memory Management and Garbage Collection

C and C++ programmers are by now accustomed to the problems of explicitly managing memory: allocating memory, freeing memory, and keeping track of what memory can be freed when. Explicit memory management has proved to be a fruitful source of bugs, crashes, memory leaks, and poor performance. Java completely removes the memory management load from the programmer. C-style pointers, pointer arithmetic, malloc, and free do not exist. Automatic garbage collection is an integral part of Java and its run-time system. While Java has a new operator to allocate memory for objects, there is no explicit free function. Once you have allocated an object, the run-time system keeps track of the objects status and automatically reclaims memory when objects are no longer in use, freeing memory for future use. Javas memory management model is based on objects and references to objects. Because Java has no pointers, all references to allocated storage, which in practice means all references to an object, are through symbolic handles. The Java memory manager keeps track of references to objects. When an object has no more references, the object is a candidate for garbage collection. Javas memory allocation model and automatic garbage collection make your programming task easier, eliminate entire classes of bugs, and in general provide better performance than youd obtain through explicit memory management. Heres a code fragment that illustrates when garbage collection happens. Its an example from the on-line Java language programmers guide:
class ReverseString { public static String reverseIt(String source) { int i, len = source.length(); StringBuffer dest = new StringBuffer(len); for (i = (len - 1); i >= 0; i--) {

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dest.appendChar(source.charAt(i)); } return dest.toString(); } }

The variable dest is used as a temporary object reference during the execution of the reverseIt method. When dest goes out of scope (the reverseIt method returns), the reference to that object has gone away and its then a candidate for garbage collection.

2.1.7 The Background Garbage Collector

The Java garbage collector achieves high performance by taking advantage of the nature of a users behavior when interacting with software applications such as the HotJava browser. The typical user of the typical interactive application has many natural pauses where theyre contemplating the scene in front of them or thinking of what to do next. The Java run-time system takes advantage of these idle periods and runs the garbage collector in a low priority thread when no other threads are competing for CPU cycles. The garbage collector gathers and compacts unused memory, increasing the probability that adequate memory resources are available when needed during periods of heavy interactive use. This use of a thread to run the garbage collector is just one of many examples of the synergy one obtains from Javas integrated multithreading capabilitiesan otherwise intractable problem is solved in a simple and elegant fashion.

2.1.8 Integrated Thread Synchronization

Java supports multithreading, both at the language (syntactic) level and via support from its run-time system and thread objects. While other systems have provided facilities for multithreading (usually via lightweight process libraries), building multithreading support into the language itself provides the programmer with a much easier and more powerful tool for easily creating thread-safe multithreaded classes. Multithreading is discussed in more detail in Chapter 5.

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2.2 Features Removed from C and C++
The earlier part of this chapter concentrated on the principal features of Java. This section discusses features removed from C and C++ in the evolution of Java. The rst step was to eliminate redundancy from C and C++. In many ways, the C language evolved into a collection of overlapping features, providing too many ways to say the same thing, while in many cases not providing needed features. C++, in an attempt to add classes in C, merely added more redundancy while retaining many of the inherent problems of C.

2.2.1 No More Typedefs, Denes, or Preprocessor

Source code written in Java is simple. There is no preprocessor, no #define and related capabilities, no typedef, and absent those features, no longer any need for header les. Instead of header les, Java language source les provide the denitions of other classes and their methods. A major problem with C and C++ is the amount of context you need to understand another programmers code: you have to read all related header les, all related #defines, and all related typedefs before you can even begin to analyze a program. In essence, programming with #defines and typedefs results in every programmer inventing a new programming language thats incomprehensible to anybody other than its creator, thus defeating the goals of good programming practices. In Java, you obtain the effects of #define by using constants. You obtain the effects of typedef by declaring classesafter all, a class effectively declares a new type. You dont need header les because the Java compiler compiles class denitions into a binary form that retains all the type information through to link time. By removing all this baggage, Java becomes remarkably context-free. Programmers can read and understand code and, more importantly, modify and reuse code much faster and easier.

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2.2.2 No More Structures or Unions
Java has no structures or unions as complex data types. You dont need structures and unions when you have classes; you can achieve the same effect simply by declaring a class with the appropriate instance variables. The code fragment below declares a class called Point.
class Point extends Object { double x; double y; methods to access the instance variables }

The following code fragment declares a class called Rectangle, that uses objects of the Point class as instance variables.
class Rectangle extends Object { Point lowerLeft; Point upperRight; methods to access the instance variables }

In C youd dene these classes as structures. In Java, you simply declare classes. You can make the instance variables as private or as public as you wish, depending on how much you wish to hide the details of the implementation from other objects.

2.2.3 No More Functions

Java has no functions. Object-oriented programming supersedes functional and procedural styles. Mixing the two styles just leads to confusion and dilutes the purity of an object-oriented language. Anything you can do with a function you can do just as well by dening a class and creating methods for that class. Consider the Point class from above. Weve added public methods to set and access the instance variables:
class Point extends Object { double x; double y;

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public void setX(double x) { this.x = x; } public void setY(double y) { this.y = y; } public double x() { return x; } public double y() { return x; } }

If the x and y instance variables are private to this class, the only means to access them is via the public methods of the class. Heres how youd use objects of the Point class from within, say, an object of the Rectangle class:
class Rectangle extends Object { Point lowerLeft; Point upperRight; public void setEmptyRect() { lowerLeft.setX(0.0); lowerLeft.setY(0.0); upperRight.setX(0.0); upperRight.setY(0.0); } }

Its not to say that functions and procedures are inherently wrong. But given classes and methods, were now down to only one way to express a given task. By eliminating functions, your job as a programmer is immensely simplied: you work only with classes and their methods.

2.2.4 No More Multiple Inheritance

Multiple inheritanceand all the problems it generateshas beed discarded from Java. The desirable features of multiple inheritance are provided by interfacesconceptually similar to Objective C protocols.

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An interface is not a denition of an object. Rather, its a denition of a set of methods that one or more objects will implement. An important issue of interfaces is that they declare only methods and constants. No variables may be dened in interfaces.

2.2.5 No More Goto Statements

Java has no goto statement*. Studies illustrated that goto is (mis)used more often than not simply because its there. Eliminating goto led to a simplication of the languagethere are no rules about the effects of a goto into the middle of a for statement, for example. Studies on approximately 100,000 lines of C code determined that roughly 90 percent of the goto statements were used purely to obtain the effect of breaking out of nested loops. As mentioned above, multi-level break and continue remove most of the need for goto statements.

2.2.6 No More Operator Overloading

There are no means provided by which programmers can overload the standard arithmetic operators. Once again, the effects of operator overloading can be just as easily achieved by declaring a class, appropriate instance variables, and appropriate methods to manipulate those variables.

2.2.7 No More Automatic Coercions

Java prohibits C and C++ style automatic coercions. If you wish to coerce a data element of one type to a data type that would result in loss of precision, you must do so explicitly by using a cast. Consider this code fragment:
int myInt; double myFloat = 3.14159; myInt = myFloat;

The assignment of myFloat to myInt would result in a compiler error indicating a possible loss of precision and that you must use an explicit cast. Thus, you should re-write the code fragments as:

* However, goto is still a reserved word.

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int myInt; double myFloat = 3.14159; myInt = (int)myFloat;

2.2.8 No More Pointers

Most studies agree that pointers are one of the primary features that enable programmers to inject bugs into their code. Given that structures are gone, and arrays and strings are objects, the need for pointers to these constructs goes away. Thus, Java has no pointers. Any task that would require arrays, structures, and pointers in C can be more easily and reliably performed by declaring objects and arrays of objects. Instead of complex pointer manipulation on array pointers, you access arrays by their arithmetic indices. The Java run-time system checks all array indexing to ensure indices are within the bounds of the array. You no longer have dangling pointers and trashing of memory because of incorrect pointers, because there are no pointers in Java.

2.3 Summary
To sum up this chapter, Java is:

Simplethe number of language constructs you need to understand to get your job done is minimal. FamiliarJava looks like C and C++ while discarding the overwhelming complexities of those languages.

Now that youve seen how Java was simplied by removal of features from its predecessors, read the next chapter for a discussion on the object-oriented features of Java.

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My Object All Sublime I Will Achieve in Time Gilbert and SullivanThe Mikado

To stay abreast of modern software development practices, Java is object oriented from the ground up. The point of designing an object-oriented language is not simply to jump on the latest programming fad. The objectoriented paradigm meshes well with the needs of client-server and distributed software. Benets of object technology are rapidly becoming realized as more organizations move their applications to the distributed client-server model. Unfortunately, object oriented remains misunderstood, over-marketed as the silver bullet that will solve all our software ills, or takes on the trappings of a religion. The cynics view of object-oriented programming is that its just a new way to organize your source code. While there may be some merit to this view, it doesnt tell the whole story, because you can achieve results with objectoriented programming techniques that you cant with procedural techniques. An important characteristic that distinguishes objects from ordinary procedures or functions is that an object can have a lifetime greater than that of the object that created it. This aspect of objects is subtle and mostly

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overlooked.In the distributed client-server world, this creates the potential for objects to be created in one place, passed around networks, and stored elsewhere, possibly in databases, to be retrieved for future work. As an object-oriented language, Java draws on the best concepts and features of previous object-oriented languages, primarily Eiffel, SmallTalk, Objective C, and C++. Java goes beyond C++ in both extending the object model and removing the major complexities of C++. With the exception of its primitive data types, everything in Java is an object, and even the primitive types can be encapsulated within objects if the need arises.

3.1 Object Technology in Java

To be truly considered object oriented, a programming language should support at a minimum four characteristics:

Encapsulationimplements information hiding and modularity (abstraction) Polymorphismthe same message sent to different objects results in behavior thats dependent on the nature of the object receiving the message Inheritanceyou dene new classes and behavior based on existing classes to obtain code re-use and code organization Dynamic bindingobjects could come from anywhere, possibly across the network. You need to be able to send messages to objects without having to know their specic type at the time you write your code. Dynamic binding provides maximum exibility while a program is executing

Java meets these requirements nicely, and adds considerable run-time support to make your software development job easier.

3.2 What Are Objects?

At its simplest, object technology is a collection of analysis, design, and programming methodologies that focuses design on modelling the characteristics and behavior of objects in the real world. True, this denition appears to be somewhat circular, so lets try to break out into clear air. What are objects? Theyre software programming models. In your everyday life, youre surrounded by objects: cars, coffee machines, ducks, trees, and so on. Software applications contain objects: buttons on user interfaces, spreadsheets

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and spreadsheet cells, property lists, menus, and so on. These objects have state and behavior. You can represent all these things with software constructs called objects, which can also be dened by their state and their behavior. In your everyday transportation needs, a car can be modelled by an object. A car has state (how fast its going, in which direction, its fuel consumption, and so on) and behavior (starts, stops, turns, slides, and runs into trees). You drive your car to your ofce, where you track your stock portfolio. In your daily interactions with the stock markets, a stock can be modelled by an object. A stock has state (daily high, daily low, open price, close price, earnings per share, relative strength), and behavior (changes value, performs splits, has dividends). After watching your stock decline in price, you repair to the cafe to console yourself with a cup of good hot coffee. The espresso machine can be modelled as an object. It has state (water temperature, amount of coffee in the hopper) and it has behavior (emits steam, makes noise, and brews a perfect cup of java).

3.3 Basics of Objects

Method Method Method

Instance Variables

In the programming implementation of an object, its state is dened by its instance variables. Instance variables are private to the object. Unless explicitly made public or made available to other friendly classes, an objects instance variables are inaccessible from outside the object. An objects behavior is dened by its methods. Methods manipulate the instance variables to create new state; an objects methods can also create new objects. The small picture to the left is a commonly used graphical representation of an object. The diagram illustrates the conceptual structure of a software objectits kind of like a cell, with an outer membrane thats its interface to the world, and an inner nucleus thats protected by the outer membrane. An objects instance variables (data) are packaged, or encapsulated, within the object. The instance variables are surrounded by the objects methods. With certain well-dened exceptions, the objects methods are the only means by which other objects can access or alter its instance variables. In Java, classes can declare their instance variables to be public, in which cases the instance variables are globally accessible to other objects. Declarations of accessibility are covered in later in Access Speciers.

Method

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3.3.1 Classes
A class is a software construct that denes the instance variables and methods of an object. A class in and of itself is not an object. A class is a template that denes how an object will look and behave when the object is created or instantiated from the specication declared by the class. You obtain concrete objects by instantiating a previously dened class. You can instantiate many objects from one class denition, just as you can construct many houses that area all the same from a single architects drawing. Heres the basic declaration of a very simple class called Point
class Point extends Object { public double x; /* instance variable public double y; /* instance variable } */ */

As mentioned, this declaration merely denes a template from which real objects can be instantiated, as described next.

3.3.2 Instantiating an Object from its Class

Having declared the size and shape of the Point class above, any other object can now create a Point objectan instance of the Point classwith a fragment of code like this:
Point myPoint; // // declares a variable to refer to a Point object allocates an instance of a Point object

myPoint = new Point();

Now, you can access the variables of this Point object by referring to the names of the variables, qualied with the name of the object:
myPoint.x = 10.0; myPoint.y = 25.7;

This referencing scheme, similar to a C structure reference, works because the instance variables of Point were declared public in the class declaration. Had the instance variables not been declared public, objects outside of the package within which Point was declared could not access its instance variables in this direct manner. The Point class declaration would then need to provide accessor methods to set and get its variables. This topic is discussed in a little more detail after the discussion on constructors.

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3.3.3 Constructors
When you declare a class in Java, you can declare optional constructors that perform initialization when you instantiate objects from that class. You can also declare an optional nalizer, discussed later. Lets go back to our Point class from before:
class Point extends Object { public double x; /* instance variable public double y; /* instance variable Point() { x = 0.0; y = 0.0; } /* */ */ */

constructor to initialize to default zero value

/* constructor to initialize to specific value */ Point(double x, double y) { this.x = x; /* set instance variables to passed parameters this.y = y; } }

*/

Methods with the same name as the class as in the code fragment are called constructors. When you create (instantiate) an object of the Point class, the constructor method is invoked to perform any initialization thats neededin this case, to set the instance variables to an initial state. This example is a variation on the Point class from before. Now, when you wish to create and initialize Point objects, you can get them initialized to their default values, or you can initialize them to specic values:
Point Point lowerLeft; upperRight;

lowerLeft = new Point(); /* initialize to default zero value */ upperRight = new Point(100.0, 200.0); /* initialize to non- zero */

The specic constructor thats used when creating a new Point object is determined from the type and number of parameters in the new invocation.

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The this Variable
Whats the this variable in the examples above? this refers to the object youre in right now. In other words, this refers to the receiving object. You use this to clarify which variable youre referring to. In the two-parameter Point method, this.x means the x instance variable of this object, rather than the x parameter to the Point method. In the example above, the constructors are simply conveniences for the Point class. There are situations, however, where constructors are necessary, especially in cases where the object being instantiated must itself instantiate other objects. Lets illustrate this by declaring a Rectangle class that uses two Point objects to dene its bounds:
class Rectangle extends Object { private Point lowerLeft; private Point upperRight; Rectangle() { lowerLeft = new Point(); upperRight = new Point(); } . . . instance methods appear in here . . . }

In this example, the Rectangle() constructor is vitally necessary to ensure that the two Point objects are instantiated at the time a Rectangle object is instantiated, otherwise, the Rectangle object would subsequently try to reference points that have not yet been allocated, and would fail.

3.3.4 Methods and Messaging

Method Method Method Message Method Method Method Instance Variables Method Instance Variables Method

If an object wants another object to do some work on its behalf, then in the parlance of object-oriented programming, the rst object sends a message to the second object. In response, the second object selects the appropriate method to invoke. Java method invocations look similar to functions in C and C++. Using the message passing paradigms of object-oriented programming, you can build entire networks and webs of objects that pass messages between them to change state. This programming technique is one of the best ways to

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create models and simulations of complex real-world systems. Lets redene the declaration of the Point class from above such that its instance variables are private, and supply it with accessor methods to access those variables.
class Point extends Object { private double x; /* private double y; /* Point() { /* x = 0.0; y = 0.0; } instance variable instance variable */ */ */

constructor to initialize to zero

/* constructor to initialize to specific value */ Point(double x, double y) { this.x = x; this.y = y; } public void setX(double x) { /* accessor method */ this.x = x; } public void setY(double y) { /* accessor method */ this.y = y; } public double getX() { /* accessor method */ return x; } public double getY() { /* accessor method */ return y; } }

These method declarations provides the avor of how the Point class provides access to its variables from the outside world. Another object that wants to manipulate the instance variables of Point objects must now do so via the accessor methods:
Point myPoint; // // // declares a variable to refer to a Point object allocates an instance of a Point object sets the x variable via the accessor method

myPoint = new Point(); myPoint.setX(10.0); myPoint.setY(25.7);

Making instance variables public or private is a design tradeoff the designer makes when declaring the classes. By making instance variables public, you are exposing some of the details of the implementation of the class, thereby providing higher efciency and conciseness of expression at the possible

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expense of hindering future maintenance efforts. By hiding details of the internal implementation of a class, you have the potential to change the implementation of the class in the future without breaking any code that uses that class.

3.3.5 Finalizers
You can also declare an optional nalizer that will perform necessary tear-down actions when the garbage collector is about to free an object. This code fragment illustrates a finalize method in a class.
/** * Close the stream when garbage is collected. */ protected void finalize() { try { file.close(); } catch (Exception e) { } }

This finalize method will be invoked when the object is about to be garbage collected, which means that the object must shut itself down in an orderly fashion. In the particular code fragment above, the finalize method merely closes an I/O le stream that was used by the object, to ensure that the le descriptor for the stream is closed.

3.3.6 Subclassing
Subclassing is the mechanism by which new and enhanced objects can be dened in terms of existing objects. One example: a zebra is a horse with stripes. If you wish to create a zebra object, you notice that a zebra is kind of like a horse, only with stripes. In object-oriented terms, youd create a new class called Zebra, which is a subclass of the Horse class. In Java language terms, youd do something like this:
class Zebra extends Horse { Your new instance variables and new methods go here }

The denition of Horse, wherever it is, would dene all the methods to describe the behavior of a horse: eat, neigh, trot, gallop, buck, and so on. The only method you need to override is the method for drawing the hide. You

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gain the benet of already written code that does all the workyou dont have to re-invent the wheel, or in this case, the hoof. The extends keyword tells the Java compiler that Zebra is a subclass of Horse. Zebra is said to be a derived classits derived from Horse, which is called a base class. Heres an example of subclassing a variant of our Point class from previous examples to create a new three-dimensional point called ThreePoint:
class Point extends Object { protected double x; /* protected double y; /* Point() { /* x = 0.0; y = 0.0; } } class ThreePoint extends Point { protected double z; /* the z coordinate of the point */ instance variable instance variable */ */ */

constructor to initialize to zero

ThreePoint() { /* default constructor */ x = 0.0; /* initialize the coordinates */ y = 0.0; z = 0.0; } ThreePoint(double x, double y, double z) {/* specific constructor */ this.x = x; /* initialize the coordinates */ this.y = y; this.z = z; } }

Notice that ThreePoint adds a new instance variable for the z coordinate of the point. The x and y instance variables are inherited from the original Point class, so theres no need to declare them in ThreePoint. However, notice we had to make Points instance variables protected instead of private as in the previous examples. Had we left Points instance variables private, even its subclasses would be unable to access them, and the compilation would fail. Subclassing enables you to use existing code thats already been developed and, much more important, tested, for a more generic case. You override the parts of the class you need for your specic behavior. Thus, subclassing gains

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you reuse of existing codeyou save on design, development, and testing. The Java run-time system provides several libraries of utility functions that are tested and are also thread safe.

3.3.7 Access Control

When you declare a new class in Java, you can indicate the level of access permitted to its instance variables and methods. Java provides four levels of access speciers. Three of the levels must be explicitly specied if you wish to use them. They are public, protected, and private. The fourth level doesnt have a nameits often called friendly and is the access level you obtain if you dont specify otherwise. The friendly access level indicates that your instance variables and methods are accessible to all objects within the same package, but inaccessible to objects outside the package. The friendly access level comes in handy if youre creating packages of classes that are related to each other and can access each others instance variables directly. A geometry package consisting of Point and Rectangle classes, for instance, might well be easier and cleaner to implement, as well as more efcient, if the Points instance variables were directly available to the Rectangle class. Outside of the geometry package, however, the details of implementations are hidden from the rest of the world, giving you the freedom to changed implementation details without worrying youll break code that uses those classes. Packages are a Java language construct that gather collections of related classes into a single container. For example, all Java I/O system code is collected into a single package. The primary benet of packages is organizing many class denitions into a single unit. The secondary benet from the programmers viewpoint is that the friendly instance variables and methods are available to all classes within the same package, but not to classes dened outside the package. public methods and instance variables are available to any other class anywhere. protected means that instance variables and methods so designated are accessible only to subclasses of that class, and nowhere else. private methods and instance variables are accessible only from within the class in which theyre declaredtheyre not available even to their subclasses.

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3.3.8 Class Variables and Class Methods
Java follows conventions from other object-oriented languages in providing class methods and class variables. Normally, variables you declare in a class denition are instance variablesthere is one of those variables in every separate object thats created (instantiated) from the class. A class variable, on the other hand, is local to the class itselftheres only a single copy of the variable and its shared by every object you instantiate from the class. To declare class variables and class methods, you declare them as static. This short code fragment illustrates the declaration of class variables:
class Rectangle extends Object { static final int version = 2; static final int revision = 0; }

The Rectangle class declares two static variables to dene the version and revision level of this class. Now, every instance of Rectangle that you create from this class will share these same variables. Notice theyre also dened as final because you want them to be constants. Class methods are methods that are common to an entire class. When would you use class methods? Usually, when you have behavior thats common to every object of a class. For example, suppose you have a Window class. A useful item of information you can ask the class is the width of the border around the window. Theres no point in having an instance method to obtain this information thats shared by every instance of Windowit makes more sense to have just one class method to return the border width. Class methods can operate only on class variables. Class methods cant access instance variables, nor can they invoke instance methods. Like class variables, you declare class methods by dening them as static.

3.3.9 Abstract Methods

Abstract methods are a powerful construct in the object-oriented paradigm. To understand abstract methods, we look at the notion of an abstract superclass. An abstract superclass is a class in which you dene methods that arent actually implemented by that classthey only provide place-holders such that subsequent subclasses must override those methods and supply their actual implementation.

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This all sounds wonderfully, well, abstract, so why would you need an abstract superclass? Lets look at a concrete example, no pun intended. Lets suppose youre going to a restaurant for dinner, and you decide that tonight you want to eat sh. Well, sh is somewhat abstractyou generally wouldnt just order sh; the waiter is highly likely to ask you what specic kind of sh you want. When you actually get to the restaurant, you will nd out what kind of sh they have, and order a specic sh, say, sturgeon, or salmon, or opakapaka. In the world of objects, an abstract class is like generic shthe abstract class denes generic state and generic behavior, but youll never see a real live implementation of an abstract class. What you will see is a concrete subclass of the abstract class, just as opakapaka is a specic (concrete) kind of sh. Suppose you are creating a drawing application. The initial cut of your application can draw rectangles, lines, circles, polygons, and so on. Furthermore, you have a series of operations you can perform on the shapesmove, reshape, rotate, ll color, and so on. You could make each of these graphic shapes a separate classyoud have a Rectangle class, a Line class, and so on. Each class needs instance variables to dene its position, size, color, rotation and so on, which in turn dictates methods to set and get at those variables. At this point, you realize you can collect all the instance variables into a single abstract superclass called Graphical, and implement most of the methods to manipulate the variables in that abstract superclass. The skeleton of your abstract superclass might look something like this:
abstract class Graphic extends Object { protected Point lowerLeft; // lower left of bounding box protected Point upperRight; // upper right of bounding box . . . more instance variables . . . public void setPosition(Point ll, Point ur) { lowerLeft = ll; upperRight = ur; } abstract void drawMyself(); // abstract method } }

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Now, you cant instantiate the Graphical class, because its declared abstract. You can only instantiate a subclass of it. When you implement the Rectangle class or the Circle class, youd extend (subclass) Graphical. Within Rectangle, youd provide a concrete implementation of the drawMySelf() method that draws a rectangle, because the denition of drawMySelf() must by necessity be unique to each shape inherited from the Graphical class. Lets see a small fragment of the Rectangle class declaration, where its drawMySelf() method operates in a somewhat PostScripty fashion:
abstract class Rectangle extends Graphical { void drawMySelf() { // really does the drawing moveTo(lowerLeft.x, lowerLeft.y); lineTo(upperRight.x, lowerLeft.y); lineTo(upperRight.x, upperRight.y) lineTo(lowerLeft.x, upperRight.y); . . . and so on and so on . . . } }

Notice, however, that in the declaration of the Graphical class, the setPosition() method was declared as a regular (public void) method. All methods that can be implemented by the abstract superclass can be declared there and their implementations dened at that time. Then, every class that inherits from the abstract superclass will also inherit those methods. You can continue in this way adding new shapes that are subclasses of Graphical, and most of the time, all you ever need to implement is the methods that are unique to the specic shape. You gain the benet of re-using all the code that was dened inside the abstract superclass.

3.4 Summary
This chapter has conveyed the essential aspects of Java as an object-oriented language. To sum up:

Classes dene templates from which you instantiate (create) distinct concrete objects. Instance variables hold the state of a specic object.

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Objects communicate by sending messages to each other. Objects respond to messages by selecting a method to execute. Methods dene the behavior of objects instantiated from a class. It is an objects methods that manipulate its instance variables. Unlike regular procedural languages, classes in an object-oriented language may have methods with the same names as other classes. A given object responds to a message in ways determined by the nature of that object, providing polymorphic behavior. Subclassing provides the means by which a new class can inherit instance variables and methods from any already dened class. The newly declared class can add new instance variables (extra state), can add new methods (new behavior), or can override the methods of its superclass (different behavior). Subclassing provides code reuse.

Taken together, the concepts of object-oriented programming create a powerful and simple paradigm for software developers to share and re-use code and build on the work of others.

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Architecture Neutral, Portable, and Robust

With the phenomenal growth of networks, todays developers must think distributed. Applicationseven parts of applicationsmust be able to migrate easily to a wide variety of computer systems, a wide variety of hardware architectures, and a wide variety of operating system architectures. They must operate with a plethora of graphical user interfaces. Clearly, applications must be able to execute anywhere on the network without prior knowledge of the target hardware and software platform. If application developers are forced to develop for specic target platforms, the binary distribution problem quickly becomes unmanageable. Various and sundry methods have been employed to overcome the problem, such as creating fat binaries that adapt to the specic hardware architecture, but such methods are not only clumsy but are still geared to a specic operating system. To solve the binary-distribution problem, software applications and fragments of applications must be architecture neutral and portable. Reliability is also at a high premium in the distributed world. Code from anywhere on the network should work robustly with low probabilities of creating crashes in applications that import fragments of code. This chapter describes the ways in which Java has addressed the issues of architecture neutrality, portability, and reliability.

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4.1 Architecture Neutral
The solution that the Java system adopts to solve the binary-distribution problem is a binary code format thats independent of hardware architectures, operating system interfaces, and window systems. The format of this system-independent binary code is architecture neutral. If the Java run-time system is made available on a given hardware and software platform, an application written in Java can then execute on that platform without the need to perform any special porting work for that application.

4.1.1 Byte Codes

The Java compiler doesnt generate machine code in the sense of native hardware instructionsrather, it generates bytecodes: a high-level, machineindependent code for a hypothetical machine that is implemented by the Java interpreter and run-time system. One of the early examples of the bytecode approach was the UCSD P-System, which was ported to a variety of eight-bit architectures in the middle 1970s and early 1980s and enjoyed widespread popularity during the heyday of eight-bit machines. Coming up to the present day, current architectures have the power to support the bytecode approach for distributed software. Java bytecodes are designed to be easy to interpret on any machine, or to dynamically translate into native machine code if required by performance demands. The architecture neutral approach is useful not only for network-based applications, but also for single-system software distribution. In todays software market, application developers have to produce versions of their applications that are compatible with the IBM PC, Apple Macintosh, and ftyseven avors of workstation and operating system architectures in the fragmented UNIX marketplace. With the PC market (through Windows 95 and Windows NT) diversifying onto many CPU architectures, and Apple moving full steam from the 68000 to the PowerPC, production of software to run on all platforms becomes almost impossible until now. Using Java, coupled with the Abstract Window Toolkit, the same version of your application can run on all platforms.

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4.2 Portable
The primary benet of the interpreted byte code approach is that compiled Java language programs are portable to any system on which the Java interpreter and run-time system have been implemented. The architecture-neutral aspect discussed above is one major step towards being portable, but theres more to it than that. C and C++ both suffer from the defect of designating many fundamental data types as implementation dependent. Programmers labor to ensure that programs are portable across architectures by programming to a lowest common denominator. Java eliminates this issue by dening standard behavior that will apply to the data types across all platforms. Java species the sizes of all its primitive data types and the behavior of arithmetic on them. Here are the data types: byte short int long float double char 8-bit twos complement 16-bit twos complement 32-bit twos complement 64-bit twos complement 32-bit IEEE 754 oating point 64-bit IEEE 754 oating point 16-bit Unicode character

The data types and sizes described above are standard across all implementations of Java. These choices are reasonable given current microprocessor architectures because essentially all central processor architectures in use today share these characteristics. That is, most modern processors can support twos-complement arithmetic in 8-bit to 64-bit integer formats, and most modern processors support single- and double-precision oating point. The Java environment itself is readily portable to new architectures and operating systems. The Java compiler is written in Java. The Java run-time system is written in ANSI C with a clean portability boundary which is essentially POSIX-compliant. There are no implementation-dependent notes in the Java language specication.

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4.3 Robust
Java is intended for developing software that must be robust, highly reliable, and secure, in a variety of ways. Theres strong emphasis on early checking for possible problems, as well as later dynamic (run-time) checking, to eliminate error-prone situations.

4.3.1 Strict Compile-Time and Run-Time Checking

The Java compiler employs extensive and stringent compile-time checking so that syntax-related errors can be detected early, before a program is deployed. One of the advantages of a strongly typed language (like C++) is that it allows extensive compile-time checking, so bugs can be found early. Unfortunately, C++ inherits a number of loopholes in its compile-time checking from C. Unfortunately, C++ and C are relatively lax, most notably in the area of method or function declarations. Java imposes much more stringent requirements on the developer: Java requires explicit declarations and does not support C-style implicit declarations. Many of the stringent compile-time checks at the Java compiler level are carried over to the run time, both to check consistency at run time, and to provide greater exibility. The linker understands the type system and repeats many of the type checks done by the compiler, to guard against version mismatch problems. The single biggest difference between Java and C or C++ is that Javas memory model eliminates the possibility of overwriting memory and corrupting data. Instead of pointer arithmetic, Java has true arrays and strings, which means that the interpreter can check array and string indexes. In addition, a programmer cant write code that turns an arbitrary integer into an object reference by casting. While Java doesnt pretend to completely remove the software quality assurance problem, removal of entire classes of programming errors considerably eases the job of testing and quality assurance.

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4.4 Summary
Javaan architecture-neutral and portable programming languageprovides an attractive and simple solution to the problem of distributing your applications across heterogeneous network-based computing platforms. In addition, the simplicity and robustness of the underlying Java language results in higher quality, reliable applications in which users can have a high level of condence. The next chapter contains a brief discussion of Javas interpreted implementation.

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Interpreted and Dynamic

Programmers using traditional software development tools have become resigned to the articial edit-compile-link-load-throw-the-application-off-thecliff-let-it-crash-and-start-all-over-again style of current development practice. Additionally, keeping track of what must be recompiled when a declaration changes somewhere else strains the capabilities of development toolseven fancy make-style tools such as found on UNIX systems. This development approach bogs down as the code bases of applications grow to hundreds of thousands of lines. Better methods of fast and fearless prototyping and development are needed. The Java language environment is one of those better ways, because its interpreted and dynamic. As discussed in the previous chapter on architecture-neutrality, the Java compiler generates byte codes for the Java Virtual Machine*, which was introduced briey in Chapter 4. The notion of a virtual interpreted machine is not new. But the Java language brings the concepts into the realm of secure, distributed, network-based systems. The Java language virtual machine is a strictly dened virtual machine for which an interpreter must be available for each hardware architecture and operating system on which you wish to run Java language applications. Once

* One of the ancestors of the virtual machine concept was the UCSD P System, developed by Kenneth Bowles at the University of California at San Diego in the late 1970s.

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you have the Java language interpreter and run-time support available on a given hardware and operating system platform, you can run any Java language application from anywhere, always assuming the specic Java language application is written in a portable manner. The notion of a separate link phase after compilation is pretty well absent from the Java environment. Linking, which is actually the process of loading new classes by the Class Loader, is a more incremental and lightweight process. The concomitant speedup in your development cycle means that your development process can be much more rapid and exploratory, and because of the robust nature of the Java language and run-time system, you will catch bugs at a much earlier phase of the cycle.

5.1 Dynamic Loading and Binding

The Java languages portable and interpreted nature produces a highly dynamic and dynamically-extensible system. The Java language was designed to adapt to evolving environments. Classes are linked in as required and can be downloaded from across networks. Incoming code is veried before being passed to the interpreter for execution. Object-oriented programming has become accepted as a means to solve at least a part of the software crisis, by assisting encapsulation of data and corresponding procedures, and encouraging reuse of code. Most programmers doing object-oriented development today have adopted C++ as their language of choice. But C++ suffers from a serious problem that impedes its widespread use in the production and distribution of software ICs. This defect is known as the fragile superclass problem.

5.1.1 The Fragile Superclass Problem

This problem arises as a side-effect of the way that C++ is usually implemented. Any time you add a new method or a new instance variable to a class, any and all classes that reference that class will require a recompilation, or theyll break. Keeping track of the dependencies between class denitions and their clients has proved to be a fruitful source of programming error in C++, even with the help of make-like utilities.The fragile superclass issue is sometimes also referred to as the constant recompilation problem. You can avoid these problems in C++, but with extraordinary difculty, and doing so

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effectively means not using any of the languages object-oriented features directly. By avoiding the object-oriented features of C++, developers defeat the goal of re-usable software ICs.

5.1.2 Solving the Fragile Superclass Problem

The Java language solves the fragile superclass problem in several stages. The Java compiler doesnt compile references down to numeric valuesinstead, it passes symbolic reference information through to the byte code verier and the interpreter. The Java interpreter performs nal name resolution once, when classes are being linked. Once the name is resolved, the reference is rewritten as a numeric offset, enabling the Java interpreter to run at full speed. Finally, the storage layout of objects is not determined by the compiler. The layout of objects in memory is deferred to run time and determined by the interpreter. Updated classes with new instance variables or methods can be linked in without affecting existing code. At the small expense of a name lookup the rst time any name is encountered, the Java language eliminates the fragile superclass problem. Java programmers can use object-oriented programming techniques in a much more straightforward fashion without the constant recompilation burden engendered by C++. Libraries can freely add new methods and instance variables without any effect on their clients. Your life as a programmer is simpler.

5.1.3 Java Language Interfaces

An interface in the Java language is simply a specication of methods that an object implements. The concept of an interface in the Java language was borrowed from the Objective-C concept of a protocol. An interface does not include instance variables or implementation code. You can import and use multiple interfaces in a exible manner, providing the benets of multiple inheritance without the inherent difculties created by the usual rigid class inheritance structure.

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5.1.4 Run-Time Representations
Classes in the Java language have a run-time representation. There is a class named Class, instances of which contain run-time class denitions. If youre handed an object, you can nd out what class it belongs to. In a C or C++ program, you may be handed a pointer to an object, but if you dont know what type of object it is, you have no way to nd out. In the Java language, nding out based on the run-time type information is straightforward. It is also possible to look up the denition of a class given a string containing its name. This means that you can compute a data type name and easily have it dynamically-linked into the running system.

5.2 Summary
The interpreted and dynamic nature of Java provides several benets:

The interpreted environment enables fast prototyping without waiting for the traditional compile and link cycle, The environment is dynamically extensible, whereby classes are loaded on the y as required, The fragile superclass problem that plagues C++ developers is eliminated because of deferral of memory layout decisions to run time.

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Security in Java

Security commands a high premium in the growing use of the Internet for products and services ranging from electronic distribution of software and multimedia content, to digital cash. The area of security with which were concerned here is how the Java compiler and run-time system restrict application programmers from creating subversive code. The Java language compiler and run-time system implement several layers of defense against potentially incorrect code. The environment starts with the assumption that nothing is to be trusted, and proceeds accordingly. The next few sections discuss the Java security models in greater detail.

6.1 Memory Allocation and Layout

One of the Java compilers primary lines of defense is its memory allocation and reference model. First of all, memory layout decisions are not made by the Java language compiler, as they are in C and C++. Rather, memory layout is deferred to run time, and will potentially differ depending on the characteristics of the hardware and software platforms on which the Java system executes. Secondly, Java does not have pointers in the traditional C and C++ sense of memory cells that contain the addresses of other memory cells.The Java compiled code references memory via symbolic handles that are resolved to real memory addresses at run time by the Java interpreter. Java programmers

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cant forge pointers to memory, because the memory allocation and referencing model is completely opaque to the programmer and controlled entirely by the underlying run-time system. Very late binding of structures to memory means that programmers cant infer the physical memory layout of a class by looking at its declaration. By removing the C and C++ memory layout and pointer models, the Java language has eliminated the programmers ability to get behind the scenes and manufacture pointers to memory. These features must be viewed as positive benets rather than a restriction on the programmer, because they ultimately lead to more reliable and secure applications.

6.2 The Byte Code Verication Process

What about the concept of a hostile compiler? Although the Java compiler ensures that Java source code doesnt violate the safety rules, when an application such as the HotJava Browser imports a code fragment from anywhere, it doesnt actually know if code fragments follow Java language rules for safety: the code may not have been produced by a known-to-be trustworthy Java compiler. In such a case, how is the Java run-time system on your machine to trust the incoming bytecode stream? The answer is simple: the Java run-time system doesnt trust the incoming code, but subjects it to bytecode verication. The tests range from simple verication that the format of a code fragment is correct, to passing each code fragment through a simple theorem prover to establish that it plays by the rules:

it doesnt forge pointers, it doesnt violate access restrictions, it accesses objects as what they are (for example, InputStream objects are always used as InputStreams and never as anything else).

A language that is safe, plus run-time verication of generated code, establishes a base set of guarantees that interfaces cannot be violated.

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6.2.1 The Byte Code Verier
The bytecode verier traverses the bytecodes, constructs the type state information, and veries the types of the parameters to all the bytecode instructions.
Compile Time Java Source
byte codes move through network or file system

Run Time Bytecode Loader

Java Compiler

Byte Code Verifier

Interpreter Java Byte Codes Run time Code Generator

hardware

The illustration shows the ow of data and control from Java language source code through the Java compiler, to the bytecode verier and hence on to the Java interpreter. The important issue is that the Java bytecode loader and the bytecode verier make no assumptions about the primary source of the bytecode streamthe code may have come from the local system, or it may have travelled halfway around the planet. The bytecode verier acts as a sort of gatekeeper: it ensures that code passed to the Java interpreter is in a t state to be executed and can run without fear of breaking the Java interpreter. Imported code is not allowed to execute by any means until after it has passed the veriers tests. Once the verier is done, a number of important properties are known:

There are no operand stack overows or underows

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The types of the parameters of all bytecode instructions are known to always be correct Object eld accesses are known to be legalprivate, public, or protected

While all this checking appears excruciatingly detailed, by the time the bytecode verier has done its work, the Java interpreter can proceed, knowing that the code will run securely. Knowing these properties makes the Java interpreter much faster, because it doesnt have to check anything. There are no operand type checks and no stack overow checks. The interpreter can thus function at full speed without compromising reliability.

6.3 Security Checks in the Bytecode Loader

While a Java program is executing, it may in its turn request that a particular class or set of classes be loaded, possibly from across the network. After incoming code has been vetted and determined clean by the bytecode verier, the next line of defense is the Java bytecode loader. The environment seen by a thread of execution running Java bytecodes can be visualized as a set of classes partitioned into separate name spaces. There is one name space for classes that come from the local le system, and a separate name space for each network source. When a class is imported from across the network it is placed into the private name space associated with its origin. When a class references another class, it is rst looked for in the name space for the local system (built-in classes), then in the name space of the referencing class. There is no way that an imported class can spoof a built-in class. Built-in classes can never accidentally reference classes in imported name spacesthey can only reference such classes explicitly. Similarly, classes imported from different places are separated from each other.

6.4 Security in the Java Networking Package

Javas networking package provides the interfaces to handle the various network protocols (FTP, HTTP, Telnet, and so on). This is your front line of defense at the network interface level. The networking package can be set up with congurable levels of paranoia. You can

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Disallow all network accesses Allow network accesses to only the hosts from which the code was imported

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Allow network accesses only outside the rewall if the code came from outside Allow all network accesses

6.5 Summary
Java is secure to survive in the network-based environment. The architectureneutral and portable aspects of the Java language make it the ideal development language to meet the challenges of distributing dynamically extensible software across networks.

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Multithreading in Java

Sophisticated computer users become impatient with the do-one-thing-at-atime mindset of the average personal computer. Users perceive that their world is full of multiple events all happening at once, and they like to have their computers work the same way. Unfortunately, writing programs that deal with many things happening at once can be much more difcult than writing in the conventional single-threaded C and C++ style. You can write multithreaded applications in languages such as C and C++, but the level of difculty goes up by orders of magnitude, and even then there are no assurances that vendors libraries are thread-safe. The term thread-safe means that a given library function is implemented in such a manner that it can be executed by multiple concurrent threads of execution. The major problem with explicitly programmed thread support is that you can never be quite sure you have acquired the locks you need and released them again at the right time. If you return from a method prematurely, for instance, or if an exception is raised, for another instance, your lock has not been released; deadlock is the usual result.

7.1 Threads at the Java Language Level

Built-in support for threads provides Java programmers with a powerful tool to improve interactive performance of graphical applications. If your application needs to run animations and play music while scrolling the page and

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downloading a text le from a server, multithreading is the way to obtain fast, lightweight concurrency within a single process space. Threads are sometimes also called lightweight processes or execution contexts. Threads are an essential keystone of Java. The Java library provides a Thread class that supports a rich collection of methods to start a thread, run a thread, stop a thread, and check on a threads status. Java thread support includes a sophisticated set of synchronization primitives based on the widely used monitor and condition variable paradigm introduced twenty years ago by C.A.R. Hoare and implemented in a production setting in Xerox PARCs Cedar/Mesa system. Integrating support for threads into the language makes them much easier to use and more robust. Much of the style of Javas integration of threads was modelled after Cedar and Mesa. Javas threads are pre-emptive, and depending on platform on which the Java interpreter executes, threads can also be time-sliced. On systems that dont support time-slicing, once a thread has started, the only way it will relinquish control of the processor is if another thread of a higher priority takes control of the processor. If your applications are likely to be compute-intensive, you might consider how to give up control periodically by using the yield() method to give other threads a chance to run; doing so will ensure better interactive response for graphical applications.

7.2 Integrated Thread Synchronization

Java supports multithreading at the language (syntactic) level and via support from its run-time system and thread objects. At the language level, methods within a class that are declared synchronized do not run concurrently. Such methods run under control of monitors to ensure that variables remain in a consistent state. Every class and instantiated object has its own monitor that comes into play if required. Here are a couple of code fragments from the sorting demonstration in the HotJava web browser. The main points of interest are the two methods stop and startSort, which share a common variable called kicker (it kicks off the sort thread):
public synchronized void stop() { if (kicker != null) { kicker.stop();

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kicker = null; } } private synchronized void startSort() { if (kicker == null || !kicker.isAlive()) { kicker = new Thread(this); kicker.start(); } }

The stop and startSort methods are declared to be synchronizedthey cant run concurrently, enabling them to maintain consistent state in the shared kicker variable. When a synchronized method is entered, it acquires a monitor on the current object. The monitor precludes any other synchronized methods in that object from running. When a synchronized method returns by any means, its monitor is released. Other synchronized methods within the same object are now free to run. If youre writing Java applications, you should take care to implement your classes and methods so theyre thread-safe, in the same way that Java run-time libraries are thread-safe. If you wish your objects to be thread-safe, any methods that may change the values of instance variables should be declared synchronized. This ensures that only one method can change the state of an object at any time. Java monitors are re-entrant: a method can acquire the same monitor more than once, and everything will still work.

7.3 Multithreading SupportConclusion

While other systems have provided facilities for multithreading (usually via lightweight process libraries), building multithreading support into the language as Java has done provides the programmer with a much more powerful tool for easily creating thread-safe multithreaded classes. Other benets of multithreading are better interactive responsiveness and realtime behavior. Stand-alone Java run-time environments exhibit good real-time behavior. Java environments running on top of popular operating systems provide the real-time responsiveness available from the underlying platform.

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Performance and Comparisons

This chapter addresses two issues of interest to prospective adopters of Java, namely, what is the performance of Java, and how does it stack up against other comparable programming languages? Lets rst address the performance question and then move on to a brief comparison with other languages.

8.1 Performance
Java has been ported to and run on a variety of hardware platforms executing a variety of operating system software. Test measurement of some simple Java programs on current high-end computer systems such as workstations and high-performance personal computers show results roughly as follows: new Object new C() (class with several methods) o.f() (method f invoked on object o) o.sf() (synchronized method f invoked on object o) 119,000 per second 89,000 per second 590,000 per second 61,500 per second

Thus, we see that creating a new object requires approximately 8.4 sec, creating a new class containing several methods consumes about 11 sec, and invoking a method on an object requires roughly 1.7 sec. While these performance numbers for interpreted bytecodes are usually more than adequate to run interactive graphical end-user applications, situations may arise where higher performance is required. In such cases, the Java bytecodes can be translated on the y (at run time) into machine code for the

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particular CPU on which the application is executing. For those accustomed to the normal design of a compiler and dynamic loader, this is somewhat like putting the nal machine code generator in the dynamic loader. The bytecode format was designed with generating machine codes in mind, so the actual process of generating machine code is generally simple. Reasonably good code is produced: it does automatic register allocation and the compiler does some optimization when it produces the bytecodes. Performance of bytecodes converted to machine code is roughly the same as native C or C++.

8.2 The Java Language Compared

There are literally hundreds of programming languages available for developers to write programs to solve problems in specic areas. Programming languages cover a spectrum ranging across fully interpreted languages such as UNIX Shells, awk, TCL, Perl, and so on, all the way to programming to the bare metal languages like C and C++. Languages at the level of the Shells and TCL, for example, are fully interpreted high-level languages. They deal with objects (in the sense they can be said to deal with objects at all) at the system level, where their objects are les and processes rather than data structures. Some of these languages are suitable for very fast prototypingyou can develop your ideas quickly, try out new approaches, and discard non-working approaches without investing enormous amounts of time in the process. Scripting languages are also highly portable. Their primary drawback is performance; they are generally much slower than either native machine code or interpreted bytecodes. This tradeoff may well be reasonable if the run time of such a program is reasonably short and you use the program infrequently. In the intermediate ground come languages like Perl, that share many characteristics in common with Java. Perls ongoing evolution has led to the adoption of object-oriented features, security features, and it exhibits many features in common with Java, such as robustness, dynamic behavior, architecture neutrality, and so on. At the lowest level are compiled languages such as C and C++, in which you can develop large-scale programming projects that will deliver high performance. The high performance comes at a cost, however. Drawbacks include the high cost of debugging unreliable memory management systems and the use of multithreading capabilities that are difcult to implement and

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use. And of course when you use C++, you have the perennial fragile superclass issue. Last but denitely not least, the binary distribution problem of compiled code becomes unmanageable in the context of heterogeneous platforms all over the Internet. The Java language environment creates an extremely attractive middle ground between very high-level and portable but slow scripting languages and very low level and fast but non-portable and unreliable compiled languages. The Java language ts somewhere in the middle of this space. In addition to being extremely simple to program, highly portable and architecture neutral, the Java language provides a level of performance thats entirely adequate for all but the most compute-intensive applications.

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Prospective adopters of the Java language need to examine where the Java language ts into the rmament of other languages. Here is a basic comparison chart illustrating the attributes of the Java languagesimple, object-oriented, threaded, and so onas described in the earlier parts of this paper.
Feature exists Feature somewhat exists

Java Simple

SmallTalk

TCL

Perl

Shells

C++

Feature doesnt exist

Object Oriented Robust Secure Interpreted Dynamic Portable Neutral Threads Garbage Collection Exceptions

rm erfo

anc

High

Medium

Low

Medium

Low

High

High

From the diagram above, you see that the Java language has a wealth of attributes that can be highly benecial to a wide variety of developers. You can see that Java, Perl, and SmallTalk are comparable programming environments offering the richest set of capabilities for software application developers.

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8.3 A Major Benet of Java: Fast and Fearless Prototyping
Very dynamic languages like Lisp, TCL, and SmallTalk are often used for prototyping. One of the reasons for their success at this is that they are very robustyou dont have to worry about freeing or corrupting memory. Similarly, programmers can be relatively fearless about dealing with memory when programming in Java. The garbage collection system makes the programmers job vastly easier; with the burden of memory management taken off the programmers shoulders, storage allocation errors go away. Another reason commonly given that languages like Lisp, TCL, and SmallTalk are good for prototyping is that they dont require you to pin down decisions early onthese languages are semantically rich. Java has exactly the opposite property: it forces you to make explicit choices. Along with these choices come a lot of assistanceyou can write method invocations and, if you get something wrong, you get told about it at compile time. You dont have to worry about method invocation error.

8.4 Summary
From the discussion above, you can see that the Java language provides high performance, while its interpreted nature makes it the ideal development platform for fast and fearless prototyping. From the previous chapters, youve seen that the Java language is extremely simple and object oriented. The language is secure to survive in the network-based environment. The architecture-neutral and portable aspects of the Java language make it the ideal development language to meet the challenges of distributing dynamically extensible software across networks.

Now We Move On to the HotJava World-Wide Web Browser

These rst eight chapters have been your introduction to the Java language environment. Youve learned about the capabilities of Java and its clear benets to develop software for the distributed world. Now its time to move on to the next chapter and take a look at the HotJava World-Wide Web browsera major end-user application developed to make use of the dynamic features of the Java language environment.

Performance and Comparisons

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Its a jungle out there, So drink your Java

T-shirt caption from Printers Inc Cafe, Palo Alto, California

The HotJava Browser (HotJava) is a new World-Wide Web browser implemented entirely in the Java programming language. HotJava is the rst major end-user application created using the Java programming language and its run-time system as a base. HotJava not only showcases the powerful features of the Java environment, it also provides an ideal platform for distributing Java programs across the Internetthe most complex, distributed, heterogeneous network in the world.HotJava and its rapidly growing Web population of Java language programs called applets (mini-applications), are the most compelling demonstration of the dynamic capabilities of Java. HotJava includes many innovative features and capabilities above and beyond the rst generation of static Web browsers. HotJava is extensible. Its foremost feature is its ability to download Java programs (applets) from anywhere, even across networks, and execute them on the users machine. HotJava builds on the network-browsing techniques established by Mosaic and other Web browsers and expands them by adding dynamic behavior that transforms static documents into dynamic applications.

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HotJava goes far beyond the current generation of statically-oriented Web browsers and brings a much needed measure of interactivity to the concept of the Web browser. It transforms the existing static data display of current generation Web browsers into a new and dynamic viewing system for hypertext, described below. It enables creation and display of animationoriented applications. World-Wide Web content developers can have their applications distributed across the Internet with the click of a button on the users client computer.

9.1 The Evolution of Cyberspace

The Internet has evolved into an amorphous ocean of data stored in many formats on a multiplicity of network hosts. Over time, various data storage and transmission protocols have evolved to impose some order on this chaos. One of the fastest growing areas of the netthe one were primarily interested in hereis the World-Wide Web (WWW), which uses a hypertext-based markup system to enable users to navigate their way across the oceans of data. The concept of hypertext is by no means new, but its realization has spanned decades. The idea behind hypertext was described in an essay by Vannevar Bush in 1945, and evangelized by Theodore (Ted) Nelson in the 1960s and 1970s. Although Apple Computers HyperCard product for Macintosh provided an early if somewhat primitive implementation, the real power of hypertest comes from the ability to create inter-document links across multiple host computers on the network. The rst practical if small implementation of a network-based hypertext system was created by Tim Berners-Lee at CERN, using the NEXTSTEP development environment to create what would blossom into HTML (HyperText Markup Language), HTTP (HyperText Transport Protocol), and the WWW (World-Wide Web, or W3). Web browsers combine the functions of fetching data with guring out what the data is and displaying it if possible. One of the most prevalent le formats browsers deal with is HyperText Markup Language, or HTML a markup language that embeds simple text-formatting commands within text to be formatted. The main key to the hypertext concept is HTMLs use of links to other HTML pages either on the same host or elsewhere on the Internet. A user in search of gold mining data, for instance, can follow links across the net from Mountain View, California, to the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa, and arrive back at commercial data providers in Montreal, Canada, all within the context of tracing links in hypertext pages. For a topic

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of timely relevance to the World-Wide Web, a user interested in aspects of multimedia law relative to the World-Wide Web can tune in to the home page at www.oikoumene.com/oikoumene for links to intellectual property issues.

9.1.1 First Generation Browsers

What we could call the rst-generation Web browsersexemplied by NCSA Mosaic and the rst release of Netscape Navigatorprovide an illusion of being interactive. By using the (somewhat limited) language of HTML these browsers provide hypertext links on which you can click. The browser goes off across the network to fetch the data associated with that link, downloads the data, and displays it on your local screen. As we said, this is an illusion of interactivity. This illustration depicts roughly the interactive ow of control in the rstgeneration Web browsers. As you see, its not really interactiveits just a fancy data fetching and display utility. HotJava brings a new twist to the concept of client-server computing. The general view of client-server computing is a big centralized server that clients connect to for a long time and from which they access data and applications. It is roughly a star with a big server in the middle and clients arrayed around it. The new model exemplied by the World-Wide Web is a wide-spread collection of independent nodes with short -lived connections between clients and many servers. The controlling intelligence shifts from the server to the client and the answer to whos in charge? shifts from the server to the client. The primary problem with the rst-generation web browsers is that theyre built in a monolithic fashion with their awareness of every possible type of data, protocol, and behavior hard wired in order for them to navigate the Web. This means that every time a new data type, protocol, or behavior is invented, these browsers must be upgraded to be cognizant of the new situation. From the viewpoint of end users, this is an untenable position to be in. Users must continually be aware of what protocols exist, which browsers deal with those protocols, and which versions of which browsers are compatible with each other. Given the growth of the Internet, this situation is clearly out of control.

Display Text and Images

Fetch Data Decode URL

Click Link

smtp

nntp

html

http

url

substrate A conventional browser: a monolithic chunk, all bound tightly together.

ftp

gif

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9.1.2 The HotJava BrowserA New Concept in Web Browsers
HotJava solves the monolithic approach and moves the focus of interactivity away from the Web server and onto the Web clientthat is, to the computer on which the user is browsing the Web. Because of its basis in the Java system, a HotJava client can dynamically download segments of code that are executed right there on the client machine. Such Java-based applets (miniapplications) can provide full animation, play sound, and generally interact with the user in real time. HotJava removes the static limitations of the Mosaic generation of Web browsers with its ability to add arbitrary behavior to the browser. Using HotJava, you can add applications that range from interactive science experiments in educational material, to games and specialized shopping applications. You can implement interactive advertising, customized newspapers, and a host of application areas that havent even been thought of yet. The capabilities of a Web browser whose behavior can be dynamically updated are open-ended. Furthermore, HotJava provides the means for users to access these applications in a new way. Software migrates transparently across the network as its needed. You dont have to install softwareit comes across the network as you need itperhaps after asking you to pay for it. Content developers for the World-Wide Web dont have to worry about whether or not some special piece of software is installed in a users systemit just gets there automatically. This transparent acquiring of applications frees content developers from the boundaries of the xed media types such as images and text and lets them do whatever theyd like.

9.1.3 The Essential Difference

The central difference between HotJava and other browsers is that while these other browsers have knowledge of the Internet protocols hard-wired into them, HotJava understands essentially none of them. What it does understand is how

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to nd out about things it doesnt understand. The result of this lack of understanding is great exibility and the ability to add new capabilities very easily. new1 smtp nntp url ftp gif

new2

html

HOTJAVA HotJava is the coordinator of a federation of pieces, each with individual responsibility. New pieces can be added at any time. Pieces can be added from across the network, without needing to be concerned with what CPU architecture they were designed for and with reasonable condence that they wont compromise the integrity of a users system.

9.1.4 Dynamic Content

One of the most visible uses of HotJavas ability to dynamically add to its capabilities is something we call dynamic content. For example, someone could write a Java program to implement an interactive chemistry simulation, following the rules of the HotJava API. People browsing the net with HotJava could easily get this simulation and interact with it, rather than just having a static picture with some text. They can do this and be assured that the code that brings their chemistry experiment to life doesnt also contain malicious code that damages the system. Code that attempts to be malicious or which has bugs essentially cant breach the walls placed around it by the security and robustness features of Java.

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new3

http

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For example, the following is a snapshot of HotJava in use. Each diagram in the document represents a different sort algorithm. Each algorithm sorts an array of integers. Each horizontal line represents an integer: the length of the line corresponds to the value of the integer and the position of the line in the diagram corresponds to the position of the integer in the array.

In a book or HTML document, the author has to be content with these static illustrations. With HotJava the author can enable the reader to click on the illustrations and see the algorithms animate:

Using these dynamic facilities, content providers can dene new types of data and behavior that meet the needs of their specic audiences, rather than being bound by a xed set of objects.

9.1.5 Dynamic Types

HotJavas dynamic behavior is also used for understanding different types of objects. For example, most Web browsers can understand a small set of image formats (typically GIF, X11 pixmap, and X11 bitmap). If they see some other type, they have no way to deal with it. HotJava, on the other hand, can dynamically link the code from the host that has the image allowing it to display the new format. So, if someone invents a new compression algorithm,

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the inventor just has to make sure that a copy of its Java code is installed on the server that contains the images they want to publish; they dont have to upgrade all the browsers in the world. HotJava essentially upgrades itself on the y when it sees this new type. The following is an illustration of how HotJava negotiates with a server when it encounters an object of an unknown type:

Browser
User asks for object

Network

Server

request

Object Browser doesnt understand object type

reply

Time

request

Java code to support object

reply

Object Displayed

9.1.6 Dynamic Protocols

The protocols that Internet hosts use to communicate among themselves are key components of the net. For the World-Wide Web (WWW), HTTP (HyperText Transfer Protocol) is the most important of these communication protocols. Within WWW documents, a reference to another document (even to a document on another Internet host computer) is called a URL, meaning a Uniform Resource Locator. The URL contains the name of the protocol, HTTP, that is used to nd that document. Most of the current generation of Web browsers have the knowledge of HTTP built-in. Rather than having built-in protocol handlers, HotJava uses the protocol name to link in the appropriate handler as required, allowing new protocols to be incorporated dynamically.

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The dynamic incorporation of protocols has special signicance to how business is done on the Internet. Many vendors are providing new Web browsers and servers with added capabilities, such as billing and security. These capabilities most often take the form of new protocols. So each vendor comes up with their unique style of security (for example) and sells a server and browser that speak this new protocol. If a user wants to access data on multiple servers on which each has proprietary new protocols, the user needs multiple browsers. This is incredibly clumsy and defeats the synergistic cooperation that makes the World-Wide Web work. Products from Vendor A VATP Server Proprietary Protocol Web Browser

?
Which browser should the poor user run?

Products from Vendor B

VBTP Server

Proprietary Protocol

Web Browser

With HotJava as a base, vendors can produce and sell exactly the piece that is their added value, and integrate smoothly with other vendors, creating a nal result that is seamless and very convenient for the end user. Products from Vendor A VATP Server Proprietary Protocol A B Products from Vendor B VBTP Server Proprietary Protocol Web Browser No problem!

Protocol handlers get installed in a sequence similar to how content handlers get installed: The HotJava Browser is given a reference to an object (a URL). If the handler for that protocol is already loaded, it will be used. If not, the HotJava Browser will search rst the local system and then the system that is the target of the URL.

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9.2 Freedom to Innovate
Innovation on the Internet follows a pattern: initially: someone develops a technology. Theyre free to try all kinds of things since no one else is using the technology and there are no compatibility issues. Slowly, people start using it, and as they do, compatibility and interoperability concerns slow the pace of innovation. The Internet is now in a state where even simple changes that everyone agrees will have signicant merit are very hard to make. User Population

Ability to innovate Time Within a community that uses HotJava, individuals can experiment with new facilities while at the same time preserving compatibility and interoperability. Data can be published in new formats and distributed using new protocols and the implementations of these will be automatically and safely installed. There is no upgrade problem. One need not be inventing new things to need these facilities. Almost all organizations need to be able to adapt to changing requirements. TheHotJava browsers exibility can greatly aid that. As new protocols and data types become important, they can be transparently incorporated.

9.3 Implementation Details

The basic structure of HotJava is instructive. It is easiest understood from the operation of Mosaic. Mosaic starts with a URL and fetches the object referenced by that URL using the specied protocol. The host and localinfo elds are passed to the protocol handler. The result of this is a bag of bytes that contains the object that has been fetched. These bytes are inspected to determine the type of the data (HTML document or JPEG image, for example). From this type information, code is invoked to manipulate and view the data.

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Thats all there is to Mosaic. Its essentially very simple. But despite this, the Mosaic program is actually huge since it must contain specialized handlers for all of these data types. Its bundled together into one big monolithic lump. In contrast, HotJava is very small, since all of the protocol and data handlers are brought in from the outside. For example, when it calls the protocol handler, instead of having a table that has a xed list of protocols that it understands, HotJava instead uses this type string to derive a Java language class name. The protocol handler for this type is dynamically linked in if it is missing. They can be linked in from the local system, or they can be linked in from denitions stored on the host where the URL was found, or anywhere else on the net that HotJava suspects might be a good place to look. In a similar fashion, HotJava can dynamically locate and load the code to handle different types of data objects and different ways of viewing them.

9.4 Security
Network security is of paramount importance to Internet users, especially with the exponential growth of Internet commerce. Network-based applications must be able to defend themselves against a veritable gallimaufry of network viruses, worms, Trojan horses, and other forms of intruders. This section discusses the layers of defense provided by Java, the Java run-time system, and the higher-level protocols of HotJava itself. One of the most important technical challenges in building a system like HotJava is making it secure. Downloading, installing,and executing fragments of code importedfrom across the network is potentially an open invitation to all sorts of problems. On the one hand, such a facility provides great power that can be used to achieve very valuable ends; on the other hand, the facility could potentially be subverted to become a breeding ground for computer viruses. The topic of safety is a very broad one and doesnt have a single answer. HotJava has a series of facilities that layer and interlock to provide a fairly high degree of safety.

9.4.1 The First Layerthe Java Language Interpreter

The rst layer of security in Java applications come from the ground rules of Java itself. These features have been described in detail in previous chapters in this paper.

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When HotJava imports a code fragment, itdoesnt actually know whether or not the code fragment follows Java language rules for safety. As described earlier, imported code fragments are subjected to a series of checks, starting with straightforward tests that the format of the code is correct and ending with a series of consistency checks by the Bytecode Verier.

9.4.2 The Next Layerthe Higher Level Protocols

Given this base set of guarantees that interfaces cannot be violated, higher level parts of the system implement their own protection mechanisms. For example, the le access primitives implement an access control list that controls read and write access to les by imported code (or code invoked by imported code). The defaults for these access control lists are very restrictive. If an attempt is made by a piece of imported code to access a le to which access has not been granted, a dialog box pops up to allow the user to decide whether or not to allow that specic access. These access restrictions err on the conservative side, which makes constructing some very useful extensions impossible or awkward. We have a mechanism whereby public keys can be securely attached to code fragments that allows code with trusted public keys to have fewer restrictions. This mechanism isnt in the public release for legal reasons.

9.5 HotJavathe Promise

The HotJava Web browser, based upon the foundations of the Java environment, brings a hitherto unrealized dynamic and interactive capability to the World-Wide Web. Dynamic content, dynamic data types, and dynamic protocols provide content creators with an entirely new tool that facilitates the burgeoning growth of electronic commerce and education. The advent of the dynamic and interactive capabilities provided by the HotJava Web browser brings the World-Wide Web to life, turning the Web into a new and powerful business and communication tool for all users.

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Further Reading

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Ive got a little list. Ive got a little list. Gilbert and SullivanThe Mikado

The Java Programmers Guide Sun Microsystems http://java.sun.com/progGuide/index.html This is the draft version of the Java/HotJava Programmers Guide.

Pitfalls of Object-Oriented Development, by Bruce F. Webster Published by M&T Books. A collection of traps to avoid for people adopting object technology. Recommended readingit alerts you to the problems youre likely to encounter and the solutions for them.

The Design and Evolution of C++, by Bjarne Stroustrop Published by Addison Wesley A detailed history of how we came to be where we are with C++.

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NEXTSTEP Object-Oriented Programming and the Objective C Language. Addison Wesley Publishing Company, Reading, Massachusetts, 1993. The book on Objective C. A good introduction to object-oriented programming concepts.

Discovering Smalltalk. By Wilf Lalonde. Benjamin Cummings, Redwood City, California, 1994. An introduction to Smalltalk.

Eiffel: The Language. By Bertrand Meyer. Prentice-Hall, New York, 1992. An introduction to the Eiffel language, written by its creator.

An Introduction to Object-Oriented Programming. By Timothy Budd. Addison Wesley Publishing Company, Reading, Massachusetts. An introduction to the topic of object-oriented programming, as well as a comparison of C++, Objective C, SmallTalk, and Object Pascal.

Monitors: An Operating System Structuring Concept. By C. A. R. Hoare. Communications of the ACM, volume 17 number 10, 1974. Pages 549-557. The original seminal paper on the concept of monitors as a means to synchronizing multiple concurrent tasks.

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