Strings

• A whole story of its own.
• Strings are characters enclosed in quotes.  Any characters are fair game.
• There is no primitive type for Strings, though the primitive type for an individual character is char.
• Thus, most of the String operations you do will be done with methods of the java.lang.String object.
• One exception is String concatenation.  You can simply use the +.
• If you attempt to concatenate a String with a non-String, the non-String will be converted.
• Primitives will be converted by the compiler.
• Other objects will be converted via their toString() method.  Every object has a toString() method.
• As an object, the String has a lot of 'exceptions to the rules' of normal objects.
• The String is the only object for which the "+" may be used to join two instances together.
• The String object is the only object that can be created without calling a constructor.  You can create a new String simply by setting a String-type variable equal to string data in quotes.
• You usually have to specifically tell the compiler to import a class that you are using, except for classes in the java.lang.* package.  Classes that reside there are so common, they are imported automatically.  You guessed it, String resides in that package.


 Substrings

Created by:  Brandan Jones January 4, 2002