Methods

• Methods are part of an object.  Identify the owning object as an implicit parameter, which is preceeded by the method name, separated by a period.
• The parameters you want to pass in are called explicit parameters, which are preceeded by type.
• A method may have 0 - to - many explicit parameters.
• The implicit parameters, explicit parameters, and method name make up the methods signature.  You can have multiple methods with the same name, as long as the explicit parameters differ.
• Note that, in Java, a different return type does not change the signature.  As a matter of fact, two methods with identical signatures and different return types will cause a compiler error.
• Methods also have keywords for access control and ownership.
• public, private, protected: define the scope of the method.
• static: define whether an object must be instantiated or not
• A return value specifies the type of data that is returned.  This can be any object, any primitive, or void if nothing is returned.  A method can only return one value, though you can return multiple values by enclosing them in an object.


 See Previous Example

 Accessor Methods
 

Created by:  Brandan Jones January 4, 2002