I have an abstract class like so:  abstract class Player {          //some stuff          public abstract String getName();      }   and in one of the subclasses I am implementing (and overloading / overriding as well? Here is where I am not sure) the function getName() like so by typing out the whole function again:  public String getName(){     return "John"; }   but I can also in my subclass simply write "getName()", press enter and my IDE automatically fills out the following code for me, which also works (if I change null to "John" in this case):  @Override public String getName(){     return null; }   Obviously since it states "Override" I am here overriding the function in the abstract superclass. But am I not already overriding the function even without putting "@Override" above the function?   What I am saying is: I have an abstract function, so it is only implemented in a subclass and not in the superclass itself. Doesn't this mean that by implementing it I am automatically overriding it as well, since it has no implementation in the superclass to begin with? Why should I write @Override then? Or am I just "overloading" if I don't put "@Override" in there?
1079
What are the best practices for using Java's @Override annotation and why?     It seems like it would be overkill to mark every single overridden method with the @Override annotation.   Are there certain programming situations that call for using the @Override and others that should never use the @Override?
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I have been reading through the  and was curious about the  declaration. I personally have never used it, however I am interested in exploring the language.   What is a good example of using friend?    Reading the FAQ a bit longer I like the idea of the &lt;&lt; &gt;&gt; operator overloading and adding as a friend of those classes. However I am not sure how this doesn't break encapsulation. When can these exceptions stay within the strictness that is OOP?
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I'm looking at some GXT code for GWT and I ran across this use of Generics that I can't find another example of in the Java tutorials. The class name is  if you want to look at all of the code.  Here are the important parts:  private RpcMap map;  public &lt;X&gt; X get(String property) {   if (allowNestedValues &amp;&amp; NestedModelUtil.isNestedProperty(property)) {     return (X)NestedModelUtil.getNestedValue(this, property);   }   return map == null ? null : (X) map.get(property); }   X is defined nowhere else in the class or anywhere in the hierarchy, and when I hit "go to declaration" in eclipse it just goes to the &lt;X&gt; in the public method signature.  I've tried to call this method with the following two examples to see what happens:  public Date getExpiredate() {     return  get("expiredate"); }  public String getSubject() {     return  get("subject"); }   They compile and show no errors or warnings.  I would think at the very least I would have to do a cast to get this to work.  Does this mean that Generics allow a magic return value that can be anything and will just blow up at runtime?  This seems counter to what generics are supposed to do.  Can anyone explain this to me and possibly give me a link to some documentation that explains this a little better?  I've went through Sun's 23 page pdf on generics and every example of a return value is defined either at the class level or is in one of the parameters passed in.
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I have a function with the same name, but with different signature in a base and derived classes. When I am trying to use the base class's function in another class that inherits from the derived, I receive an error. See the following code:  class A {     public:     void foo(string s){}; };  class B : public A {     public:     int foo(int i){}; };  class C : public B {     public:     void bar()     {         string s;         foo(s);     } };   I receive the following error from the gcc compiler:  In member function `void C::bar()': no matching function for call to `C::foo(std::string&amp;)' candidates are: int B::foo(int)   If I remove int foo(int i){}; from class B, or if I rename it from foo1, everything works fine.   What's the problem with this?
109568
Is it possible to reflectively instantiate a generic type in Java? Using the technique described  I get an error because class tokens cannot be generic. Take the example below. I want to instantiate some subclass of Creator that implements Creator. The actual class name is passed in as a command line argument. The idea is to be able to specify an implementation of Creator at runtime. Is there another way to accomplish what I'm trying to do here?  public interface Creator&lt;T&gt; {     T create(); } public class StringCreator implements Creator&lt;String&gt; {     public String create() { return new String(); } } public class FancyStringCreator implements Creator&lt;String&gt; {     public String create() { return new StringBuffer().toString(); } } public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {     Class&lt;?&gt; someClass = Class.forName(args[0]);     /*ERROR*/Class&lt;? extends Creator&lt;String&gt;&gt; creatorClass = someClass.asSubclass(Creator.class);     Constructor&lt;? extends Creator&lt;String&gt;&gt; creatorCtor = creatorClass.getConstructor((Class&lt;?&gt;[]) null);     Creator&lt;String&gt; creator = creatorCtor.newInstance((Object[]) null); }   Edit: I like Marcus' approach as being the most simple and pragmatic without circumventing the whole generics thing. I can use it in my situation because I can specify that the class passed must be a subclass of StringCreator. But as Ericson pointed out the generic information is still there at the type level, just not at the runtime level so it is still possible to reflectively examine whether a given class implements the correct generic type.
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Can an abstract class have a constructor?  If so, how can it be used and for what purposes?
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When I define an object of a class using new like this  $blah = new Whatever();   I get autocomplete for $blah. But how do I do it when I have $blah as a function parameter? Without autocomplete I am incomplete.  Edit: How do I do it if it's in an include and PDT or Netbeans can't figure it out? Is there any way to declare types for variables in PHP?
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Why does the  exist in modern languages such as C# and Java? Is it purely a self documenting code feature, or does it serve any actual purpose?  For instance the following example:  Class1 obj = new Class1();  Class1 foo() {     return new Class1(); }   Is as easy to read as the more Pythonesque way of writing it:  Class1 obj = Class1();  Class1 foo() {     return Class1(); }   EDIT:  hit the nail on the head with the clarification of the question: Why did they choose this syntax?
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The question is in Java why can't I define an abstract static method? for example  abstract class foo {     abstract void bar( ); // &lt;-- this is ok     abstract static void bar2(); //&lt;-- this isn't why? }
4013
If I have two variables:  Object obj; String methodName = "getName";   Without knowing the class of obj, how can I call the method identified by methodName on it?  The method being called has no parameters, and a String return value. It's a getter for a Java bean.
22005
I see a lot of example code for C# classes that does this:  public class Point {     public int x { get; set; }     public int y { get; set; } }   Or, in older code, the same with an explicit private backing value and without the new auto-implemented properties:  public class Point {     private int _x;     private int _y;      public int x {         get { return _x; }         set { _x = value; }     }      public int y {         get { return _y; }         set { _y = value; }     } }   My question is why. Is there any functional difference between doing the above and just making these members public fields, like below?  public class Point {     public int x;     public int y; }   To be clear, I understand the value of getters and setters when you need to do some translation of the underlying data. But in cases where you're just passing the values through, it seems needlessly verbose.
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allow you to create code which defines the methods of classes that implement it. You cannot however add any code to those methods.    allow you to do the same thing, along with adding code to the method.   Now if you can achieve the same goal with abstract classes, why do we even need the concept of interfaces?   I've been told that it has to do with OO theory from C++ to Java, which is what PHP's OO stuff is based on. Is the concept useful in Java but not in PHP? Is it just a way to keep from having placeholders littered in the abstract class? Am I missing something?
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Here's what I've been trying to do, in a nutshell:  class example &lt;T extends Number&gt; {     private int function(T number)     {         int x = (int) number;         ...     }     ... }   Basically, I'm trying to make it so that T is a number so I can convert it to an int inside that function. The problem is that I'm getting an "incovertible types" error, so I must be doing something wrong.
77422
I have a call to a method in a class as follows:  String key1 = "test1"; String key2 = "test2";  long[] datalr = new long[] {}; datalr = TestClass.callerSub(key1,key2);   The test class is as follows:  public class TestClass {  Public TestClass { }  public long[] callerSub(string key1, String key2){  long[] datalr = new long[] {0,0};  datalr[0] = 2; datalr[1] = 3;  return datalr;  } }   I'm getting the following error in the first class:  Error: Compile Error: Method does not exist or incorrect signature: TestClass.callerSub(String, String) at line 54 column 12       which is the following line:  datalr = TestClass.callerSub(key1,key2);   The datalr data in the callerSub method is just an example above,  Any idea why?  Thanks
52524
So I was making a class the other day and used Eclipse's method to create the equals method when I realized that it generated the following working code:  class Test {   private int privateInt;   [...]   public boolean equals(Object obj) {     [...]     Test t = (Test) obj;     if ( t.privateInt == privateInt ) {     [...]   } }   t.privateInt..???? It's suppose to be private! So I guess there is one more field visibility other than private, protected, package protected and public.  So what is happening here? How is this called? Where would somebody use this? Doesn't this break encapsulation? What if the class didn't have a mutator and I changed this? Does this happen to C++ as well? Is this an OO idiom? If not, then why did Java do it?  Generally, where can I find information about this?  Thank you.
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Consider this example (typical in OOP books):    I have an Animal class, where each Animal can have many friends. And subclasses like Dog, Duck, Mouse etc which add specific behavior like bark(), quack() etc.  Here's the Animal class:  public class Animal {     private Map&lt;String,Animal&gt; friends = new HashMap&lt;&gt;();      public void addFriend(String name, Animal animal){         friends.put(name,animal);     }      public Animal callFriend(String name){         return friends.get(name);     } }   And here's some code snippet with lots of typecasting:  Mouse jerry = new Mouse(); jerry.addFriend("spike", new Dog()); jerry.addFriend("quacker", new Duck());  ((Dog) jerry.callFriend("spike")).bark(); ((Duck) jerry.callFriend("quacker")).quack();   Is there any way I can use generics for the return type to get rid of the typecasting, so that I can say      jerry.callFriend("spike").bark(); jerry.callFriend("quacker").quack();   Here's some initial code with return type conveyed to the method as a parameter that's never used.   public&lt;T extends Animal&gt; T callFriend(String name, T unusedTypeObj){     return (T)friends.get(name);         }   Is there a way to figure out the return type at runtime without the extra parameter using instanceof? Or at least by passing a class of the type instead of a dummy instance. I understand generics are for compile time type-checking, but is there a workaround for this?
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Is there a way in Python to override a class method at instance level? For example:  class Dog:     def bark(self):         print "WOOF"  boby = Dog() boby.bark() # WOOF # METHOD OVERRIDE boby.bark() # WoOoOoF!!