Basic HTML version of Foils prepared Sept 21 1998

Foil 16 The Overarching Object Class

From Java Tutorial 98- 4: Multi-Treading, Useful Java Classes, I/O and Networking NAVO Tutorial -- Sept 23 1998. by Geoffrey C. Fox, Nancy McCracken
Public class Object is the root of the class hierarchy. Every Java class has Object as its ultimate parent and so any object (object with a small "o" is any instance of a class) can use methods of Object.
Methods of Object include:
  • clone() creates a clone of the object
  • equals( Object ) compares two objects, returning a boolean result
  • getClass() returns a descriptor of type Class (a child of Object) defining the class of the object
  • toString() returns a String representation of the object. It is expected that each subclass will override this method
  • wait(...) in various forms causes threads to wait
  • finalize() executed when the object is deleted by system (i.e., garbage collected)

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