The Java™ Language Environment: Awhitepaper

The Java™ Language Environment
AWhitePaper
JamesGosling
HenryMcGilton
JavaSoft
2550 Garcia Avenue
Mountain View, CA 94043 U.S.A
408-343-1400
May 1996
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Contents
1. Introduction to Java . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
1.1 Beginnings of the Java Language Project. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
1.2 Design Goals of Java . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
1.2.1 Simple, Object Oriented, and Familiar . . . . . . . . . . . 13
1.2.2 Robust and Secure. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
1.2.3 Architecture Neutral and Portable . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
1.2.4 High Performance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
1.2.5 Interpreted, Threaded, and Dynamic . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
1.3 The Java Platform—a New Approach to Distributed
Computing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
2. Java—Simple and Familiar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
2.1 Main Features of the Java Language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
2.1.1 Primitive Data Types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
2.1.2 Arithmetic and Relational Operators . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
2.1.3 Arrays . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
2.1.4 Strings. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
iv
2.1.5 Multi-Level Break . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
2.1.6 Memory Management and Garbage Collection . . . 24
2.1.7 The Background Garbage Collector . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
2.1.8 Integrated Thread Synchronization . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
2.2 Features Removed from C and C++ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
2.2.1 No More Typedefs, Defines, or Preprocessor . . . . . 26
2.2.2 No More Structures or Unions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
2.2.3 No Enums . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
2.2.4 No More Functions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
2.2.5 No More Multiple Inheritance. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
2.2.6 No More Goto Statements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
2.2.7 No More Operator Overloading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
2.2.8 No More Automatic Coercions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
2.2.9 No More Pointers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
2.3 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
3. Java is Object Oriented . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
3.1 Object Technology in Java . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
3.2 What Are Objects? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
3.3 Basics of Objects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
3.3.1 Classes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
3.3.2 Instantiating an Object from its Class. . . . . . . . . . . . 35
3.3.3 Constructors. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
3.3.4 Methods and Messaging . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
3.3.5 Finalizers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
v The Java Language Environment—May 1996

3.3.6 Subclasses. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
3.3.7 Java Language Interfaces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
3.3.8 Access Control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
3.3.9 Packages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
3.3.10 Class Variables and Class Methods. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
3.3.11 Abstract Methods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
3.4 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
4. Architecture Neutral, Portable, and Robust . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
4.1 Architecture Neutral . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
4.1.1 Byte Codes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
4.2 Portable . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
4.3 Robust . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
4.3.1 Strict Compile-Time and Run-Time Checking. . . . . 53
4.4 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
5. Interpreted and Dynamic. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
5.1 Dynamic Loading and Binding. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
5.1.1 The Fragile Superclass Problem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
5.1.2 Solving the Fragile Superclass Problem . . . . . . . . . . 58
5.1.3 Run-Time Representations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
5.2 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
6. Security in Java . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
6.1 Memory Allocation and Layout . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
6.2 Security Checks in the Class Loader . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
6.3 The Byte Code Verification Process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
Contents vi
6.3.1 The Byte Code Verifier . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
6.4 Security in the Java Networking Package . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
6.5 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
7. Multithreading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
7.1 Threads at the Java Language Level . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
7.2 Integrated Thread Synchronization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
7.3 Multithreading Support—Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
8. Performance and Comparisons. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
8.1 Performance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
8.2 The Java Language Compared . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
8.3 A Major Benefit of Java: Fast and Fearless Prototyping. . 74
8.4 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
9. Java Base System and Libraries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
9.1 Java Language Classes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
9.2 Input Output Package . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
9.3 Utility Package . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
9.4 Abstract Window Toolkit. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
10. The HotJava World-Wide Web Browser . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
10.1 The Evolution of Cyberspace . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
10.1.1 First Generation Browsers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
10.1.2 The HotJava Browser—A New Concept in Web Browsers
85
10.1.3 The Essential Difference . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
10.1.4 Dynamic Content . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
vii The Java Language Environment—May 1996

10.1.5 Dynamic Types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
10.1.6 Dynamic Protocols . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
10.2 Freedom to Innovate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
10.3 Implementation Details . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
10.4 Security . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
10.4.1 The First Layer—the Java Language Interpreter. . . 92
10.4.2 The Next Layer—the Higher Level Protocols . . . . . 92
10.5 HotJava—the Promise . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
11. Further Reading. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
Contents viii
ix The Java Language Environment—May 1996
Introduction to Java 1
The Next Stage of the Known,

Or a Completely New Paradigm?
Taiichi Sakaiya—The Knowledge-Value Revolution
The Software Developer’s Burden

Imagine you’re a software application developer. Your programming language
of choice (or the language that’s been foisted on you) is C or C++. You’ve been
at this for quite a while and your job doesn’t seem to be getting any easier.
These past few years you’ve 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 you’re 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.
10
1
The tools you use to develop applications don’t seem to help you much. You’re
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 way—it’s the Java™ programming language platform
(“Java” for short) from Sun Microsystems. Imagine, if you will, this
development world…
• Your programming language is object oriented, yet it’s still dead simple.
• Your development cycle is much faster because Java is interpreted. The
compile-link-load-test-crash-debug cycle is obsolete—now you just compile
and run.
• Your applications are portable across multiple platforms. Write your
applications once, and you never need to port them—they will run without
modification 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 the Java language and runtime platform.
• 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
they’re downloading code from all over the Internet; the Java run-time
system has built-in protection against viruses and tampering.
You don’t need to dream about these features. They’re here now. The Java
Programming Language platform provides a portable, interpreted, high-
performance, simple, object-oriented programming language and supporting run-
time 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.
11 The Java Language Environment—May 1996

1
The last chapter of this paper describes the HotJava™ Browser (“HotJava” for
short). HotJava is an innovative World-Wide Web browser, and the first major
applications written using the Java platform. HotJava is the first browser to
dynamically download and execute Java code fragments from anywhere on the
Internet, and can do 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 network devices and embedded systems. The goal was to
develop a small, reliable, portable, distributed, real-time operating platform.
When the project started, C++ was the language of choice. But over time the
difficulties encountered with C++ grew to the point where the problems could
best be addressed by creating an entirely new language platform. Design and
architecture decisions drew from a variety of languages such as Eiffel,
SmallTalk, Objective C, and Cedar/Mesa. The result is a language platform
that has proven ideal for developing secure, distributed, network-based end-
user applications in environments ranging from network-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.
1
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 fit 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

let’s examine some of them and their respective benefits 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
finally 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 efficient object-based development platform.
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.

1
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 model is extremely simple: objects are created with
a new operator. There are no explicit programmer-defined pointer data types,
no pointer arithmetic, and automatic garbage collection. This simple memory
management model eliminates entire classes of programming errors that
bedevil C and C++ programmers. You can develop Java language code with
confidence that the system will find many errors quickly and that major
problems won’t 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 can’t
be invaded from outside. In the network environment, applications written in
Java are secure from intrusion by unauthorized code attempting to get behind
the scenes and create viruses or invade file systems.
1.2.3 Architecture Neutral and Portable

Java is designed to support applications that will be deployed into
heterogeneous network 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 bytecodes—an architecture neutral intermediate format
designed to transport code efficiently 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 definition of the basic language.
Java puts a stake in the ground and specifies the sizes of its basic data types
and the behavior of its arithmetic operators. Your programs are the same on
every platform—there are no data type incompatibilities across hardware and
software architectures.
1
The architecture-neutral and portable language platform of Java is known as
the Java Virtual Machine. It’s the specification of an abstract machine for which
Java language compilers can generate code. Specific implementations of the
Java Virtual Machine for specific hardware and software platforms then
provide the concrete realization of the virtual machine. The Java Virtual
Machine is based primarily on the POSIX interface specification—an industry-
standard definition 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 platform. In general, users perceive that
interactive applications respond quickly even though they’re 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
platform such as Java system, the link phase of a program is simple,
incremental, and lightweight. You benefit from much faster development
cycles—prototyping, 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. Java’s 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.

1
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, Java’s high-level system libraries
have been written to be thread safe: the functionality provided by the libraries is
available without conflict 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 Platform—a New Approach to Distributed Computing

Taken individually, the characteristics discussed above can be found in a
variety of software development platforms. What’s completely new is the
manner in which Java and its run-time system have combined them to produce
a flexible 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 easier—you 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 platform.
1

Java—Simple and Familiar 2
You know you’ve 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-fiction novel, The Rolling Stones, Robert A. Heinlein comments:

Every technology goes through three stages: first 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 final proper design therefrom.
Heinlein’s comment could well describe the evolution of many programming

languages. Java presents a new viewpoint in the evolution of programming
languages—creation of a small and simple language that’s still sufficiently
comprehensive to address a wide variety of software application development.
Although Java is superficially similar to 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, it’s simple (from
removing features) and familiar (because it looks like C and C++). The next
18
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chapter discusses Java’s object-oriented features in more detail. At the end of
this chapter you’ll find a discussion on features eliminated from C and C++ in
the evolution of Java.
Design Goals
Simplicity is one of Java’s overriding design goals. Simplicity and removal of
many “features” of dubious worth from its C and C++ ancestors keep Java
relatively small and reduce the programmer’s 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 find their Java
language learning curve quite short—on 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. It’s about the simplest program you can write that actually does
something. Here’s 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

2
invoking the println method of the out object. The out object is a class
variable in the System class that performs output operations on files. That’s all
there is to HelloWorld.
2.1 Main Features of the Java Language

Java follows C++ to some degree, which carries the benefit 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 library-
supplied objects if required. The Java programming language 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, character types, and Boolean types.
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 specifier 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 defined by the IEEE 754 specification. A
floating 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. Java’s char data
type defines a sixteen-bit Unicode character. Unicode characters are unsigned
16-bit values that define character codes in the range 0 through 65,535. If you
write a declaration such as
char myChar = ‘Q’;

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you get a Unicode (16-bit unsigned value) type 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 world-
wide applications.
Boolean Data Types

Java added a Boolean data type as a primitive type, tacitly ratifying existing C
and C++ programming practice, where developers define 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 can’t be converted to any
numeric type.
2.1.2 Arithmetic and Relational Operators

All the familiar C and C++ operators apply. The Java programming language
has no unsigned data types, so 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 first-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 you’ve 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 doesn’t 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 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.
The length of an array is stored in the length instance variable of the specific
array: myPoints.length contains 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 confident 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!";

2
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.
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. Here’s a small
fragment of code from Java’s 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;

2
alternatively, programmers have (mis)used the goto statement to exit out of
nested blocks. Use of labelled blocks in Java leads to considerable
simplification in programming effort and a major reduction in maintenance.
The notion of labelled blocks dates back to the mid-1970s, but it hasn’t caught
on to any large extent in modern programming languages. Perl is another
modern programming language that implements the concept of labelled
blocks. Perl’s 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 object’s status and automatically reclaims memory when objects are no
longer in use, freeing memory for future use.
Java’s memory management model is based on objects and references to objects.

Java has no pointers. Instead, 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.
Java’s memory allocation model and automatic garbage collection make your
programming task easier, eliminate entire classes of bugs, and in general
provide better performance than you’d obtain through explicit memory
management. Here’s a code fragment that illustrates when garbage collection
happens:
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 execution of

the reverseIt method. When dest goes out of scope (the reverseIt
method returns), the reference to that object has gone away and it’s 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 user’s behavior when interacting with software applications
such as the HotJava browser. The typical user of the typical interactive
application has many natural pauses where they’re 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 Java’s integrated multithreading
capabilities—an 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.

2
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 first 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, Defines, 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 files. Instead of header files, Java language source files provide the
declarations of other classes and their methods.
A major problem with C and C++ is the amount of context you need to
understand another programmer’s code: you have to read all related header
files, 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 that’s
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 classes—after all, a class effectively declares a
new type. You don’t need header files because the Java compiler compiles class
definitions 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.

2
2.2.2 No More Structures or Unions

Java has no structures or unions as complex data types. You don’t 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 you’d define 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 Enums
Java has no enum types. You can obtain something similar to enum by declaring
a class whose only raison d’etre is to hold constants. You could use this feature
something like this:
class Direction extends Object {
public static final int North = 1;
public static final int South = 2;
public static final int East = 3;
public static final int West = 4;
}
You can now refer to, say, the South constant using the notation
Direction.South.

2
Using classes to contain constants in this way provides a major advantage over
C’s enum types. In C (and C++), names defined in enums must be unique: if
you have an enum called HotColors containing names Red and Yellow, you
can’t use those names in any other enum. You couldn’t, for instance, define
another Enum called TrafficLightColors also containing Red and Yellow.
Using the class-to-contain-constants technique in Java, you can use the same
names in different classes, because those names are qualified by the name of
the containing class. From our example just above, you might wish to create
another class called CompassRose:
class CompassRose extends Object {
public static final int North = 1;
public static final int NorthEast = 2;
public static final int East = 3;
public static final int SouthEast = 4;
public static final int South = 5;
public static final int SouthWest = 6;
public static final int West = 7;
public static final int NorthWest = 8;
}
There is no ambiguity because the name of the containing class acts as a

qualifier for the constants. In the second example, you would use the notation
CompassRose.NorthWest to access the corresponding value. Java effectively
provides you the concept of qualified enums, all within the existing class
mechanisms.
2.2.4 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 defining a class and creating methods for that class.
Consider the Point class from above. We’ve added public methods to set and
access the instance variables:
double x;
double y;
public void setX(double x) {

this.x = x;
}

2
public void setY(double y) {
this.y = y;
}
public double x() {
return x;
}
public double y() {
return y;
}
}
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. Here’s how you’d use
objects of the Point class from within, say, an object of the Rectangle class:
Point lowerLeft;
Point upperRight;
public void setEmptyRect() {

lowerLeft.setX(0.0);
lowerLeft.setY(0.0);
upperRight.setX(0.0);
upperRight.setY(0.0);
}
}
It’s not to say that functions and procedures are inherently wrong. But given
classes and methods, we’re now down to only one way to express a given task.
By eliminating functions, your job as a programmer is immensely simplified:
you work only with classes and their methods.
2.2.5 No More Multiple Inheritance

Multiple inheritance—and all the problems it generates—was discarded from
Java. The desirable features of multiple inheritance are provided by
interfaces—conceptually similar to Objective C protocols.
An interface is not a definition of a class. Rather, it’s a definition of a set of

methods that one or more classes will implement. An important issue of
interfaces is that they declare only methods and constants. Variables may not
be defined in interfaces.

2
2.2.6 No More Goto Statements

Java has no goto statement*. Studies illustrated that goto is (mis)used more
often than not simply “because it’s there”. Eliminating goto led to a
simplification of the language—there 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.
2.2.7 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. Eliminating
operator overloading leads to great simplification of code.
2.2.8 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:
int myInt;
double myFloat = 3.14159;
myInt = (int)myFloat;
* However, goto is still a reserved word.

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2.2.9 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 pointer data types. 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:
• Simple—the number of language constructs you need to understand to get
your job done is minimal.
• Familiar—Java looks like C and C++ while discarding the overwhelming
complexities of those languages.
Now that you’ve seen how Java was simplified by removal of features from its
predecessors, read the next chapter for a discussion on the object-oriented
features of Java.

Java is Object Oriented 3
My Object All Sublime

I Will Achieve in Time
Gilbert and Sullivan—The 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 object-
oriented paradigm meshes well with the needs of client-server and distributed
software. Benefits 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 cynic’s view of object-oriented programming is that it’s just a new
way to organize your source code. While there may be some merit to this view,
it doesn’t tell the whole story, because you can achieve results with object-
oriented programming techniques that you can’t 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 overlooked.
32
3
In the distributed client-server world, you now have 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:
• Encapsulation—implements information hiding and modularity (abstraction)
• Polymorphism—the same message sent to different objects results in behavior
that’s dependent on the nature of the object receiving the message
• Inheritance—you define new classes and behavior based on existing classes
to obtain code re-use and code organization
• Dynamic binding—objects could come from anywhere, possibly across the
network. You need to be able to send messages to objects without having to
know their specific type at the time you write your code. Dynamic binding
provides maximum flexibility 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 definition
appears to be somewhat circular, so let’s try to break out into clear air.
What are objects? They’re software programming models. In your everyday life,
you’re surrounded by objects: cars, coffee machines, ducks, trees, and so on.
Software applications contain objects: buttons on user interfaces, spreadsheets

3
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 defined 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 it’s 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 office, 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
Method
An object’s behavior is defined by its methods. Methods manipulate the instance

variables to create new state; an object’s 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
object—it’s kind of like a cell, with an outer membrane that’s its interface to the
world, and an inner nucleus that’s protected by the outer membrane.
An object’s instance variables (data) are packaged, or encapsulated, within the

object. The instance variables are surrounded by the object’s methods. With
certain well-defined exceptions, the object’s methods are the only means by

3
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 later in Access Specifiers. Later on you will also find a discussion on
class variables and class methods.
3.3.1 Classes
A class is a software construct that defines the data (state) and methods
(behavior) of the specific concrete objects that are subsequently constructed
from that class. In Java terminology, a class is built out of members, which are
either fields or methods. Fields are the data for the class. Methods are the
sequences of statements that operate on the data. Fields are normally specific
to an object—that is, every object constructed from the class definition will
have its own copy of the field. Such fields are known as instance variables.
Similarly, methods are also normally declared to operate on the instance
variables of the class, and are thus known as instance methods.
A class in and of itself is not an object. A class is like a blueprint that defines
how an object will look and behave when the object is created or instantiated
from the specification declared by the class. You obtain concrete objects by
instantiating a previously defined class. You can instantiate many objects from
one class definition, just as you can construct many houses all the same* from a
single architect’s drawing. Here’s the basic declaration of a very simple class
called Point
public double x; /* instance variable */
public double y; /* instance variable */
}
As mentioned, this declaration merely defines a template from which real

objects can be instantiated, as described next.
* Like those “Little Boxes”.

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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 object—an instance of the Point class—with a
fragment of code like this:
Point myPoint; // declares a variable to refer to a Point object
myPoint = new Point(); // allocates an instance of a Point object
Now, you can access the variables of this Point object by referring to the names
of the variables, qualified 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 this discussion on constructors.
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 finalizer, discussed later. Let’s go back to our Point class
from before:
public double x; /* instance variable */
public double y; /* instance variable */
Point() { /* constructor to initialize to default zero value */

x = 0.0;
y = 0.0;
}
/* constructor to initialize to specific value */
Point(double x, double y) {
this.x = x; /* set instance variables to passed parameters */
this.y = y;
}
}

3
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 that’s needed—in
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 specific values:
Point lowerLeft;
Point upperRight;
lowerLeft = new Point(); /* initialize to default zero value */

upperRight = new Point(100.0, 200.0); /* initialize to non- zero */
The specific constructor that’s used when creating a new Point object is
determined from the type and number of parameters in the new invocation.
The this Variable

What’s the this variable in the examples above? this refers to the object
you’re “in” right now. In other words, this refers to the receiving object. You
use this to clarify which variable you’re 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. Situations arise, however, where constructors are necessary, especially in
cases where the object being instantiated must itself instantiate other objects.
Let’s illustrate one of those situations by declaring a Rectangle class that uses
two Point objects to define its bounds:
private Point lowerLeft;
private Point upperRight;
Rectangle() {
lowerLeft = new Point();
upperRight = new Point();
}
. . .
instance methods appear in here
. . .
}

3
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
Instance
Variables
Method
Message
Method
Method
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 first 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
create models and simulations of complex real-world systems. Let’s redefine
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.
private double x; /* instance variable */
private double y; /* instance variable */
Point() { /* constructor to initialize to zero */

x = 0.0;
y = 0.0;
}
/* constructor to initialize to specific value */
Point(double x, double y) {

3
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 provide the flavor 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
myPoint = new Point(); // allocates an instance of a Point object

myPoint.setX(10.0); // sets the x variable via the accessor method
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 expose details of the class implementation, thereby providing
higher efficiency and conciseness of expression at the possible 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 finalizer that will perform necessary teardown
actions when the garbage collector is about to free an object. This code
fragment illustrates a finalize method in a class.

3
/**
* 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 file stream that was used by the object, to ensure that the file
descriptor for the stream is closed.
3.3.6 Subclasses
Subclasses are the mechanism by which new and enhanced objects can be
defined 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, you’d create a new
class called Zebra, which is a subclass of the Horse class. In Java language
terms, you’d do something like this:
class Zebra extends Horse {
Your new instance variables and new methods go here
}
The definition of Horse, wherever it is, would define 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
gain the benefit of already written code that does all the work—you don’t 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
class—it’s derived from Horse, which is called a superclass.
Here’s an example of making a subclass, which is a variant of our Point class

from previous examples to create a new three-dimensional point called
ThreePoint:
protected double x; /* instance variable */
protected double y; /* instance variable */

3
Point() { /* constructor to initialize to zero */

x = 0.0;
y = 0.0;
}
}
class ThreePoint extends Point {
protected double z; /* the z coordinate of the point */
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 there’s no need to declare them in ThreePoint. However, notice we
had to make Point’s instance variables protected instead of private as in
the previous examples. Had we left Point’s instance variables private, even
its subclasses would be unable to access them, and the compilation would fail.
Subclasses enable you to use existing code that’s already been developed and,
much more important, tested, for a more generic case. You override the parts of
the class you need for your specific behavior. Thus, subclasses gain you reuse

3
of existing code—you 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.
All classes in Java ultimately inherit from Object. Object is the most general
of all the classes. New classes that you declare add functionality to their
superclasses. The further down the class hierarchy you go—that is, the further
you get from Object—the more specialized your classes become.
Single Inheritance and the Class Hierarchy

Java implements what is known as a single-inheritance model. A new class can
subclass (extend, in Java terminology) only one other class. Ultimately, all
classes eventually inherit from the Object class, forming a tree structure with
Object as its root. This picture illustrates the class hierarchy of the classes in
the Java utility package, java.util.
The HashTable class is a subclass of Dictionary, which in turn is a subclass

of Object. Dictionary inherits all of Object’s variables and methods
(behavior), then adds new variables and behavior of its own. Similarly,
HashTable inherits all of Object’s variables and behavior, plus all of
Dictionary’s variables and behavior, and goes on to add its own variables
and behavior.
Then the Properties class subclasses HashTable in turn, inheriting all the
variables and behavior of its class hierarchy. In a similar manner, Stack and
ObserverList are subclasses of Vector, which in turn is a subclass of
Object. The power of the object-oriented methodology is apparent—none of
the subclasses needed to re-implement the basic functionality of their
superclasses, but needed only add their own specialized behavior.

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Object
Vector
BitSet
Enumerator
Dictionary Vector
Hashtable Hashtable
Observable
Entry Enumerator
Hashtable
Stack ObserverList
Properties
However, the above diagram points out the minor weakness with the single-
inheritance model. Notice that there are two different kinds of enumerator
classes in the picture, both of which inherit from Object. An enumerator class
implements behavior that iterates through a collection, obtaining the elements

of that collection one by one. The enumerator classes define behavior that both
HashTable and Vector find useful. Other, as yet undefined collection classes,
such as list or queue, may also need the behavior of the enumeration classes.
Unfortunately, they can inherit from only one superclass.

3
A possible method to solve this problem would be to enhance some superclass
in the hierarchy to add such useful behavior when it becomes apparent that
many subclasses could use the behavior. Such an approach would lead to chaos
and bloat. If every time some common useful behavior were required for all
subsequent subclasses, a class such as Object would be undergoing constant
modification, would grow to enormous size and complexity, and the
specification of its behavior would be constantly changing. Such a “solution” is
untenable. The elegant and workable solution to the problem is provided via
Java interfaces, the subject of the next topic.
3.3.7 Java Language Interfaces

Interfaces were introduced to Java to enhance Java’s single-inheritance model.
The designers of Java decided that multiple inheritance created too many
problems for programmers and compiler writers, and decided that a single
inheritance model was better overall. Some of the problems described in the
previous discussion on the single-inheritance model are solved in a more
elegant fashion by the use of interfaces.
An interface in the Java language is simply a specification of methods that an

object declares it implements. An interface does not include instance variables
or implementation code—only declarations of constants and methods. The
concept of an interface in the Java language was borrowed from the Objective-
C concept of a protocol.
Whereas a class can inherit from only one superclass, a class can implement as
many interfaces as it chooses to. Using the examples from the previous
discussion, the HashTableEnumerator and VectorEnumerator classes both
implement an Enumeration interface that’s specific to the characteristics of
the HashTable and Vector classes. When you define a new collection
class—a Queue class, for instance—you’ll also probably define a
QueueEnumerator class that implements the Enumeration interface.
The concept of the interface is powerful—classes that implement a given

interface need do so only at the appropriate level in the class hierarchy. This
picture illustrates the use of interfaces.

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Cloneable Enumeration
Object Cloneable
Vector
BitSet
Enumerator
Dictionary Vector
Hashtable Hashtable
Observable
Entry Enumerator
Hashtable
Enumeration
Cloneable
Stack ObserverList
Properties
In this illustration, interfaces are represented by rectangles. You see that the
Cloneable interface is implemented by multiple classes. In addition, the
HashtableEnumerator and the VectorEnumerator classes both implement

3
the Enumeration interface. Any given class can implement as many interfaces
as it wants to, and in any way that it wants to. Details of the actual
implementation of the interface are hidden within the class definition, and
should be replaceable without affecting the outside view of the interface in any
way. Recall, however, that an interface merely declares methods; it does not
implement them. When inheriting from classes (in languages such as C++), the
implementation of inherited classes is also inherited, so more code can be
reused when compared to the amount of code re-use in multiply-inherited
interfaces. For this reason, inheriting from interfaces provides a reasonable
alternative to multiple inheritance, but this practice should not be seen as a
substitute for the more powerful but often confusing practice of inheriting
from multiple classes.
3.3.8 Access Control

When you declare a new class in Java, you can indicate the level of access
permitted to its members—that is, its instance variables and methods. Java
provides four levels of access. Three of the levels must be explicitly specified:
public, protected, and private. Members declared public are available
to any other class anywhere. Members declared protected are accessible only
to subclasses of that class, and nowhere else. Members declared private are
accessible only from within the class in which they’re declared—they’re not
available even to their subclasses.
The fourth access level doesn’t have a name—it’s often called “friendly” and is
the access level you obtain if you don’t specify otherwise. The “friendly”
access level indicates that the class’s members are accessible to all objects
within the same package, but inaccessible to objects outside the package.
Packages, a useful tool for grouping together related collections of classes and
interfaces, are discussed below.
3.3.9 Packages
Java packages are collections of classes and interfaces that are related to each
other in some useful way. Such classes need to be able to access each other’s
instance variables and methods directly. A geometry package consisting of
Point and Rectangle classes, for instance, might well be easier and cleaner
to implement—as well as more efficient—if the Point’s instance variables

3
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 you’ll break code that uses those classes. Packages are created by
storing the source files for the classes and interfaces of each package in a
separate directory in the file system.
The primary benefit of packages is the ability to organize many class

definitions into a single unit. For example, all the Java I/O system code is
collected into a single package called java.io. The secondary benefit from the
programmer’s viewpoint is that the “friendly” instance variables and methods
are available to all classes within the same package, but not to classes defined
outside the package.
3.3.10 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
definition are instance variables—there is one of those variables in every
separate object created (instantiated) from the class. A class variable, on the
other hand, is local to the class itself—there’s only a single copy of the variable
and it’s shared by every object you instantiate from the class.
To declare class variables and class methods in Java programs, you declare
them static. This short code fragment illustrates the declaration of class
variables:
static final int version = 2;
static final int revision = 0;
}
The Rectangle class declares two static variables to define the version and
revision level of this class. Now, every instance of Rectangle you create from
this class will share these same variables. Notice they’re also defined as final
because you want them to be constants.
Class methods are common to an entire class. When would you use class
methods? Usually, when you have behavior that’s 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 current number of currently open
windows. This information is shared by every instance of Window and it is

3
only available through knowledge obtained from other instances of Window.
For these reasons, it is necessary to have just one class method to return the
number of open windows.
In general, class methods can operate only on class variables. Class methods
can’t access instance variables, nor can they invoke instance methods. Like
class variables, you declare class methods by defining them as static.
We say, “in general”, because you could pass an object reference to a class
method, and the class method could then operate on the object’s public
instance variables, and invoke the object’s instance methods via the reference.
However, you’re usually better off doing only class-like operations at the class
level, and doing object-like operations at the object level.
3.3.11 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 declare methods that aren’t actually
implemented by that class—they only provide place-holders that subsequent
subclasses must override and supply their actual implementation.
This all sounds wonderfully, well, abstract, so why would you need an abstract
superclass? Let’s look at a concrete example, no pun intended. Let’s suppose
you’re going to a restaurant for dinner, and you decide that tonight you want
to eat fish. Well, fish is somewhat abstract—you generally wouldn’t just order
fish; the waiter is highly likely to ask you what specific kind of fish you want.
When you actually get to the restaurant, you will find out what kind of fish
they have, and order a specific fish, say, sturgeon, or salmon, or opakapaka.
In the world of objects, an abstract class is like generic fish—the abstract class
defines generic state and generic behavior, but you’ll 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 specific (concrete) kind of fish.
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
shapes—move, reshape, rotate, fill color, and so on. You could make each of
these graphic shapes a separate class—you’d have a Rectangle class, a Line

3
class, and so on. Each class needs instance variables to define 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 Graphical 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
}
Now, you can’t instantiate the Graphical class, because it’s declared
abstract. You can only instantiate a subclass of it. You would implement the
Rectangle class or the Circle class as a subclass of Graphical. Within
Rectangle, you’d provide a concrete implementation of the drawMySelf
method that draws a rectangle, because the definition of drawMySelf must by
necessity be unique to each shape inherited from the Graphical class. Let’s
see a small fragment of the Rectangle class declaration, where its
drawMySelf method operates in a somewhat PostScript’y fashion:
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
. . .
}
}

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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 defined 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 specific shape. You gain the benefit of re-using
all the code that was defined 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 define templates from which you instantiate (create) distinct concrete
objects.
• Instance variables hold the state of a specific object.
• Objects communicate by sending messages to each other. Objects respond to
messages by selecting a method to execute.
• Methods define the behavior of objects instantiated from a class. It is an
object’s 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.
• Subclasses provide the means by which a new class can inherit instance
variables and methods from any already defined 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). Subclasses provide 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.

3

Architecture Neutral, Portable,
and Robust 4
With the phenomenal growth of networks, today’s developers must “think

distributed”. Applications—even parts of applications—must 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 specific 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 specific hardware architecture, but such methods are
not only clumsy but are still geared to a specific 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.
50
4
4.1 Architecture Neutral

The solution that the Java system adopts to solve the binary-distribution
problem is a “binary code format” that’s 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
platform is made available for a given hardware and software environment, an
application written in Java can then execute in that environment without the
need to perform any special porting work for that application.
4.1.1 Byte Codes

The Java compiler doesn’t generate “machine code” in the sense of native
hardware instructions—rather, it generates bytecodes: a high-level, machine-
independent 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 today’s
software market, application developers have to produce versions of their
applications that are compatible with the IBM PC, Apple Macintosh, and fifty-
seven flavors 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.

4
4.2 Portable
The primary benefit 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 there’s 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 defining standard behavior that will apply to the
data types across all platforms. Java specifies the sizes of all its primitive data
types and the behavior of arithmetic on them. Here are the data types:
byte 8-bit two’s complement

short 16-bit two’s complement
int 32-bit two’s complement
long 64-bit two’s complement
float 32-bit IEEE 754 floating point
double 64-bit IEEE 754 floating point
char 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 two’s-complement arithmetic in 8-bit to 64-bit integer
formats, and most modern processors support single- and double-precision
floating 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 specification.
Architecture Neutral, Portable, and Robust 52

4
4.3 Robust
Java is intended for developing software that must be robust, highly reliable,
and secure, in a variety of ways. There’s 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 flexibility. 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 Java’s 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 can’t write code that turns an arbitrary integer into an object
reference by casting.
While Java doesn’t 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.

4
4.4 Summary
Java—an architecture-neutral and portable programming language—provides 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 confidence.
The next chapter contains a brief discussion of Java’s interpreted
implementation.
Architecture Neutral, Portable, and Robust 54

4

Interpreted and Dynamic 5
Programmers using “traditional” software development tools have become

resigned to the artificial edit-compile-link-load-throw-the-application-off-the-
cliff-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 tools—even
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 it’s
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 briefly 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 defined 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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5
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 specific 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 language’s 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 verified 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 they’ll break. Keeping track of the dependencies between class definitions
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 difficulty, and doing so

5
effectively means not using any of the language’s 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 doesn’t compile references down to numeric values—instead, it
passes symbolic reference information through to the byte code verifier and the
interpreter. The Java interpreter performs final 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 first 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 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 definitions. If you’re
handed an object, you can find out what class it belongs to. In a C or C++
program, you may be handed a pointer to an object, but if you don’t know
what type of object it is, you have no way to find out. In the Java language,
finding out based on the run-time type information is straightforward.
It is also possible to look up the definition 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.
Interpreted and Dynamic 58

5
5.2 Summary
The interpreted and dynamic nature of Java provides several benefits:
• 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 fly as required,
• The fragile superclass problem that plagues C++ developers is eliminated
because of deferral of memory layout decisions to run time.

Security in Java 6
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 we’re
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 compiler’s 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
60
6
can’t 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 platform.
Very late binding of structures to memory means that programmers can’t 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 programmer’s ability to get behind the scenes and
either forge or otherwise manufacture pointers to memory. These features must
be viewed as positive benefits rather than a restriction on the programmer,
because they ultimately lead to more reliable and secure applications.
6.2 Security Checks in the Class 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 verifier,
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 file 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 first 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 spaces—they can only reference such
classes explicitly. Similarly, classes imported from different places are
separated from each other.
6.3 The Byte Code Verification Process

What about the concept of a “hostile compiler”? Although the Java compiler
ensures that Java source code doesn’t violate the safety rules, when an
application such as the HotJava Browser imports a code fragment from
anywhere, it doesn’t 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

6
your machine to trust the incoming bytecode stream? The answer is simple: the
Java run-time system doesn’t trust the incoming code, but subjects it to bytecode
verification.
The tests range from simple verification 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 doesn’t forge pointers,
• it doesn’t 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 verification of generated code,

establishes a base set of guarantees that interfaces cannot be violated.
Security in Java 62
6
6.3.1 The Byte Code Verifier

The bytecode verifier traverses the bytecodes, constructs the type state
information, and verifies the types of the parameters to all the bytecode
instructions.
Compile Time Execution Time
Bytecodes
move through Class Loader
network or Bytecode Verifier
file system
Java
Source
Java
Just in Time
Virtual Machine
Compiler
Java
Compiler
Operating System
Java
Hardware
ByteCodes
The illustration shows the flow of data and control from Java language source
code through the Java compiler, to the class loader and bytecode verifier and
hence on to the Java virtual machine, which contains the interpreter and
runtime system. The important issue is that the Java class loader and the
bytecode verifier make no assumptions about the primary source of the
bytecode stream—the code may have come from the local system, or it may
have travelled halfway around the planet. The bytecode verifier acts as a sort
of gatekeeper: it ensures that code passed to the Java interpreter is in a fit 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 verifier’s tests. Once the verifier is done, a number of important properties
are known:
• There are no operand stack overflows or underflows

6
• The types of the parameters of all bytecode instructions are known to
always be correct
• Object field accesses are known to be legal—private, public, or protected
While all this checking appears excruciatingly detailed, by the time the
bytecode verifier 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 doesn’t have to check anything. There are no
operand type checks and no stack overflow checks. The interpreter can thus
function at full speed without compromising reliability.
6.4 Security in the Java Networking Package

Java’s 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 configurable levels of paranoia. You can
• Disallow all network accesses
• Allow network accesses to only the hosts from which the code was imported
• Allow network accesses only outside the firewall if the code came from
outside
• Allow all network accesses
6.5 Summary
Java 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.
Security in Java 64
6

Multithreading 7
Sophisticated computer users become impatient with the do-one-thing-at-a-

time 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 difficult 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 difficulty 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
66
7
downloading a text file 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 thread’s 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 PARC’s Cedar/Mesa system. Integrating support for threads into the
language makes them much easier to use and more robust. Much of the style of
Java’s integration of threads was modelled after Cedar and Mesa.
Java’s threads are pre-emptive, and depending on platform on which the Java
interpreter executes, threads can also be time-sliced. On systems that don’t
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();

7
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 synchronized—they

can’t 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 you’re writing Java applications, you should take care to implement your
classes and methods so they’re 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 Support—Conclusion

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 benefits of multithreading are better interactive responsiveness and real-

time 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.
Multithreading 68
7

Performance and Comparisons 8
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? Let’s first 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 119,000 per second

new C() (class with several methods) 89,000 per second
o.f() (method f invoked on object o) 590,000 per second
o.sf() (synchronized method sf invoked on object o) 61,500 per second
Thus, we see that creating a new object requires approximately 8.4 µsec,
creating a new class containing several methods consumes about 11 µsec, and
invoking a method on an object requires roughly 1.7 µsec.
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, Java bytecodes
can be translated on the fly (at run time) into machine code for the particular
CPU on which the application is executing. This process is performed by the
70
8
Just In Time (JIT) compiler. For those accustomed to the normal design of a
compiler and dynamic loader, the Just In Time compiler is somewhat like
putting the final 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 specific 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 files and
processes rather than data structures. Some of these languages are suitable for
very fast prototyping—you 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. Perl’s 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 difficult to implement and

8
use. And of course when you use C++, you have the perennial fragile
superclass issue. Last but definitely 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 fits 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 that’s entirely adequate for all but
the most compute-intensive applications.
Prospective adopters of the Java language need to examine where the Java
language fits into the firmament of other languages. Here is a basic comparison
chart illustrating the attributes of the Java language—simple, object-oriented,
threaded, and so on—as described in the earlier parts of this paper.

8
Java SmallTalk TCL Perl Shells C C++
Simple
Object
Oriented
Robust
Secure
Interpreted
Dynamic
Portable
Neutral
Threads
Garbage
Collection
Exceptions
e
anc High Medium Low Medium Low High High
rm
Perfo
Feature exists
Feature somewhat exists
Feature doesn’t exist
From the diagram above, you see that the Java language has a wealth of
attributes that can be highly beneficial 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.

8
8.3 A Major Benefit 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
robust—you don’t 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
programmer’s job vastly easier; with the burden of memory management
taken off the programmer’s shoulders, storage allocation errors go away.
Another reason commonly given that languages like Lisp, TCL, and SmallTalk
are good for prototyping is that they don’t require you to pin down decisions
early on—these 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 assistance—you can write method
invocations and, if you get something wrong, you get told about it at compile
time. You don’t 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, you’ve
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 first eight chapters have been your introduction to the Java language
environment. You’ve learned about the capabilities of Java and its clear
benefits to develop software for the distributed world. Now it’s time to move
on to the next chapter and take a look at the HotJava World-Wide Web
browser—a major end-user application developed to make use of the dynamic
features of the Java language environment.

8

Java Base System and Libraries 9
The complete Java system includes several libraries of utility classes and
methods of use to developers in creating multi-platform applications. Very
briefly, these libraries are:
Basic Java language classes—java.lang
The Input/Output package—java.io
The Java Utilities package—java.util
The Abstract Window Toolkit—java.awt
9.1 Java Language Classes

The java.lang package contains the collection of base types (language
types) that are always imported into any given compilation unit. This where
you’ll find 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.
This picture illustrates the classes in java.lang, excluding all the exception and
error classes.
76
9
Object
Throwable
Boolean
Thread
Character Group
Class Thread
Math Security
Manager System
Process Runtime String
Number
Integer Double
Long Float
Note the Boolean, Character, and Number classes—these classes are

“wrapper” classes for the primitive types. You use these classes in applications
where the primitive types must be stored as objects. Note also the Throwable
class—this is the root class for all exceptions and errors.
9.2 Input Output Package

The java.io package contains the declarations of classes to deal with streams
and random-access files. This is where you find the rough equivalent of the
Standard I/O Library you’re familiar with on most UNIX systems. A further
library is called java.net, which provides support for sockets, telnet
interfaces, and URLs.
This picture shows the class hierarchy of the I/O package.

9
Object File
Descriptor
File
Stream
Tokenizer
Random
DataInput AccessFile DataOutput
Input Output
Stream Stream
ByteArray ByteArray
InputStream OutputStream
Piped File
File Piped
Sequence Filter
StringBuffer
InputStream
Filter
InputStream Buffered
OutputStream
Data
OutputStream
Bufferered Print
InputStream Stream
Data
InputStream
LineNumber
InputStream
Pushback
InputStream
Note that the grayed out boxes with DataInput and DataOutput represent
interfaces, not classes. Any new I/O class that subclasses one of the other
classes can implement the appropriate interface if it needs to.

9
9.3 Utility Package

The java.util package contains various utility classes including collection
classes such as Dictionary and Vector. Here you’ll find common storage classes
such as HashTable and Stack, as well as special use classes like Date and
Time and classes to handle encoder and decoder techniques. This picture
illustrates the useful classes contained in the java.util package.
Object
BitSet
String
Date Tokenizer Vector
Dictionary Observable
Random
Hashtable
Enumerator
Hashtable Stack Observer
Entry List
Hashtable
Properties
9.4 Abstract Window Toolkit

The java.awt package is an Abstract Windowing Toolkit that provides a
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.

9
The following picture is a graphical depiction of the class hierarchy in the
Abstract Window Toolkit.
Button Canvas Check Choice Label List Scroll Text

Box Bar Component
FileDialog
GridLayout
Dialog
GridBag
LayoutInfo
GridBag Component
Window Frame
Layout
Flow
Layout
Container Panel
Card
Layout
Applet
Border
Layout
Object
MenuBar
CheckBox
Group
Menu
Color Component
Dimension Graphics MenuItem
Event GridBag
Constraints
Font
Image Point
Menu CheckBox
FontMetrics MenuItem
Insets
Polygon
MediaEntry
Rectangle
Media
Image Tracker
MediaEntry Toolkit

9
Familar interface elements such as windows and panels are subclasses of
Component. Layout classes provide varying degrees of control over the layout
of interface elements.

The HotJava
World-Wide Web Browser 10
It’s a jungle out there,

So drink your Java
T-shirt caption from Printer’s 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 first
major end-user application created using the Java programming language to
run on the Java platform. HotJava not only showcases the powerful features of
the Java environment, it also provides an ideal platform for distributing Java
programs across the Internet—the 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 first 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 user’s 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.
82
10
HotJava goes far beyond the first 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 first
generation Web browsers into a new and dynamic viewing system for
hypertext, which is described below. HotJava enables creation and display of
animation-oriented applications. World-Wide Web content developers can have
their applications distributed across the Internet with the click of a button on
the user’s client computer.
Java has been adopted enthusiastically by the internet community and Java
capabilities have appeared in many Internet-related products like Web
browsers and other client-server applications.
10.1 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 net—the one we’re primarily interested in
here—is 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 Computer’s HyperCard product for Macintosh
provided an early if somewhat primitive implementation, the real power of
hypertext comes from the ability to create inter-document links across multiple
host computers on the network. The first 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 figuring out what
the data is and displaying it if possible. One of the most prevalent file formats
that 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 HTML’s use of links to
other HTML pages either on the same host or elsewhere on the Internet.

10
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
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.
10.1.1 First Generation Browsers

What we could call the “first-generation” Web browsers—exemplified by NCSA
Mosaic and early versions of Netscape Navigator—provide only 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.
Display
Text
and
Images
Fetch Click
Data Link
Decode
URL
This illustration depicts roughly the “interactive” flow of control in the first-
generation Web browsers. You can see that it’s not really highly
interactive—it’s just a fancy data fetching and display utility with fixed
hypertext links. It does not dynamically handle new data types, protocols, or
behaviors.
The HotJava World-Wide Web Browser 84

10
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.
The client-server model is roughly a star with a big server in the middle and
clients arrayed around it. The new model exemplified 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 “who’s in charge?” shifts from the server
to the client.
The primary problem with the first-generation web browsers is that they’re
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.

10
10.1.2 The HotJava Browser—A 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 client—that 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” (mini-
applications) 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 haven’t 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 it’s
needed. You don’t have to “install” software—it comes across the network as
you need it—perhaps after asking you to pay for it. Content developers for the
World-Wide Web don’t have to worry about whether or not some special piece
of software is installed in a user’s system—it just gets there automatically. This
transparent acquiring of applications frees content developers from the
boundaries of the fixed media types such as images and text and lets them do
whatever they’d like.
10.1.3 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
to find out about things it doesn’t understand. The result of this lack of
understanding is great flexibility and the ability to add new capabilities very
easily.

10
10.1.4 Dynamic Content

One of the most visible uses of HotJava’s 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 doesn’t also contain malicious
code that damages the system. Code that attempts to be malicious or which has
bugs essentially can’t breach the walls placed around it by the security and
robustness features of Java.
new1
smtp
nntp
url
ftp
gif
new2
html
new3
http
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 confidence
that the won't compromise the integrity of
a user's system.
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.

10
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 define new types of data
and behavior that meet the needs of their specific audiences, rather than being
bound by a fixed set of objects.
10.1.5 Dynamic Types

HotJava’s 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,
the inventor just has to make sure that a copy of its Java code is installed on

10
the server that contains the images they want to publish; they don’t have to
upgrade all the browsers in the world. HotJava essentially upgrades itself on
the fly 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 Network Server
User asks
for object
request
Object
reply
Browser
doesn’t
Time
understand
object type request Java
code to
support
object
reply
Object
Displayed
10.1.6 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 find that document. Most of the current generation of Web browsers

10
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.
Dynamic incorporation of protocols has special significance 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.
Without dynamic protocols, a user would need multiple browsers to access

data on multiple servers if each of those servers had proprietary new
protocolss. Such a situation 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
?
Products from VBTP Proprietary Web

Vendor B Server Browser Which Browser
Protocol should the poor
user run?
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 final
result that is seamless and very convenient for the end user.
Products from HTTP Proprietary !

Server Protocol
Vendor A
A
HOTJAVA
B
Products from HTTP

Proprietary No problem!
Vendor B Server
Protocol

10
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 first the local system and then the system that is
the target of the URL.
10.2 Freedom to Innovate

Innovation on the Internet follows a pattern: initially, someone develops a
technology. They’re 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 significant 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. The HotJava
browser’s flexibility can greatly aid that. As new protocols and data types
become important, they can be transparently incorporated.

10
10.3 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 specified protocol. The host and localinfo fields are
passed to the protocol handler. The result of this is a bag of bytes containing
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.
That’s all there is to Mosaic. It’s essentially very simple. But despite this
apparent simplicity, the Mosaic program is actually huge since it must contain
specialized handlers for all of these data types. It’s bundled together into one
big monolithic lump.
In contrast, HotJava is very small, because 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 fixed 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 definitions 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.
10.4 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 imported from 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

10
viruses. The topic of safety is a very broad one and doesn’t have a single
answer. HotJava has a series of facilities that layer and interlock to provide a
fairly high degree of safety.
10.4.1 The First Layer—the Java Language Interpreter

The first 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.
When HotJava imports a code fragment, it doesn’t 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 Verifier.
10.4.2 The Next Layer—the 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 file access primitives implement an access control list that
controls read and write access to files 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 file to which access
has not been granted, a dialog box pops up to allow the user to decide whether
or not to allow that specific access.
10.5 HotJava—the 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.

10

10

Further Reading 11
I’ve got a little list.

I’ve got a little list.
Gilbert and Sullivan—The Mikado
The Java Programmer’s Guide
Sun Microsystems
http://java.sun.com/progGuide/index.html
This is the draft version of the Java/HotJava Programmer’s 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 reading—it alerts you to the problems you’re 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++.
94
11
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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The Java™ Language Environment

v The Java Language Environment—May 1996

vii The Java Language Environment—May 1996

The Next Stage of the Known,

Taiichi Sakaiya—The Knowledge-Value Revolution

The Software Developer’s Burden

The Better Way is Here Now

11 The Java Language Environment—May 1996

1.1 Beginnings of the Java Language Project

Java originated as part of a research project to develop advanced software for a

1.2 Design Goals of Java

Together, the above requirements comprise quite a collection of buzzwords, so

1.2.1 Simple, Object Oriented, and Familiar

Even though C++ was rejected as an implementation language, keeping Java

13 The Java Language Environment—May 1996

1.2.2 Robust and Secure

Java is designed to operate in distributed environments, which means that

1.2.3 Architecture Neutral and Portable

1.2.4 High Performance

1.2.5 Interpreted, Threaded, and Dynamic

Modern network-based applications, such as the HotJava World-Wide Web

15 The Java Language Environment—May 1996

1.3 The Java Platform—a New Approach to Distributed Computing

Developing your applications using Java results in software that is portable

17 The Java Language Environment—May 1996

You know you’ve achieved perfection in design,

Antoine de Saint Exupery.

In his science-fiction novel, The Rolling Stones, Robert A. Heinlein comments:

Heinlein’s comment could well describe the evolution of many programming

Another major design goal is that Java look familiar to a majority of

* Now enjoying their silver anniversaries

19 The Java Language Environment—May 1996

2.1 Main Features of the Java Language

2.1.1 Primitive Data Types

Numeric Data Types

There is no unsigned type specifier for integer data types in Java.

Character Data Types

Java—Simple and Familiar 20

Boolean Data Types

2.1.2 Arithmetic and Relational Operators

This code states that myPoints is an uninitialized array of Points. At this

21 The Java Language Environment—May 1996

for (i = 0; i < 10; i++) {

Access to elements of myPoints can be performed via normal C-style

would assign the value 10 to the howMany variable.

Java—Simple and Familiar 22

Java has extended the meaning of the + operator to indicate string

String objects provide a length() accessor method to obtain the number of

2.1.5 Multi-Level Break

test: for (int i = fromIndex; i + max1 <= max2; i++) {

23 The Java Language Environment—May 1996

2.1.6 Memory Management and Garbage Collection

Java’s memory management model is based on objects and references to objects.

for (i = (len - 1); i >= 0; i--) {

Java—Simple and Familiar 24

The variable dest is used as a temporary object reference during execution of

2.1.7 The Background Garbage Collector

2.1.8 Integrated Thread Synchronization

25 The Java Language Environment—May 1996