Returning String Methods in Java? - Stack Overflow
Java String Methods - You Need To Know
First method of the article is charAt... Great start! Then you realise this is probably every method available order alphabetically... This could be reduce to a "5 methods to know" to be really interesting.
More on reddit.comELI5:What is a "String" in Java/programming and why is it known as a "complex added type" and other variable are known as "primitive" ?
New Methods on Java Strings With JDK 11
Looks like they're taking the awful PHP "real_escape_string" approach to API development of finding increasingly strained synonyms when something needs to be fixed by making the Unicode-aware version of String.trim() be named String.strip() instead of just adding an overload for trim() that takes an option parameter to specify the trimming type.
A hypothetical alternative of trim(StringTrimOptions options), used as in these examples:
// First two are equivalent, and use the backward-compatible
// pre-existing trimming logic
str.trim();
str.trim(StringTrimOptions.ASCII_WHITESPACE);
// This example uses new Unicode-compatible trimming logic.
str.trim(StringTrimOptions.UNICODE_WHITESPACE);
... would be a much better solution that wouldn't require every developer going forward, in perpetuity, to have to discover what the non-obvious difference between trim() and strip() is (whereas the hypothetical StringTrimOptions alternative is self-explanatory to a large extent); and is forward-compatible should the need ever arise in the future for yet another type of string trimming.
(And with the isBlank() method being added too, which could probably also benefit from being able to specify the type of whitespace; maybe instead of StringSplitOptions the argument should be WhitespaceType instead so an overload ofisBlank() could read correctly with it too.)
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You're correct that your issues are rooted in not understanding static. There are many resources on this, but suffice to say here that something static belongs to a Class whereas something that isn't static belogns to a specific instance. That means that
public class A{
public static int b;
public int x;
public int doStuff(){
return x;
}
public static void main(String[] args){
System.out.println(b); //Valid. Who's b? A (the class we are in)'s b.
System.out.println(x); //Error. Who's x? no instance provided, so we don't know.
doStuff(); //Error. Who are we calling doStuff() on? Which instance?
A a = new A();
System.out.println(a.x); //Valid. Who's x? a (an instance of A)'s x.
}
}
So related to that your method histogram isn't static, so you need an instance to call it. You shouldn't need an instance though; just make the method static:
Change public String histogram(int randomNum) to public static String histogram(int randomNum).
With that done, the line histogram(randomNum); becomes valid. However, you'll still get an error on System.out.print(histogram + "\n");, because histogram as defined here is a function, not a variable. This is related to the return statement. When something says return x (for any value of x), it is saying to terminate the current method call and yield the value x to whoever called the method.
For example, consider the expression 2 + 3. If you were to say int x = 2 + 3, you would expect x to have value 5 afterwards. Now consider a method:
public static int plus(int a, int b){
return a + b;
}
And the statement: int x = plus(2, 3);. Same here, we would expect x to have value 5 afterwards. The computation is done, and whoever is waiting on that value (of type int) receives and uses the value however a single value of that type would be used in place of it. For example:
int x = plus(plus(1,2),plus(3,plus(4,1)); -> x has value 11.
Back to your example: you need to assign a variable to the String value returned from histogram(randomNum);, as such:
Change histogram(randomNum) to String s = histogram(randomNum).
This will make it all compile, but you'll hit one final roadblock: The thing won't run! This is because a runnable main method needs to be static. So change your main method to have the signature:
public static void main(String[] args){...}
Then hit the green button!
For starters your main method should be static:
public static void main(String[] Args)
Instance methods can not be called without an instance of the class they belong to where static methods can be called without an instance. So if you want to call your other methods inside the main method they must also be static unless you create an object of type prog310t then use the object to call the methods example:
public static void main(String[] Args)
{
prog310t test = new prog310t();
test.histogram(1);
}
But in your case you probably want to do:
public static String histogram (int randomNum)
public static void main(String[] Args)
{
histogram(1);
}
Also you are not catching the return of histogram() method in your main method you should do like this:
System.out.print(histogram(randomNum) + "\n");
Or
String test = histogram(randomNum);
System.out.print(test + "\n");
Static methods are part of a class and can be called without an instance but instance methods can only be called from an instance example:
public class Test
{
public static void main(String[] args)
{
getNothingStatic();// this is ok
getNothing(); // THIS IS NOT OK IT WON'T WORK NEEDS AN INSTANCE
Test test = new Test();
test.getNothing(); // this is ok
getString(); // this is ok but you are not capturing the return value
String myString = getString(); // now the return string is stored in myString for later use
}
public void getNothing()
{
}
public static void getNothingStatic()
{
}
public static String getString()
{
return "hello";
}
}
Void means the method is not returning anything it is just doing some processing. You can return primitive or Object types in place of void but in your method you must specify a return if you don't use void.