Reading a Quick-Reference Entry

Each quick-reference entry contains quite a bit of information. The sections that follow describe the structure of a quick-reference entry, explaining what information is available, where it is found, and what it means. While reading the following descriptions, you will find it helpful to flip through the reference section itself to find examples of the features being described.

Class Name, Package Name, Availability, and Flags

Each quick-reference entry begins with a four-part title that specifies the name, package, and availability of the class, and may also specify various additional flags that describe the class. The class name appears in bold at the upper left of the title. The package name appears, in smaller print, in the lower left, below the class name.

The upper-right portion of the title indicates the availability of the class; it specifies the earliest release that contained the class. If a class was introduced in Java 1.1, for example, this portion of the title reads “Java 1.1.” If the class was introduced in Version 1.2 of the Java 2 platform, the availability reads “Java 1.2,” for simplicity’s sake. If the class is part of a standard extension, this portion of the title specifies the name (or acronym) of the standard extension and the earliest version in which the class appeared. For example, the availability might read “Servlets 2.0” or “JNDI 1.1.” The availability section of the title also indicates whether a class has been deprecated, ...

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